Watershed, Möder & Nothingness

Popcentrale is a small live music venue in Dordrecht, located on the Noordendijk in the south of the Netherlands. It works as a pop stage for the city, hosting concerts that lean toward the heavier and more underground end of the spectrum as well as broader rock and pop programming. The room has a reputation for being a place where the atmosphere of past nights lingers, something its own promotion has described as walls that carry the stories of the evenings held there. The venue has a particular connection to metal. In 2013 it staged a Metal Night in Dordrecht, an event that originated with Popcentrale itself, and visitors writing about the evening treated it as a distinctive stop on the Dutch metal circuit. The place has also drawn international punk acts. The American band The Casualties, for example, have announced a headline show here, which shows how the venue fits into the touring routes of loud, guitar driven bands that move between small European rooms rather than large halls. Part of the character comes from the setting. Concerts are sometimes billed as taking place in the vaults of Popcentrale, a phrase that points to a cellar like, enclosed space where sound and crowd sit close together. That kind of intimate, low ceilinged room suits club shows where the audience stands near the stage and the line between performer and listener is thin. For anyone following live music in the Zuid Holland region, Popcentrale is one of the places in Dordrecht where touring bands and local acts play in a compact, unpolished setting, with a steady focus on rock, punk and metal.