On Friday, August 1st, Dogma played a show at Little Devil in Tilburg. The show was fully sold out, packing the tiny venue full of people. This was the first headline show of their small summer run titled “Sinning Over Europe 2025, Part II”, where they play both headline shows and appear at festivals, such as Wacken the day before.
Support for this evening was Dan Brooklyn, who tells the story of occultist Aleister Crowley through his music. With the venue also being a bar, the doors to the stage opened at 20.30 and just 15 minutes later Dan Brooklyn’s band made their way through the crowd to the stage. The intro sounded over the speakers, to which Dan Brooklyn himself walked out on stage. Dressed in a fur coat over a fully gold outfit, accompanied by gold facepaint, he stood behind his microphone stand. The microphone stand was fully decorated by gold eyes with blue irises, which also were painted on his pants and face. Their performance felt like a theatrical experience, somewhere between a ritual and a concert. While the band is usually accompanied by two dancers, this stage was unfortunately too small for them to join for this performance. There were some small outfit changes throughout the set, first losing the fur coat and later on putting on a black cloak. At the end of their set Dan Brooklyn took the time to pay his respects to Ozzy Osbourne, who recently passed.
After a short 30 minute break, it was time for the headliner of the evening: Dogma. This band is known for dressing like attractive nuns, which mostly attracts a male crowd. The band stands for freedom of speech, expression and being able to be yourself freely, without blindly following religion and politics. As stated on their website: “We are DOGMA, and we are anti-DOGMA. Wake up. Open up your eyes. Nuns follow a god. They live without enjoyment and claim to abstain from sexual encounters. We subvert the iconography of nuns because they represent the exact opposite of what we preach. They are not free. Like many characters in the human race, they deprive themselves of the richness of a full life. We believe in complete freedom, unbound by a belief in any “god”. Each person is their own god.” The band consists of singer Lilith, drummer Abrahal, bassist Nixe and guitarists Rusalka and Lamia.
Their intro sounded over the speakers while they walked out on stage and ended with a voice saying “Welcome To Hell”. The first song of the evening was ‘Forbidden Zone’, which starts with high church-like vocals. When the rest of the band joined in for the song the crowd gave some enthusiastic screams. ‘Feel The Zeal’ was played next, followed by ‘Be Free’. “Ready to sin?” asked Lilith before getting into the song ‘My First Peak’.
“Things always taste better when they are banned” is how Lilith introduced the song ‘Banned’. Aside from the few words between songs, there was not much crowd interaction through words. Instead the band interacted with the crowd with their movements, making eye contact and dancing for them. Nixe even posed for a selfie with a fan in the front row. While all band members were dressed the same, the way they acted set them apart. Lamia was all about dancing, sometimes suggestive, while Rusalka gave off more theatrical antics, snapping her fingers, encouraging the crowd to clap and intensely staring in the eyes of fans at the front.
If people in the crowd showed up without knowing the band, they surely were familiar with the cover of Madonna’s ‘Like A Prayer’, which they performed in their own way. Then it was time for a mash up of all the classics, starting with ‘Crazy Train’ by Ozzy Osbourne, once again paying tribute to him. Lilith left for most of the mash up, giving the full spotlight to the band. The mash up also included snippets from ‘Master Of Puppets’ by Metallica, Shania Twain’s iconic phrase “Let’s Go Girls”, Pantera’s ‘Walk’ and Iron Maiden’s ‘The Trooper’ along many more classics.
After a short wait for the encore the crowd got treated to two more songs: ‘Father I Have Sinned’ and ‘The Dark Messiah’. Afterwards both Rusalka and Abrahal made their way to the merch table, both selling merch and meeting fans.
