REVIEW BY PAUL VAN GORP

After a good show by Senser, we had to wait a short while to see the Antwerp band once again. Again I was expecting a lot of this concert. The show started with some sort of deja-vu. Last year, at my first dEUS-gig at the Dour Music Festival, I saw Tom perform in a dress. This time Klaas, Tom and Stef had planned a similar act. Klaas was wearing a silver skirt with a bikinitop, Stef was dressed in a tigerskin-dress and Tom was wearing an old-ladies' apron/dress. This caused a somewhat puzzled and hilarious reaction amongst the audience.
It was clear that Rudy had not come over his leg-injury yet, because he was sitting during the entire show again. This time he seemed much more at attention, maybe because of a smaller alcohol consumption. He did look a little pale, so there was still something wrong with his health. I was surprised by the fact that they opened with yet another new song from My Sister = My Clock. This was the first time I could experience Little Ghost live. This very modest hymn was a daring opening song, but it turned out to be a success. Stef was able to give an impressive version of this song, because the audience was quite attentive and relatively quiet.

As usual, the uptempo Via followed, which caused much activity in the pit. There was a lot of continuous crowdsurfing in Belgium, too. Sometimes this crowdsurfing is a bit irritating, especially if you are rather tall. The transformation of Little Ghost into via formed a nice aspect of this song.

After a tremendous rendition of Horror Party Jokes, Rudy showed to be in a good shape during Morticiachair.

Twenty Something was introduced to be a song on the new album. Tom told us that this new album would be released in may of the next year. Tom seems very content with the (non-)Def Leopard-like opening of Twenty Something, because this statement was again part of the introduction.

A beautiful version of Worst Case Scenario followed, but again Tom's second microphone did not work in the right way. Unbelievable that they don't seem to be able to tackle this problem once and for all. During this song dEUS was accompanied by an extra keyboardplayer. I noticed this instrument before, but I didn't pay any attention to it until now. This extra (and to me unknown) person was introduced by Tom as DJ Crying D; later on this guy would play a more important role. The addition of the keyboardsounds was not really necessary; sometimes this instrument was even somewhat disturbing. It didn't really fit in the ordinary dEUS line-up. Nevertheless, Worst Case Scenario was the highlight of this dEUS-gig.

After this, Stef was able to get his act together again during Mr. Death Won't Get Me. Earlier in the day, I had read in some sort of festivalnewspaper that his second band was now being called Moondog Jr. This caused a content feeling, because I remembered that this band is planned to appear at the Lowlands festival in august in Holland; dEUS will also play this magnificent festival, by the way.

Suds And Soda was characterized by much activity in the pit. Again the keyboardplayer was added, and again this sounded superfluous. Although I would like it if this song was excluded once in a while, it is very logical to play it at such a festival, where the audience is waiting for known and easy-to-interpret songs.

During Supermarket Song the additional bandmember played a more prominent role. The guy's name appeared to be David, and during this song he added his vocals through Stef's microphone. Sometimes both Stef and this David-person were screaming together into this microphone.

Supermarket Song turned out be a bit of a mess, but My Wife Jan was really chaotic. In this festivalcontext My Wife Jan is a good choice, but this time it was too chaotic. Nevertheless, the band really seemed to enjoy themselves.

Again Hotellounge finished off another dEUS-show. The concert started at 12.45h and closed at 13.40h. Before Hotellounge, Tom made it clear again that he would like to play on and on, but he was allowed to do this song and no more. This time Hotellounge had a very strange ending. I did not hear this version before. The music was totally different, and only the words (partly in French again) could be recognized.

Although Belgium's current top act (it was a long time ago that a Belgian band was this high on the festival bill) appeared to be a big success amongst a big part of the audience, I was not really enthusiastic about this show. I don't know what was wrong, but there was something missing. Although the setlist was rather nice, this was one of the less satisfying dEUS-gigs I attended.

I didn't expect to ever say this, but there was an other band that was much better than dEUS: REM rocked in a BIG way! In my opinion they were by far the best band of this festival. Other good acts were Senser, Morphine, P.J. Harvey and Belly.