The metal stars align

May 18th, 2010 by metalbeast

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!

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Summer Breeze sells out, plus Skeletonwitch and Despised Icon news

May 9th, 2010 by goatlady

that's a lot of tents!

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!

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Wacken 2010 band shortlist

May 4th, 2010 by metalbeast

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/

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Triptykon added to Summer Breeze

March 28th, 2010 by goatlady

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…

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Full Metal Pastry Chef

March 19th, 2010 by goatlady

Camp cooking with Stu

Our Wacken com­pan­ion from last year, Mr Vagrant, likes to cook. He’s par­tic­u­larly good at desserts: from his kitchen we’ve enjoyed choco­late souf­flés, truf­fles at Christ­mas, giant oat and macadamia cook­ies, and a deli­cious choco­late semi­freddo, to name a few.

After a few drinks the other week­end we “cooked” up a deli­ciously devi­ous plan: appoint Vagrant the offi­cial 2010 tour muf­fin cook and demand camp­fire del­i­ca­cies in the field. The deed was done on Face­book shortly thereafter:

I’m appoint­ing you our offi­cial “Blitzkrieg Tour” Baker. You will be required to con­coct some kind of deli­cious treat using only camp­ground mate­ri­als dur­ing Wacken, Party.San or Sum­mer Breeze. Are you up to the challenge?

The response was favourable and the chal­lenge was accepted:

Aye aye, cap’n. Expect me to bake under the influ­ence. And prob­a­bly shout things like “AH CAN’AE DO EET CAP’N” and “NO COOKIE FOR j00!” at random.

The next log­i­cal step was an offi­cial uni­form piece. Mouths water­ing in antic­i­pa­tion, we found a chef’s hat and got it embroi­dered with “BLITZKRIEG TOUR PASTRY CHEF”, then popped it in a post bag an sent it off to Vagrant Inc’s offices:

Pastry Chef

We trust it will be bet­ter than “camp cook­ing with Stu”, pic­tured at the top of this post.

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Blitzkrieg Tour 2010: all systems go

March 13th, 2010 by goatlady

blitzkrieg

At some point in the last few months our epic three fes­ti­val tour has devel­oped the code­name Blitzkrieg 2010.

Cur­rent Blitzkrieg Tour status:

  • fes­ti­val tick­ets: Wacken, Party.San, Sum­mer Breeze: check
  • flights: booked and paid for: check
  • tent and back­packs: check
  • accom­mo­da­tion between fes­ti­vals: still to be sourced
  • car hire: still to be sourced

The Fes­ti­val buddy sys­tem is in full swing, with Charp set to actu­ally attend his first Wacken after bail­ing out on his two pre­vi­ous attempts. Zoe Zom­bie and uh, “Roger” will be at the Holy Grounds on their Full Metal Hon­ey­moon, and Vagrant is mak­ing it two Wack­ens run­ning as well as join­ing the full Blitzkrieg-in-a-bus expe­ri­ence (as hon­orary pas­try chef) and rock­ing on for a week of post-festival alco­holism in Krakow. The mot­ley Eng­lish crew will be in atten­dance in some con­fig­u­ra­tion or another as always, and we’re try­ing as hard as we can to get Metal As Fuck’s Bioda­gar on board. She totally fuck­ing needs to do it.

And who knows, there will prob­a­bly be other ran­doms that we know as well, includ­ing the dude who works at our local com­puter store (*waves*), Alex, a hot chick from Syd­ney I’ve been talk­ing to that found us via this blog, and the Perth peeps join­ing the Sound­works Metal Travel tour.

As of this evening, 144 days to go!

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You just try and wipe this smile off my face

March 8th, 2010 by goatlady

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.

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Wanted: Festival Factory

March 1st, 2010 by goatlady

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!

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Success: Gojira added to Wacken

February 27th, 2010 by goatlady

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.

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Party.San heating up

January 30th, 2010 by goatlady

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

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