Death Metal Live

Last Saturday (12 December), I finally went to another festival. It was about goddamn time. So now I'm sitting here with a minor neck-ache, telling you how much awesome bands I saw. Well, I'll just keep it short since I have a paper to get to. Here's the time schedule and all the bands that played:
16:45 - 17:15: Hackneyed
17:15 - 17:45: Escutcheon
17:35 - 18:15: Ulcerate
18:05 - 18:45: Dead Head
18:35 - 19:20: Krisiun
19:10 - 19:55: The Rotted
19:45 - 20:30: Grave
20:20 - 21:05: Disharmonic Orchestra
20:55 - 21:55: Tankard
21:45 - 22:45: Hail of Bullets
22:30 - 23:30: Nile
These were (obviously) on two different stages. I've seen most of Hackneyed, most of Ulcerate, all of Krisiun, a little bit of The Rotted, most of Grave, Disharmonic Orchestra and Tankard, a few songs of Hail of Bullets and all of Nile.
For starters, Hackneyed was a band of teenagers playing pretty straight-forward, slightly modern death metal. They were pretty good for such a young band, I just hope they get a little better. After some food, I went to see Ulcerate, which had just started. This was to be (for me, anyway) one of the best bands of the festival. They played what is best described as technical death metal. Technical as their playing might be, it didn't come off as technical wankery. There was a pretty wide variety of sounds here and I'm definitely going to check at least one of their two albums out. After a break, Krisiun from Brazil played. This three-piece played some pretty good death metal. That said, I really hated the sound of the bass guitar. The bass player (and vocalist) did get the crowd moving though.
After this, we saw a little bit of The Rotted, which was a kind of grindcore band from the UK. The front man here was a pretty funny dude. They put up quite a show. This did, however, get old pretty soon. We went to see Grave, which was quite a disappointment for me. Sure, the band played well, but I find that Grave lacks bits that really excite me. They've got all the basic death metal elements, but that's just about all.
Anyway, next up was Disharmonic Orchestra: the other big positive surprise for me. First thing that is notable about this band is that they don't look like average death metal folk. Then again, their style doesn't really conform to that either. They've got a lot of elements: grindcore, death metal, alternative metal and some funk influences too. Add to this a large variety of speed and a charismatic stage performance and you've got Disharmonic Orchestra. They played songs from most of their albums, including from their upcoming one, which is due (quote:) "maybe in 2010". I'm looking forward to hearing some of their albums.
Beyond this band was Tankard, thrashing beer-addicted metal from Germany. They had a pretty good show, just you'd expect a thrash metal band to play. They're the only thrash band I've seen (though I read Dead Head was thrash metal too, I didn't see them).
Last up was Nile. I can be really short about this: their performance was great. The only thing I really missed was that they didn't play Unas, probably my favorite track off In Their Darkened Shrines. That said, they picked songs off each album roughly equally (ie. it wasn't a show based on their new album, or with only new material, like sometimes tends to happen).

So there you have it. I'll probably update this later with pictures or something. The venue has a page where they put pictures for all their events, but there aren't any up there as of yet.