Monthly Archives juni 2010

Posted in Gig/Festival Reviews

Atreyu
The American metalcore band whose name is inspired by the character in the fantasy movie ’The Nevereneding Story’ opened the last day on the main stage. While the members got on stage they had a Queen’s song on the background. The music is quite intense, with lots of screaming and the guitar solo almost resemble power/speed metal.

Evergrey
This is a band that I have recently discovered and fell in love with. And another personal interest in watching them was to see how the ex Therion bassist, Johan Niemann integrated into the progressive band. He seemed confident with his playing and was a cool surprise to see him doing backing vocals as well. The singer, Tom, joked that they would play fast since they want to run and see Katatonia...

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Sabaton
The Swedes whose main theme in the lyrics is historical wars opened the day for me on the main stage. They keep jumping around during their very energetic show and it’s quite a good wake up music. In between songs they talk t the crowd, spicing the dialogues up with jokes about the sound engineer and a blow job. The show ended literary on fire on the rhythm of Primo Victoria.

Dark Funeral
To wake up completely, I went to the Marquee I tent to check out more Swedes, this time on the black metal side. They came on stage with their faces painted, almost on the edge of silliness and with big pentagrams on their clothes. I think most of their songs are dedicated to one form or another of Satan or anything anti Christian. Good blasting from the drummer.

Bullet for my Valentine
A quick ...

Posted in Gig/Festival Reviews

Held every year in Dessel, Belgium, usually the last weekend of June, the festival celebrated 15 years of existence in 2010. Big names such as Aerosmith, Soulfly and Kiss were brought for the celebration, even if along its history the festival was never cheap on big names. A list with these names can be fund here http://www.graspop.be/2010/en/extra/bandsdb.php

The sun seems to have enjoyed the music and considered showing up for the entire weekend, making it almost unbearable in the small tents. Speaking of small tents, the amount of famous names playing here is so high that names like Sepultura and Nile only got a space in the smallest of the 3 tents. Organisation is even better than in 2010 in my opinion, but it’s probably demanded by an increased number of attendees...

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Have you ever imagined energetic rock concert at Opera and Ballet house area? Well, that is quite possible. For example, in the capital of Norway. In the heart of Oslo, Operataket started series of various concerts. And just another day after celebration of Midsummer day it was possible to enjoy yourself at famous Skambankt and BigBang concert. Yeah, stage is on the water, possibilities to watch show – on the Operas and Ballet house roof. Spectacular view, nothing less. Possibilities to listen to the concert – whole Oslo downtown. So, can you imagine the atmosphere?

At the concert there were two more bands for warming up. So that were Lionheart Brothers and Smoke Mohawk. They started to play at 6 p.m. After them, straight ahead – Skambankt on the stage at 8 p.m...

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If day 1 came with some rain, and day 2 kept everyone in suspense, with big, black clouds constantly hanging above the city, the last day of Sonisphere was as bright and shiny as they come. The line-up was a more eclectic combination of bands than in the previous day – Anathema, Stone Sour, Alice in Chains and Rammstein, so the crowd wasn’t as large at first. Also, there were a few sound issues, something which had not occurred in the previous day (although people had complained about it after the Paradise Lost performance, on day 1).

Anathema

Anathema, who was first on stage, is a band that has performed in Romania many, many times before...

Posted in Gig/Festival Reviews

Although in the last three or four years Bucharest has started showing up on the tour map of many notable artists, it’s not every day that you get to see all “big fours” (Anthrax, Megadeth, Slayer and Metallica) on the same stage, on the same day. Historical events have happened before on a festival stage in Romania’s capital city – the first one that pops into my head is the Marilyn Manson/Alice Cooper double duet from 2007’s last day of B’estival – but a full day of good old school speed/thrash metal attracted an even larger crowd at the venue, one of the biggest I’ve seen at a Romanian festival so far.

Anthrax

They had a very short performance (about 45 minutes), but they were one of the most energetic bands from the festival’s line-up...

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Day 3 – Sunday

Saxon
Due to morning laziness, I only got to see the last 3 songs of their set. It would have been cool to see it all, since they played the entire Wheels of Steel to commemorate their 30th anniversary and 30 years of rock at Donington. Plus, Saxon performed at the first festival there, so it was quite special. They dedicated one of the songs to Dio and I was really happy to see Wheels of Steel live. Not many people were awake at that early hour, so the crowd was not quite up for such a show, in my oppinion.

Ricky Warwick
I tagged along with my friends to the acoustic stage to see the performance of Ricky Warwick, the next Thin Lizzy vocalist...

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Day 2 – Saturday

Sybreed
I was told by a friend to go and see them, so I took my only trip to the Pepsi tent. They excused themselves for their accent caused by their Swiss-French origin. The industrial rock that they played reminded me at times of Meshuggah maybe, with a lot of mixtures of black and death metal, but with a lot of electro/synth stuff that were a turn off for me and made me leave before the end of their show. I still remember the massiveness of their bassist whose last name is, ironically, Grand, and who made me think of a character from some SF series, and was doing some really cool bass tapping.

Flyleaf
I wanted to see Atreyu on the main stage, but they switched places with the Americans from Flyleaf. They are a female fronted band, with a mean looking bassist...

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DAY 1 — Friday

Anathema
The first concert I got to see (and I wanted to see) on Friday after I collected my wristband (by the way, it was a really huge queue for the weekend tickets) was Anathema, on the second stage. I always managed to miss them live and each time I heard they were so good, so I finally got to experience the quality of their music live. And, even if the show only lasted 30 minutes, I was delighted by it as they only got to play their biggest hits and got the crowd to clap most of the time. The female voice was astonishing and they dedicated their “A natural disaster” to Dio.

36 Crazyfists
I watched them from rather far away, as my main concern was to get acquainted with the area...

Posted in Gig/Festival Reviews

A bit about the festival

Held usually during the 2nd week of June at the Donington Park motor circuit, close to Nottingam and Derby, UK’s Download Festival is a continuation of the Monsters of Rock festivals organised in the same place until 1996. It started as a two day event and expanded to 3 in 2005. The name comes from the idea of rock music being a rebellious genre, thus being against the music industry pressure who claimed the festival would destroy the industry. Along the years, the festival managed to always offer quite an impressive line-up, with big names split all over the stages, sometimes leaving one no chance of breathing between two concerts. The festival’s history can be read here.

The 2010 edition celebrated 30 years of rock festivals at Donington park; apart from this, th...