Last Saturday, I was invited to attend the Euroblast festival in Cologne, an indoor metal festival mainly focussing on djent and progressive sounds.

THE area around the Essigfabrik, a former vinegar factory that is now a concert and party venue, does not look like much. To the left are the towering storage tanks of the Aurora flour factory, the white paint flaking off, to the right a few storage spaces and a fuel station. The venue itself has seen better days too. Its facade is 1980s concrete, sicklish-yellow. It’s raining and grey and cold, 7 degrees only. Colder than Berlin. Cologne/Rhine micro-climate my ass. Not the best conditions for a metal festival, even an indoor one, I guess. There are cars from France, Belgium and Holland parked all around, so the festival must be a hit with our European neighbours in metal, at least.

Things are different once I enter the main hall. There’s a massive stage at the rear end of the hall, with a large, animated LED screen replacing the meagre printed backdrops seen at other festivals, and even though the stage is visible from everywhere in the hall, there are two large video screens left and right of the stage and cameramen and -women covering all activity on stage from various angles. When I enter, the hall is half-filled with punters, about 500 would be my rough guess, and Ever Forthright are playing. The guys from New York seem to set the tone and feeling for the festival day for me – between rough mosh parts and complex drum and riff patterns they sprinkle a nice jazz piano and even a saxophone. Do hardened metal fans leave the hall? Not at all – everyone is celebrating Chris Barretto and Co., and the band even animates the crowd to a wall of death and a mosh pit. It’s not yet six in the evening.

Outside, it’s still cold and miserable and it has started to rain, but you can buy burgers and chips and crepes from small stands and warm your fingers and feet trying out some Ibanez guitars and rehearsal drumsets at two roadshow-tents. The only thing I’m missing is something warm and strong, even a mulled wine would be nice now, but maybe I’m too old and that’s not metal enough. Behind the outside area I walk down a concrete ramp to the second, smaller stage in the basement of the Essigfabrik. Here it smells properly musty and rotted, and the sounds are somewhat heavier than on the main stage. I watch two bands from southern Europe – Tardive Dyskinesia and Hord. Tardive Dyskinesia are five angry gentlemen from Greece who pepper their Pantera-ish shouts and riffs with some tricky song patterns, so both headbangers and mathematicians in the audience are satisfied. Hord are equally pissed and energetic and come from the south of France, mixing hardcore vocals a la Born From Pain with a massive wall of sound pierced by shrieking solos.

Back in the main hall, I am lucky to catch the second half of the set of The Algorithm, playing to a full room now. If I was suspicious about the potential success of so many diverse bands on the billing and the variety of sounds, this band dismisses all my concerns. Have you watched ‘Scott Pilgrim vs. The World’? Well – imagine Sex-Bob-Omb and the Katayanagi Brothers playing one set together on one stage, and you have The Algorithm. They produce an incredible wall of sound, only consisting of programming and drumming, sometimes only drumming, but even without tuned-down guitars this is some of the heaviest shit I’ve seen and heard in a long time. Even if there’s only drum and bass, I still see metal heads in jeans and leather and Anthrax-badges banging along. And if even seasoned headbangers approve of a sound that would fit well into Berlin’s Berghain, then the metal scene cannot be as close-minded and ignorant as everybody always says.

Twelve Foot Ninjaare next on the bill, and why I appreciate their weird videos and how they elegantly mix different music styles, live they are still a clone of Limp Bizkit and Incubus with their uniform black stage dresses and stereotypical new metal jumping around. But the crowd likes it, the band is celebrating their first time in Europe and the beer at the bar is cold and I’m feeling good, so no hard feelings here at all.

The last time I had seen The Ocean was almost a decade ago, when they were touring every shit hole in Europe and played for a snickers and glass of milk wherever they could; and I was already then mesmerized by their spirit and intransigence, but as tonight’s headliner they pack an even meaner punch – a well-oiled flood of sounds and images if flowing from the stage, all lit in blue and black and sometimes punctuated by bright flashes, and one song merges into the next while the five men on stage are really working for their music. The sweat is flowing. A perfect amalgamated final performance for the second Euroblast day, and I leave the hall with the last chords of ‘Nazca’ pushing me through the double doors and into the cold Cologne rain outside.

And while I missed the first day with it’s more heavier, metal-core billing; and the third day with progressive gods Meshugga shredding the festival to an end, this gathering is a good one: a sign that the scene is alive and kicking and progressing and evolving, despite of all the headwinds metal (of whatever genre) always encounters. They could have sold mulled wine, though.