Posts Tagged ‘wacken open air’

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

The countdown is on…

Friday, June 26th, 2009

As I write this, it’s 34 days until Wacken 2009 and 30 days until we leave for Europe.

We’re all organ­ised and ready to go!

Exhibit A: one tent. Note the queen size inflat­able mat­tress which fits inside said tent. We forked out a big $38 for this baby, and we have high hopes that it will be an improve­ment on last year’s dwelling which rather cramped our style.

Wacken Tent Test

Exhibit B: camp­ing choons:

image

Takes 2 bat­ter­ies and an SD card wth MP3s. Music at our camp­site, and all for $27.78 with free ship­ping. Bar­gain! It’s so small and light I’m a lit­tle con­cerned we’re gonna lose it in our bags.

I know we’ve been slack… more posts com­ing soon…

Tags: , ,
Posted in preparations | 2 Comments »

The Metal Inquisition (i)

Thursday, March 13th, 2008

So the inqui­si­tion has started. I have swal­lowed my pride and checked out a few myspace pages, and after the pages con­stantly screw­ing up and not play­ing any­thing, I was able to check out:

I may have got­ten really lucky here, because I’m actu­ally not that huge a fan of doom metal or tech­ni­cal bru­tal’ death metal this fes­ti­val could have turned out pretty aver­age for me. Luck­ily the above bands sur­prised me with some really kick­ass demos. In addi­tion to the bands I am already famil­iar with, this is shap­ing up to be a ridicu­lously awe­some show.

The Good(power and symphony)

I would describe Pow­er­wolf and Can­tus Buranus as epic, its as sim­ple as that. Pow­er­wolf are a band that play big chords, use some­what sym­phonic vocals and just have a huge melodic sound. Im actu­ally will­ing to look past the fact that their page crashed my browser twice because when the demos actu­ally did load I was in a world of rockin’ tunes. When I lis­tened to Can­tus Buranus it took me quite a while to realise they there wer­ent actu­ally any words. They are a symphonic/operatic metal band and from what I hear, it almost sounds like a heavy metal choir per­for­mance. These would be bands to see sober and really appre­ci­ate. How­ever, I don’t really intend on see­ing too many bands with­out a tasty hop-laden bev­er­age.

The most famous Shredder of them allThe Badass(shredders)

Destruc­tor sound like an awe­some old school thrash band, which is really where my heart lies. Speedy gui­tars and 80s thrash inspired vocals are FTW. War­bringer are another band out of the US that rock and rock hard. They are fast and freakin loud and the vocals have a Tom Araya feel to them. I just love see­ing these kinds of bands live, these are usu­ally the bands that have slugged it out in pubs and throw around the fastest, rock­inest riffs with the ease that only comes from years upon years of con­stant shred­ding. These are bands I would love to see after a few drinks and when I’m at my rowdiest.

The Ugly(they’re just damn ugly)

I’ve seen quite a few pics of masked/face painted death met­allers, but Lordi are just in their own league. I had kind of seen rough pic­tures but noth­ing that wasn’t slightly blurred or pix­e­lated. After hear­ing about them only after the Euro­vi­sion win I wasn’t really going to look them up either. How­ever, Dave showed me and I must say, I am damn impressed. They will defi­nately be enter­tain­ing with what I can safely assume will be a huge stage show, com­plete with ugly cos­tumes, fire and awe­some tunes.

Stay tuned for more Metal Inqui­si­tion \m/

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in preparations | Comments Off