Archive for the ‘bands’ Category

« Older Entries

The metal stars align

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

Gojira Lost Soul

 

 

 

 

 

So I was hav­ing a quick Google to see if any metal gigs were com­ing up while we are vis­it­ing Krakow, Poland. Came up with a few entries, all either just before or after we leave. I was about to go do some­thing else (atten­tion span of a gnat), when I clicked a few more links, and HOLY SHIT. Gojira (one of our favourite bands) are play­ing a club gig in Krakow a few days after we arrive. After sprint­ing to tell goat­lady with much excite­ment, I read fur­ther, and not only that – but Lost Soul, a band I just got into and who are totally, ass kick­ingly awe­some – are the sup­port act. Cue more sprint­ing to tell the sleepy goat­lady, and try­ing to work out how to book tickets.

What is even more amaz­ing is that this gig costs … $24 Aussie dol­lars. That is a crazy price!

Posted in bands, travel | Comments Off

Wacken 2010 band shortlist

Tuesday, May 4th, 2010

So it’s almost time to start get­ting our shit together for this epic fes­ti­val out­ing. Aside from a pos­si­ble hand­ful of announce­ments, all 3 fes­ti­vals have now revealed their full line-ups and holy shit, they are just amaz­ing. I don’t think I’ve ever looked for­ward to any­thing as much as this.

First up, let’s see what I con­sider as an absolute MUST SEE at Wacken. I would crawl through the mud, bro­ken glass and pos­si­bly the piss ditches to see these bands. As long as I didn’t spill my beer. There are 96 bands on the bill at the moment, which is just mind blow­ing. There are also quite a few head­lin­ers this year, so unlike pre­vi­ous fes­ti­vals where the head­line acts played on a par­tic­u­lar night, we now how big shows over all 3 evenings.

  • 1349 
  • Arch Enemy
  • Alice Cooper
  • Can­dle­mass
  • Can­ni­bal Corpse – inter­est­ingly, CC have been to Perth twice, and on both occa­sions we have missed them due to a sched­ul­ing con­flict with another band… In Perth?! I don’t know how that hap­pens either.
  • Despised Icon – they’ve recently announced their breakup, so this will be the last chance to see them.
  • End­stille – totally kicked my ass at Wacken ‘09, so I will def­i­nitely not miss them again. Hope­fully they don’t get a mid­day show again thought, that shit aint right.
  • Fear Fac­tory – really can’t wait for this, espe­cially as it’s a night show.
  • Frei Wild – this is an odd choice, but any band with antlers in their logo makes me interested.
  • Gojira – oh yeah, this will prob­a­bly be the stand­out act for me this year. Strangely they are play­ing the tiny WET stage, but who knows, it might just work.
  • Grave Dig­ger
  • Immor­tal – any­thing can be made bet­ter with Immortal
  • Möt­ley Crüe – they’re old and saggy, but it should still be a good fun show.
  • Rot­ting Christ
  • Slayer – I’m pre­dict­ing vio­lence from the hard­core Slayer fans on this one. Slayer fans scare me.
  • Soulfly
  • The Devil’s Blood
  • Tia­mat
  • UDO
  • Varg

Yeah I know – that’s only 20 bands – leav­ing another 76, but I had to cull the list down to what I con­sider an essen­tial watch, and any­thing else is just gravy (on the deli­cious €3.50 steak sand­wich from the Wacken Nacken meat tent). There are bound to be over­laps and sched­ul­ing con­flicts, but tough deci­sions always have to be made – beer makes deci­sion mak­ing much eas­ier. \m/

Posted in bands, festival, woa2010 | 1 Comment »

Triptykon added to Summer Breeze

Sunday, March 28th, 2010

Triptykon

I seem to be hav­ing a good run with this fes­ti­val band thing. Just a few weeks ago I said in this blog post:

So first Gojira, now Fear Fac­tory… would it be cheeky to sug­gest a third must-see band, Trip­tykon? They’ll be tour­ing in Europe at the time, surely it wouldn’t be too much a stretch. Wacken, Party.San, Sum­mer Breeze? Anyone?)

Well, Sum­mer Breeze have kindly stepped up to the plate and added Trip­tykon (as well as Skele­ton­witch which I know is mak­ing some other peo­ple very happy). My life is now com­plete. I have no more suggestions.

It’s now time to com­pile a list of bands that are “must see” and hope like hell the sched­ules don’t have too many awful con­flicts. Wacken said they would be releas­ing their pre­lim­i­nary sched­ule on the 22nd of March but a week later we have yet to see any­thing. Still, I don’t imag­ine it will be long now…

Tags: ,
Posted in bands | Comments Off

You just try and wipe this smile off my face

Monday, March 8th, 2010

Burton C Bell

Fear Fac­tory have been announced for Wacken. I’d be doing a lit­tle happy dance right now, except that wouldn’t be very metal. Met­al­beast can con­firm that I ripped off my head­set and threw the horns before I could even vocalise the news.

So first Gojira, now Fear Fac­tory… would it be cheeky to sug­gest a third must-see band, Trip­tykon? They’ll be tour­ing in Europe at the time, surely it wouldn’t be too much a stretch. Wacken, Party.San, Sum­mer Breeze? Anyone?

I did my very first video inter­view in Jan­u­ary, with Bur­ton and Dino from Fear Fac­tory. You can laugh at me here: Soul of an old machine.

Tags:
Posted in bands, woa2010 | 1 Comment »

Wanted: Festival Factory

Monday, March 1st, 2010

Fear FactoryI

Last year, the all-new Fear Fac­tory lineup announced head­lin­ing club dates in Ham­burg (the day after we left) and Aus­tralia includ­ing Perth (two days after we arrived back home). But then those dates were can­celled due to their ongo­ing legal issues and the band went and recorded a new album instead.

They were then added to the Big Day Out fes­ti­val in Aus­tralia, but after most of the dates had already sold out and we weren’t about to pay to go when there was only one band we wanted to see on the bill any­way. So our chances of see­ing them live were snatched away again.

Now the new album, Mech­a­nize, is out (it’s a rip­per) and a set list from a recent show in Ams­ter­dam has a few of the new songs in it. Fear Fac­tory have been announced for the fol­low­ing Euro­pean fes­ti­val dates:

  • Hellfest (France), June 18–20
  • Graspop Metal Meet­ing (Bel­gium), June 25–27
  • With Full Force (Ger­many), July 2–4
  • For­t­aRock (Hol­land), July 3
  • Son­i­sphere (United King­dom), July 31
  • Bru­tal Assault (Czech Repub­lic), August 12–14

Now, to me that looks like there’s some big gaps in there, par­tic­u­larly in July and the begin­ning of August. My bet is that there will be some more Fes­ti­val gigs announced and maybe even some sideshows. Party.San is on at the same time as Bru­tal Assault so that’s prob­a­bly out, but Wacken at the begin­ning of August and Sum­mer Breeze on August 19–21 leave me with hope.

I’ll be keep­ing a keen eye out! Wacken organ­is­ers, you finally lis­tened to me a booked Gojira… here’s another tip for you!

Tags: , , ,
Posted in bands, party.san2010, summerbreeze2010, woa2010 | Comments Off

Success: Gojira added to Wacken

Saturday, February 27th, 2010

Gojira

Either the Wacken organ­is­ers started lis­ten­ing to what I’ve been say­ing for the last three years, or they got sick of my whin­ing – either way, I’m pleased to note that my favourite French envi­ron­men­tal­ists Gojira were added to the lineup in Jan­u­ary. (The thought that I had noth­ing to do with this announce­ment has, of course, not crossed my mind).

I’ve been a huge fan of this band for a cou­ple of years now, and while I have all their releases (includ­ing the ridicu­lously hard to find debut, Terra Incog­nita), my favourite by far is their sec­ond album, The Link, partly because of the amaz­ing per­cus­sion (includ­ing mal­let per­cus­sion) parts. I’m fairly sure that these days we won’t be hear­ing many (if any) tracks off The Link but never mind, it’s all killer stuff.

I’m also a bit of a sucker for accents, and once lis­tened to the begin­ning of an inter­view where the Gojira front­man said “’ello, my name is Jo-seeeeph Du-plant-i-aaaaaair” about 20 times in a row. So cute. Ahem.

Tags: , ,
Posted in bands, woa2010 | Comments Off

Party.San heating up

Saturday, January 30th, 2010

Sarke and Nocturno Culto 

In the leadup to Christ­mas, both Wacken and Sum­mer Breeze announced one band every day – in the case of Sum­mer Breeze, some­times more than one – so their line­ups, while not com­plete, are pretty well padded. Party.San didn’t get in on the advent trend, but they’ve made a few announce­ments in recent weeks that make us very happy met­al­heads indeed.

The biggest one for me is Sarke. This Nor­we­gian black metal col­lab­o­ra­tion between Sarke him­self and Darthrone’s Noc­turno Culto played Wacken last year and I made sure I saw it because Tom G War­rior was mak­ing a guest appear­ance for a Celtic Frost cover. While I was expect­ing that to be awe­some – and fuck, it really was – what I wasn’t expect­ing was to be blown away by the rest of their set. But they were great, and I’ve got the album now, and I think it’s going to be really fun to see them play at Party.San espe­cially because it’s going to  be a much smaller and more inti­mate festival.

Other announce­ments that are pretty cool include Suf­fo­ca­tion, Milk­ingth­e­goat­ma­chine (check em out, hilar­i­ous stuff) and Dying Fetus. The full lineup so far is:

AURA NOIR
CANNIBAL CORPSE
DEMONICAL
DEVOURMENT
DYING FETUS
KETZER
MÅNEGARM
MERRIMACK
MILKING THE GOATMACHINE
MONSTROSITY
NECROPHAGIST
OFERMOD
SARKE
SUFFOCATION
SUICIDAL ANGELS
THE CROWN
THE DEVIL’S BLOOD
TRIBULATION
UNDER THAT SPELL
VARG
WATAIN

Tags: ,
Posted in bands, party.san2010 | Comments Off

New plans: three festivals

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009

 horns!

Well, we decided to harden the fuck up and our 2010 metal extrav­a­ganza tour will now have three stops: Wacken, Party.San and Sum­mer Breeze.

Co-incidentally, this is the same route that Sound­works Metal Fes­ti­val Travel will be tak­ing – but we’re not going with them (although it’s a good deal they’re offer­ing) as we have our own plans before and after.

In the lead up to Anti-Christmas this year, both Wacken and Sum­mer Breeze have been announc­ing a new band every day (in the case of Sum­mer Breeze, quite often two bands are announced). It’s a far cry from last year where Wacken didn’t announce any­thing at all for bloody ages and dis­ap­pointed the hell out of everyone.

We now have an absolutely insane list of bands that we could poten­tially see. Sev­eral of then we will have the oppor­tu­nity to see mul­ti­ple times. It’s absolutely brutal.

Wacken

  • 1349
  • Arch Enemy
  • Can­ni­bal Corpse
  • Cru­ci­fied Barbara
  • Despised Icon
  • End­stille
  • Grave Dig­ger
  • Immor­tal
  • Mot­ley Crue
  • Slayer
  • U.D.O.

And also Alice Cooper, Amor­phis, Cal­iban, Corvus Corax, Die Apoka­lyp­tis­chen Reiter, Edguy, Ekto­morf, Ghost Brigade, Iron Maiden, Kamp­far, Lake of Tears, Orden Ogan, Pri­mal Fear, Stra­to­var­ius, The Devil’s Blood, Tor­frock, W.A.S.P.

Party.San

  • Can­ni­bal Corpse
  • Suf­fo­ca­tion
  • Watain

And also The Devil’s Blood, Demon­i­cal, Aura Noir, Mane­garm, Tribulation.

Sum­mer Breeze

  • 1349
  • Ahab
  • Behe­moth
  • Can­ni­bal Corpse
  • Dark Tran­quil­lity
  • Despised Icon
  • Gor­goroth
  • Hypocrisy
  • Kylesa
  • My Dying Bride
  • Obit­u­ary
  • Ori­gin
  • Sepul­tura
  • War From a Harlot’s Mouth

And also Anath­ema, Asphyx, Bar­ren Earth, Cal­listo, Cumulo Nim­bus, Dark Funeral, Die Apoka­lyp­tis­chen Reiter, Dying Fetus, Eis­brecher, Eis­re­gen, Ensiferum, Feuer­schwanz, Fiddler’s Green, Frei­wild, Gwar, Hail of Bul­lets, Ill Nino, Insom­nium, Kor­pik­laani, Leaves Eyes, Let­zte Instanz, Long Dis­tance Call­ing, Maroon, Mono Inc, Necrophag­ist, Orphaned Land, Pan­theon I, Poi­son­black, Rebel­lion, Sol­stafir, Sub­way to Sally, Swal­low the Sun, The Crown, The Dev­ils Blood, Tracedawn, We But­ter The Bread With Butter.

Tooo… much… metal!

Tags: , ,
Posted in bands | 2 Comments »

Balls to the Wall

Monday, November 30th, 2009

l_4bc0cd8326c30b335ca235953f4ffa0d So the good peo­ple at Wacken Open Air (per­haps inspired by the Sum­mer Breeze organ­is­ers) have decided to give us fans a metal advent cal­en­dar. Pretty awe­some. Each day a band will be revealed, along with a clue for who is going to be announced the next day.

As a warm up for every­one, tonight’s clue was pretty sim­ple – which artists cur­rent album is called Dom­i­na­tor. And the sur­vey says – UDO, the awe­somely angry lit­tle man (of Accept fame) with a kick ass voice. What a great start to proceedings!

Posted in bands, woa2010 | 1 Comment »

More 2010 festival announcements

Sunday, November 8th, 2009

Dave with Arch Enemy bassist Sharlee D'Angelo

Dave and I were for­tu­nate enough to win “meet and greet” passes with Arch Enemy at their show in Perth last week… which was heaps of fun! We got to meet most of the band but the per­son who was really cool to talk to was Sharlee D’Angelo, their bass player. Sharlee men­tioned that while it wasn’t 100% final yet, the band were in nego­ti­a­tions to play Wacken 2010. Cool!

While there haven’t been any more offi­cial announce­ments for Wacken, Party.San, fron­trun­ner for “addi­tional fes­ti­val in 2010” has had Can­ni­bal Corpse, The Devil’s Blood and Demon­i­cal added to their exist­ing list which includes Aura Noir, Mane­garm, Suf­fo­ca­tion, Tribu­la­tion and Watain. We missed CC due to a date clash when they played Perth last, so it would be awe­some to see them – and even more so in a fes­ti­val setting.

Sum­mer Breeze has also had some announce­ments, includ­ing my favourite band Obit­u­ary. That one is the week after Party.San – so when we were plan­ning to be in Poland — but it’s worth keep­ing in mind.

Any­one else mak­ing early plans for the 2010 Euro­pean fes­ti­val circuit?

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in bands, woa2010 | Comments Off

« Older Entries