Category Gig/Festival Reviews

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As with the friday review, apologies to any bands I missed or cover here with a one-line review – seeing so many bands means that to do them all justice would lead to this review being ridiculously long.

Saturday at Bloodstock got off to an early start with Apollyon on the New Blood stage. Some great heavy guitar work helped the coffee to wake me up, but all too soon it was over to the Sophie Lancaster stage for one of the bands I’d been looking foward to seeing – Splintered Soul. They played the New Blood stage back in 2010 but since then have undergone lineup changes, including a new vocalist. Well they were definitely worth the wait – a really good performance...

Posted in Gig/Festival Reviews

When the clock struck midday on Thursday 9th August, this was cause for celebration – not just because I wouldn’t be back at work till Tuesday the next week, but for a far better reason – time to set off for Bloodstock, the highlight of many metalheads calendars. A quick drive to Catton Hall followed by picking up my press credentials and it was time to enter the arena once again.
I knew there were bands due to play on Thursday night but had no idea who – when the festival released the stage times they omitted the Thursday night lineup for some reason, but never mind, it would be a surprise.
In the end one band cancelled due to having broken down abroad and not being able to get to the site in time, leaving just three bands to play. Of those I watched two...

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This was my first time at V festival and I’d heard mixed reports about it, so was keen to see for myself what the festival was like.

The festival is held at two sites – Chelmsford, Essex and Weston Park, Staffordshire on the same weekend with bands who play one site on the saturday, playing the other on the sunday and vice versa. It’s a good system as it lets the organisers effectively split one massive festival into two more manageable sized ones.
First impressions were good – the site was well signposted from the motorway all the way through to the sites...

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Två gånger är en vana, tre gånger är tradition. Vad fem gånger är vet jag inte, men Scribblefestivalen har blivit ett stående inslag i Mjölby under slutet av sommaren. När det arrangeras för femte gången är lineupen förmodligen den starkaste hittills.

Night Train från Vadstena inleder festivalen på eftermiddagen. En ung hårdrockstrio som låter som att de har spelat ihop bra mycket längre än de förmodligen har. Musikaliskt riktigt duktiga och låtmaterialet håller hög klass hela vägen. Snygga riff och klockren sång. Fortsätter de så här kommer de att bli riktigt stora vad det lider. (3/5)

T.Y.P.O från Skänninge fyller sin speltid med covers. Stor inledning med Danko Jones kanske bästa låt, Had enough, men bäst är ändå Lady Gagas Pokerface i punkkostym...

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How a 20th anniversary of festival life is could be celebrated?

Sziget Festival is the winner of the best European major festival award- written on the hand passes. Idea started 20 years ago, as a small audience and band-meeting camp. Since it is thousands of young and older people biggest party in Europe every summer.

Anniversary’s lead and line-up was extremely successful, people were coming from everywhere in Europe, Italian speakers, French guys, and Holland girls everywhere. By the way Finnish flags or Portugal national symbols and German smiles also founded in the crowd. Anyway.. dust is huge, sand is twisting, but the feeling of festival life is eternal.

After three warm up days, as Metal Day with the best hard music bands from north and south, a day addressed to the great Hungari...

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Minus second day was also a kind of surprise for those, who are curious in national music history, as well-known styles, and artists from the first hits of the modern age of Sziget Festival’s organizer Hungary.

On 5th of August a whole day music fiesta celebrated the upper mentioned topic, as the song culture and history of Hungary with the top crème of music life, reminds us great hits, unforgettable moments, sounds, and legendic artists from the past, presented by current, younger-older pop-rock icons. Initiative from Gábor Presser, world-famous Hungarian musician and music producer, in 2008. Then, as Sziget Festival, Day of Hungarian Songs also celebrates an anniversary the fifth...

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DIMMU, HAMMERFALL ON THE TOP- METALDAY IN SZIGET FESTIVAL

On the first day of 20th birthday celebrated Sziget Festival, city of Budapest was thrilled by Scandinavian soul, since that day called The Metal Day…

Started in the early afternoon Sziget’s island filled up with real music lovers, waiting for the best metal artists, mostly legendically from Scandinavia. But trying to not get any one-lined stereotypes, check all the great bands out, who played fantastic gigs at that big Hungarian Metal Day. Hungarian all-music festival, called Sziget won the best European major festival award int he year, celebrated its 20th year. Every time Sziget Festival renew itself, to show something more nd more from year to year for thousands of visitors, coming to party an enermous int he middle of summer...

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The second edition of the fresh Bucharest-based Romanian festival Summer Well started not so well and ended really bad.

The lineup announced included The Stone Roses, Hurts, The Vaccines, Patrick Wolf, Wolf Gang, Zulu Winter and many others, but the joy of being able to see Hurts (again in Bucharest) and The Stone Roses for the first time in Romania soon turned into a very frustrating experience.

Let’s start with the beginning. The festival takes place in a superb location, 20 km outside Bucharest, near a 150 year old palace and all over the forest surrounding it (including a pond populated by swans and ducks). Sounds (and really is) dreamy, which is why the tagline of the event is ”a festival like a holiday”.

Last year it was great, but unfortunately this year it rained hard in Bucharest...

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Vädret: stekhett, soligt, varmt, svettigt, regnigt, blåst, blixtar, moln, kallt, fullmåne
Summering: Woodstock bjöd på allt förutom snö och storm, men mestadels 30 grader och sol 🙂

Folk: 800 000st Polacker (så långt ögat kunde nå), en och annan tysk och så några få procent svenska, vietnameser, fransmän och ryssar. Mer internationellt önskar emellertid både från civila som från ledningen.

Stämning: trevlig, glad, välkomnande, fredfull, öppen, spexig, festlig, magisk och allt annat kul man kan förknippa med en festival under namnet Woodstock. En festival som värnar om öppenfrihet och ickevåld...

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One of the good news this year was that the organization did everything in their power to keep the same ticket prices as the previous year:50€(quite cheap right?) and at the same time they continued to improve the conditions of the festival; the beer had a reasonable price (1, 5 €), there were more portable toilets, wider variety of food and drinks inside the enclosure and finally there was a box office for photographers/press/guests and best of all: the light didn’t went out on stage like last year. The Security staff was a little tight at the entrance but more tolerant/respectful and better prepared to deal with drunkards, moshers and surf-crowders.

Day 1
Enslaved
Enslaved started playing late in the afternoon, the sunset and the cold breeze of Lake Calvão made itself felt through...