11 October 2018, in front of a small concert hall, stands a small group of metalheads, waiting for a night of hard slamming and moshing, because Crossfaith is in the Netherlands! The concert took place in Patronaat in Haarlem. Around 19:30 the doors open, and the small group goes inside, waiting for the first band, Normandie.
Normandie enters the small stage and gets a small portion of the audience going, who seemed to be there especially for Normandie. Although not a lot of the audience members got riled up by them, Normandie still did well. After a small set of 20 minutes, the band is done and they leave the stage satisfied, cheered on by some pretty big applause. The stage gets transformed and it’s time for the next band: Blood Youth.
The moment Blood Youth enters the room, you notice that a lot more people know the band Blood Youth. From the moment the first song starts a moshpit forms and the energy is right. Blood Youth had a slightly longer set than Normandie, with 30 minutes of playtime. This music is a little louder than the first act and because of this, the audience gets warmed up a bit for the main performance of the night: Crossfaith!
At 21:50 exact all of the lights in the room go out, and the only thing you hear are screaming fans that are ready for it to begin. Crossfaith kicks off with the intro of their latest album Ex_Machina, and it seems like every fan knows the number by heart and starts to dance immediately. When the song reaches its climax the band members run onto the stage to psych up the audience. Singer Kenta Koie walks onto the stage last holding a flag with the band’s logo on it, to start screaming into the microphone immediately, but doesn’t seem to realise his microphone wasn’t on yet.
After the intro follows Catastrophe, also from their last album and the audience immediately kicks off. People headbanging, a big moshpit, people singing along loudly, the whole package. The energy is right instantly. After Catastrophe it’s time for Destroy, this song is pretty memorable, since Kenta ordered the audience to get on their knees and just up the moment he tells them to. The next song on the programme is Freedom and after that Jägerbomb, in which dj Terafumi provides the front row with shots of Jägermeister.
At Countdown to Hell they turn it up another notch, because the moshpit turns out to be a lot bigger than it was during the previous songs. The whole room is turned upside down, everyone sings along, dances along, or is moving, nobody stands still. At the next song Make a Move everyone jumps along as well.
After the band members exit the stage, the next number already starts, which is System X, from the album Xeno from 2015. It quickly changes from a metal concert to a dance concert, but soon the next song starts to play, Xeno, and it turns back into a metal concert. The moshpit is ready to start and go wild. After Xeno it’s time for the oldest song from the night, Photosphere, from the EP Zion released in 2012. For the people who have been fans for longer this is a nice surprise, because all of the other songs were pretty new. After Photosphere it’s time for Daybreak, where the roof was definitely raised.
Unfortunately, the night is almost over, after a good 5 minutes of screaming and cheering the band comes back onto the stage one more time, for 2 songs: The Perfect Nightmare and Monolith. The audience seems to still have plenty of energy and moshes just as hard for the last 10 minutes.
Everything comes to an end, and sadly the concert of Crossfaith must come to an end as well. Although it was a pretty short set of 1 hour and 10 minutes, the fans look like they’ve been to battle, tired but satisfied. Slowly the room becomes empty, everyone leaves to go home, after a good night of metal provided by Crossfaith.
Setlist:
Introduction (Ex_Machina)
Catastrophe
Destroy
Freedom
Jägerbomb
Countdown to Hell
Make a Move
System X
Xeno
Photosphere
Daybreak
The Perfect Nightmare
Monolith
