Many of my friends have already been and gone to many festivals across Europe; Hellfest, Metalcamp and a multitude of others. However, having a little baby can be quite restrictive when it comes to things like that – camping in a field when Freyja is so young is just a no-go – so where we normally would’ve accompanied everyone, we sat at home cleaning up poo and sick… although I don’t think I know anyone going to Wacken Open Air this year due to it’s weakening line-up and shift towards poor music (Bring Me The Horizon, Bullet For My Valentine for example). However when it comes to Bloodstock Open Air, Hannah’s mum lives just round the corner! This blessing has enabled us to visit the festival grounds during the day, and travel home in the evening to see our gorgeous baby girl. Maybe next year we might be able to bring her with us – she’ll be about 16 months by then, but we need to find out if even ear defenders will be enough at that age… May not even be until 2011…
Anyway, this year I’m looking forward to seeing some great bands, including Carcass, Katatonia, Saxon, Apocalyptica, Blind Guardian, Enslaved, Amon Amarth, Anathema, Europe, Satyricon and Turisas. It also means I get to finally update The Metal Page!
As you may/may not know I recently got back from the yearly pilgrammage that is Wacken. There were very few bands I really wanted to see, compared to Hellfest, so much of it was socialising and partying rather than watching tonnes of bands. We left on Monday (28th July) around 9pm to pick Tom and Sophia up. I had a little strop due to the ridiculous amount of packing they did (and always have done). Srsly guys – fail.
Anyways, we set off for Dover, and as we did, the entire Atlantic Ocean poured down on my car. Most of the journey was spent doing between 20mph-40mph due to the extremely low visibility, but we pressed on. We made it to the ferry for about 00:45am after a ridiculuously long detour due to some morons closing the main road into Dover ferry terminal – srsly guys, FAIL.
After I had a disturbed sleep on the ferry, we set off still in darkness through France. As we headed into Belgium, the day began to show itself, and my tiredness kicked in again. Just before the German border, I flaked out and let Hannah drive for an hour or so, for her first time in Europe, woohoo! I took over before we reached the A1, and sped most of the way to Wacken at around 100-110mph aside from roadworks etc., and we arrived at the holy Wackenland about 2pm, after a couple of stops for food and beer (which were piled up on Tom and Soph in the back!)
Read the rest of this entry »
In the wake of Hellfest and the build-up to house-moving, I’ll take this moment to review all the bands and my general festival experience. Tom was saying how unorganised previous years were, but I kept an open mind. Thankfully, on 99% of fronts, the festival was excellently organised. Toilets were cleaned every day which was more than most festivals. The weather was spectacularly hot (and sometimes too hot for Hannah who gets sunstroke very easily!), and it was ace. Not enough shade I think, I think the benches should’ve had umbrellas for shade as well. Managed to pick up a few new T-Shirts (Venom, Dimmu Borgir, Hellfest), as did Han. Read on for my review of most of the bands I saw…
Read the rest of this entry »
I’ll post the same review as I wrote on Pompey Music forum as I’m lazy and can’t be bothered to type another review. My review of Hellfest is going to be pretty in-depth, so I shall work on that tonight.
Frosthold – Not a bad set by all accounts (apart from one of the bouncers who thought we were appalling…), think we generally played a lot better than usual aside from some minor mess-ups including me totally losing my place in The Aethelings due to Phil’s guitar suddenly being drowned out of my monitors…otherwise good.
Akakios – I was recovering from sweat for most of it, but I heard good metally sounds coming from over there.
Mayz – I had a disagreement with the door staff at this point, so missed most of Mayz calming down from wanting to rip their faces off. Sounded nice and proggy, but I’d have to listen to it properly to get it I expect. The only other thing I remember of Mayz was them turning up very late, I don’t know the full story, there could be a really valid reason, but turning up so late is just not cool…
Enochian Theory – Just excellent as always. Every time I see them, they get so much better, tighter, and more touching. Aside from the orchestra being a bunch of lazy bastards and seemingly not playing what the conductor was telling them to play, it was absolutely flawless. I’ll definitely be picking up a copy of the new CD when it’s done as I really loved the songs. Very tight, very pro, very WIN, very MANLY. In the bedroom.
Posted by mobile phone:
The engines are going and we’ve started moving!
