REVIEW BY PAUL VAN GORP

Because the concert would start at 10.00pm I didn't expect to see a support act; especially when there were no extra instruments and standards on the stage. But at once there was music coming from the stage where 4 guys had taken place. In the next 25 minutes Die Anarchistische Abendunterhaltung from Antwerp performed a very original 'classical' concert with violin, accordeon, bass and clarinet. A few songs were covers, such as Break On Through by the Doors and the crowd really got warmed up when they played Suds & Soda. At 11.12pm Tom, with his usual beer and cigaret and his hair dyed red, came on stage and was joined by the rest of the band. They started with a strong new song, called Ferocious. After this the party really got started with Via. Although all of the 'hits' were played, this was a totally different concert from the one I saw in Den Haag a few weeks ago (february 22). This time there were a lot of new songs, very different in style. There were e.g. some songs that are potential hits, and others had that smooth and jazzy sound. Especially one song, that was done by Stef, showed influences from his other band SKC Moondog & The Beat Band. It was clear the band was really eager to play, which which turned out to be logical, since Barman told us that this was their last (Dutch) appearance before the summerfestivals. There was a lot of chatting between songs. For example, Jigsaw You (the guitar-driven version again) was preceded by a story about the song being very popular in Albania. On the charts it was no. 2 behind Zombie by the Cranberries. Tom sung a part of this latter song in a hilarious way. At another moment he told us that the new CD (My Sister = My Clock) will be released within two weeks, which is great news! This time Shake Your Hip (in the first encore) and Dive Bomb Djingle were played. During the latter song the violin player totally went bezerk. Wearing strange sunglasses and a TOOL-hat, he screamed the 'That's the price you pay'-part. It was not really clear to me if he had learned something from the singing lessons during MTV's Most Wanted three days before. That dEUS had fun that night was proven once again when they came back for a second encore, in which they performed Let Go (I believe). Unfortunately Mute wasn't performed. At about 0.30am they left the stage, and after 40 minutes or so Tom joined the remaining audience and chatted for a while and signed some posters. It is difficult for me to make a comparison between this concert and the one in Den Haag. There were only about 7 songs played in both concerts, which resulted in a very different show. This only shows the diversity andoriginality in dEUS' performances. Although this last show was very driven and convincing, I'm not able to state which of these last two concerts was the best. But what I can say is that these two shows were better 'organized' than the former shows. I've seen them 5 times now, but during the first 3 shows last year, there were a lot of unnecessary breaks and long pauses. Now it is less chaotic.