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

Another one down… first Wacken sells all 70,000 tickets, now Summer Breeze has reached capacity too. Although they’re not saying how many that is, last year there were around 40,000 so I’m assuming this year will be a similar size. With a lineup that includes Behemoth, Cannibal Corpse, Dark Tranquility, Dream Evil, Obituary, Sepultura and motherflippin’ Triptykon, the only thing surprising is that it took this long.

On the Summer Breeze front, there’s a couple of other things… firstly Skeletonwitch have cancelled (boo) because they’re doing Ozzfest in the US (hiss). I’m sure the US run is a once in a lifetime opportunity which any band would jump at and it will be great for them but you know, it all sounds a bit blah blah blah.

Secondly, not only have Despised Icon been announced for the Summer Breeze, but they’ve said it’s going to be their last ever show. I like Despised Icon. Maybe I was late to the craze, but DI was the first band I heard doing pig squeals. I remember I was driving to a meeting where Charp used to work, listening to it for the first time, and I brought the CD in with me, gave it to him and said “listen to this and tell me, how the fuck are they making that noise?”. Sure, it got annoying when other bands that weren’t so good starting doing it all the time, but I was bloody impressed by everything DI. So while I’m sorry to see the band finish, it’s cool that I will see them both at Wacken and then at Summer Breeze for their final hurrah.

83 days on the clock, peeps!

Summer Breeze sells out, plus Skeletonwitch and Despised Icon news 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