Band: Nachtmystium
Title: Live At Roadburn MMX
Label: Roadburn Records (vinyl)
Distribution: x
Release date: February 17th 2011
Review: live-album

In 2010, Blake Judd’s Nachtmystium played one of their most unusual gigs ever on one of Holland’s major Metal festivals, Roadburn (actually in Tilburg). During Nachtmystium’s tour, unforeseen circumstances took place; the drummer needed to leave for home just a good week before the performance on Roadburn. Two guys were chosen rather quickly yet carefully to help the band out on this specific gig: Astrosoniq-colleagues Ron van Herpen (also in The Devils Blood) as lead guitar player and Teun van der Velden on synths. Only three hours before this gig, these two guys started rehearsing the material to perform live on stage with the other members, but in spite of this extremely limited trying-out, the result really is incredible. It sounds as if all members (don’t forget that one of the other live session members is rather ‘new’ as well: Charlie Fell of Lord Mantis / Avichi / Floating Fantasy-fame; only Andrew ‘Aamonael’ Markuszewski co-operates with Blake Judd as live-musician for a handful of years, initially as guitar player during the first half of this century, and live bass since a couple of years [he does perform some session guitars as studio-musician right now for the upcoming studio-material]) do play together for years. An incredible performance of the whole horde indeed!
As a matter of fact, there are a few minor details that don’t work in the beginning, going for both performance and sound. Yet as from a few tracks on, it turns out to become a highlight. What an energy, what a persuasion, and what a nice contact with the audience as well, apparently. And yes, that acceptable sound (after a few songs) takes courtesy of professional studio assistance by Marcel van de Vondervoort – mastering was done by Collin Jordan (Boiler Room Mastering), by the way.
The play is (read: was) nice, as mentioned before. The set did mainly consist of more recent tracks and one of the surpluses is this one (at least in my opinion): the creative and improvised performance instead of a clean repetition, an own interpretation at the moment itself, giving the musicians the necessary space to experiment and to show their skills and abilities. Impressing…
Anyway, fans of this eccentric (Black) Metal project, and fans of live registrations, are kindly asked to do the right thing: poison the world! And if not, then just buy or steal this live shit.

--/100

Ivan Tibos.