Good news for one member of the Blitzkrieg camp this week – my Wacken media accreditation came through, with photopass! This means I can take my SLR camera everywhere and take a TON of photos for Metal As Fuck and that makes me very, very happy indeed. Now the mighty Tish is going to line up some interviews. I’ve ordered a fancy pants new digital recorder which will hopefully work a bit better at filtering out background noise than my dodgy MP3 player did last year.

She’s also trying to get accreditation for Party.San and Summer Breeze. The Party.San online application came back with some funny and confusing messages including “your entry is now waiting for our go” and “You will receive an email if we have processed it”. So now we wait — for their email and their “go” (maybe).

Fingers crossed!

Your entry is now waiting for our go is a post from: hell bent for metal

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!

Wanted: Festival Factory is a post from: hell bent for metal

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

Party.San heating up is a post from: hell bent for metal