… but, well, what do you expect after four monster days …???
So, here we are, back again to Tilburg, Holland, and back again to the Roadburn festival. Spring doesn’t seem to be fully burst without coming up there. I have the ticket for the full festival, three days plus the post-festival, known as “Afterburner”. During its long, decennial life the Roadburn festival has been growing in an impressive way. Nowadays it is the object of interest for many on- and off-line communities and it even encompasses a record label run by people with some fine taste. Being involved in the Roadburn entity is a goal for many emerging as well as famous bands, for the massive exposure and probably even just for the amount of merch that will likely be able to sell in the V39 hall! Roadburn visitors are able to show some love to their bands and most of them always go back home with luggage overloaded with vinyls, t-shirts, art posters, etc. Artists are also involved as curators of parts of the event and surely help the organizers in making up probably the most varied and open-minded metal festival around. Nominally Roadburn is considered the reign of doom and stoner, however the interests and the genres covered by the festival are very much wide-angled and sometimes focused on some specific genres. For example, this year the festival has hosted a remarkable selection of artists devoted to krautrock. Moreover the festival has been expanding its range of activities and interests related to cinema and visual/graphic art and even organized seminars and master classes devoted to various aspects of making music.
So the Roadburn experience is four days full of relentless intensity, if you want to make the most of it. The most of it, not all, unfortunately. The Roadburn 2013 bill was immense. The publication of the “scary” running order is the first impact with the fact that at Roadburn you are going to miss much either due to unavoidable overlaps or due to the striking different capacity of the halls and venues available at the 013 Poppodium center: (a) the huge Main Stage theater, (b) the mid-sized Green Room, (c) the anguishing Stage01, previously and probably more appropriately known as Bat Cave, and, outside, (d) the remarkable deconsecrated chapel of Het Patronaat decorated with stained glasses. Het Patronaat is undoubtedly a magnificent hall but still has one big problem to be solved before getting perfect: air conditioning. Unfortunately logistics is a big issue also for the mighty wizards behind the Roadburn organization. But well, such big numbers of visitors (we are dealing with thousands, eh) and of bands are not at all easy to manage, I guess, and the organizing team surely know how to do miracles! Therefore, yes, if you go at Roadburn you’ll probably miss a good part of the ultra-rich offer, but the offer itself is amazing, the Roadburn atmosphere is so magic and Holland is so nice and relaxing (with or without ganja) and even sunny (!!!) that coming to Roadburn is well worth the effort and cost. So here is some lengthy ranting of mine about the experience and some photos provided by some non-professional but super-kind friends of mine. I wrote names in capital letters for the bands I could, had the intention or came close to see.
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My first day starts with a jump straight into psychedelia with
BLACK BOMBAIM. Our friends from Portugal are playing in the Green Room all covered with colourful trippy light effects and they sound to me much heavier, but no less charming, than on album. They will haunt everybody there while knitting their long and braided psychedelic jammings in pure homage to
Hawkwind and taken from their beautiful new album Titans and previous cool releases. After this generous dose of retro trippy mood it is time for moving to the nearby Main Stage where
PALLBEARER are going to play. These US doomsters are backed up by a powerful début full-length album Sorrow And Extinction released last year. Their style is very traditional with mammoth heavy riffs and warm melodies drenched with sorrow, while their ballads develop with a plodding, funereal pace as their moniker may suggest. My impression is that these four young doomsters, and especially the singer, are a wee bit, let’s say, shy or hesitant by the place or the situation. Well, easy! In the same day there comes the news that Pallbearer will play a second show for replacing prog rockers Diagonal that had to give up their turn at the Afterburner. People have still to come in this early day so it is not so difficult to enter the limited space in the Stage01 room and listen to a good part of the exhibition of the French sludgers
CROWN. As expected from the listening of their early album, they hit the listeners with their sludge-doom style which is atmospheric but also devastatingly crushing! A rush towards the Het Patronaat hall allows me to catch at least the initial part of the gig by
THE ATLAS MOTH, from Chicago, Illinois. I am quite curious about this band which is so variably linked to the American black metal scene and whose members have/had something to do even with some of the nastiest acts like Von and Krieg. The Atlas Moth will involve the crowd with their charming atmospheric style which blends intensely melodic passages with heavy blows in both sounds and vocal parts.
The presence of the legendary
PENANCE, historical US traditional heavy doom band from Pennsylvania, urges me to go back to the Main Stage. Members of Penance are in
DREAM DEATH, the other historical act that just released a brand new album (Somnium Excessum) and that will open the dances on the second day of the festival. The Penance guys announce that they haven’t played together since the 90’s! A musician friend of mine noted their rigidity on stage due to the long inactivity and possibly great emotion for the event. In spite of this supposed stiffness these doomsters were able to deliver some great great, absolutely pristine doom ballads which were able to evoke an atmosphere like in a squat or bar in deep Maryland back in the time when doom was still totally underground. I particularly enjoyed the intensity of the singer Lee Smith’s performance lead by means of a powerful voice slightly less raucous than Wino’s and by an attitude between anger and alcoholic dizziness. Awesome! Rushing back to the Het Patronaat (you can get fit at Roadburn, eh …) is for catching the start of the gig by
ROYAL THUNDER and enjoy the surge of power and melody of this cool band from Georgia (I mean, same scene as Black Tusk, Kylesa, etc., …). It is impossible to remain untouched by lady singer/bassist Mlny Parsonz and her emotional vocal performance which is sustained by a stream of solid blues doom lead by classic but cool riffs. A tough competition with the other doom lady Uta Plotkin of Witch Mountain …
The eminent gig by
GRAVETEMPLE commands a return back to the Main Stage and the drawback of missing the healthy dose of dooooom by
PILGRIM. However the exhibition of the trio Attila Csihar + Oren Ambarchi +Stephen O’Malley turns out to be impressive: 50 minutes of deeply hypnotic, sonic nightmare in full SunnO))) mood and characterized by a menacing growth of combinations and elaborations of Attila’s voice. Attila Csihar is the King here, bar none. He doesn’t need to move or make funny things. His monstruous and magic voice is mutating like some deadly virus: the howls and utters and anything coming out of Attila’s throat are continuously recorded and overlapped to what comes next and to the slowly inflating drone and noise produced by Attila’s mates, Oren and Stephen. Oren also takes care of percussions (e.g. a big gong) and some drumming as well in the final part of the performance. Unfortunately a not sufficiently powerful amplification, or maybe the deafening feeedback, end up covering the drum contribution. When compared to Gravetemple’s black hypnosis, what follows on the main Stage, i.e.
HIGH ON FIRE in the first of their two shows, is like pure balm. Matt Pike is a tireless riff-machine, well-known to everybody and especially to the aficionados of the festival. Matt is able to master the stage and the adoring crowds with a minimum effort. He doesn’t need to look fashionable or even handsome: he is there, on the stage, naked to the hips with his substantial beer-belly, with the perfect look of a porn actor (a friend said, lol …), singing with his raucous voice, sweating and erupting riff-fuelled awesomeness while he and his crew deliver their whole debut album The Art Of Self Defense (2000).
A new migration to Het Patronaat is meant to capture more US sounds but in a completely different ambience. There I can attend the final part of the acoustic psych-folk exhibition involving
JOHN BAIZLEY (singer-guitarist of Baroness and fine graphic artist – he is presenting his art as well) and
KATIE JONES interpreting crepuscular, achingly melancholic folk ballads by Townes Van Zandt. Baizley truly resembles a young lad in dungarees on the barnyard dreaming of luck, love and a better life, playing his banjo (here he plays a slightly electrified Gibson guitar) and singing along with Katie Jones and her violin. The presence of John Baizley at the festival is a highly emotional event as it happens after many many months at the hospital ensuing the scary car crash that involved Baroness on tour last year. Melancholic moods, grimness and atmospheres loaded with a sorrowful yearning for some ancient times of gold and wellness, or just a sense of sorrow and loss, will be reprised and somehow reworked in various ways by other bands that still have to play during this first night. In the meantime the crowd has been growing and growing … For example in the Main stage the Irish champions
PRIMORDIAL offer a rather, let’s say, unusual show for the festival with their painted faces and their luscious and epic folk black metal and their lyrics inspired by Irish poets and bards from long-gone epochs. Or else
MOURNFUL CONGREGATION, Australian paladins of doom-death metal, massively powerful, funereal and doleful: their litanies are unfolded by means of a bass line that makes your gutters vibrate and by their characteristic guitars mournfully howling like a distorted cello, while the deep, nether-worldly growl of singer Damon Good is going to lay a deadly veil onto the listeners filling up the Green Room. Amen …Dead tired (by now it’s deep night) I make an attempt of cheering up my spirits with an injection of boiling hot blues rock by
THE MIDNIGHT GHOST TRAIN but unfortunately these US rockers are bound to play in the impossible Stage01 room, the worst one (space-wise, not sound-wise, mind you!). The small room gets filled up quickly and there is always a big amount of frustrated people outside who cannot go inside for dipping into some relieving vibes. Eh …
Sincerely I don’t feel like drowning into more melancholy with MOURNING BELOVETH at Het Patronaat, too much grief all together in the same evening. So the best thing is to get ready for wild HERDER who are going to play in the Green Room. Eh eh, too many people have had my idea and the Green Room is overflowing, with streams of people also coming from the Main Stage where
THE PSYCHEDELIC WARLORDS are playing. Catching the distant echoes of the roars and the wild riffs shot by these Dutch outlaws is a meager satisfaction and many people around me are surely envious of the mob into the room shaking as a boiling magma while they practice one of the not so frequent phenomena here at Roadburn: wild moshing! The phenomenon will repeat again a few more times in the next days, with Satan’s Satyrs and Antisect. What did I miss in this first day? Eh, Lântlos, Pilgrim, Castle, Lord Mantis, Maserati, Intronaut… A lot, yes, but I am here and this is a monster festival.
Friday, April 19th 2013
One can get easily distracted by the meeting with some friends or by strolling around in the lively V39 merch hall which is often bursting with people browsing among the stalls, so many temptations for record shopping! This is why I get to Het Patronaat a bit too late for the exhibition of Dread Sovereign, the recent heavy doom act involving members of Primordial and which is presenting the debut limited edition vinyl EP in this special occasion of the festival. So I go back to the typical Roadburn sport, the migration from one hall to the other. Therefore I actually start this second day of mine in a serious way with entering the Main Stage hall to see mighty
DREAM DEATH, historical act belonging to the US heavy doom-death scene, east Coast, and strictly related to Penance back in the 80s! The recent release of their new album after the 2011 reunion had some enthusiastic coverage on blogs and webzines and, as a matter of fact, Dream Death rule! They inundate the Main Stage hall with powerful heavy doom ballads where the minimal death metal component just increases the impact of their remarkably retro flavoured stream of riffs surely recalling Penance. As expected, the band is rather static on the stage, but the Roadburnian people are warm and cheerful. Unfortunately, and surprisingly, the huge Main Stage hall is not too full. Why? Well, probably because outside people have been building up a huge and eventually immobile queue for trying and entering Het Patronaat for KADAVAR’s show, in spite of the fact that there’s still quite some time before the start.
I might be wrong but I can’t remember anything like that during last year edition of the festival, i.e. when the organization had to leave the mammoth Midi Theater, because of restoration, and started using the way charming yet considerably smaller Het Patronaat as an alternative. Probably Het Patronaat was not the perfectly adequate place where to put such a super popular band like Kadavar in concert. These German rockers might have easily filled up the Main Stage hall. The fame and the power of attraction of this young band is huge and is based on various features: the smart use of look with their shamelessly hippy beards and crazy jackets and clothes, a brand new album out and, above all, the exceptionally good quality of their live performances appreciated across the whole of Europe. Yes, Kadavar look awesome and rule hard! And they ruled even harder here at Roadburn as well. If you, like me, didn’t make it, read the rich description by HP Taskmaster on
The Obelisk and then start kicking yourself …
So while people is boiling into Het Patronaat for Kadavar’s hot rock vibes and for the too feeble air conditioning system (well, fortunately this year Het Patroonat has a new security exit!), the rest of the Roadburn mob is outside in the queue or else enjoying the Dutch sun which is very pleasant indeed! While waiting for Tombstones to start playing, a visit to the Stage01 room is due as today this space is more conveniently employed for the loop projection of a selection of cult, vintage horror-sexy movies for “The Electric Grindhouse Cinema”. This is part of the activities related to Electric Wizard as curators of the The Electric Acid Orgy. Yep, today it is the mighty Electric Wizard day and there is a lot going on and some substantial decisions to be made regarding the running order! So eventually I leave Sabbath Assembly (already seen at the Midi theater two years ago) and run to the Green Room for discovering TOMBSTONES, an obscure young Finnish trio able to evoke the raw sound and the retro atmospheres à-la-Witchcraft very spontaneously. Also the singer’s voice has got that slightly dissonant tone recalling a bit Magnum Pelander’s, whereas Tombstoned’s riffs are thick and warm and just slightly reverbered (the right amount). Tombstoned play with a groove-laden powerful style reminding me the stream of energy in Wtchcraft’s latest, awesome album. After Kadavar the Het Patronaat hall is still steaming hot but there is eventually some space for enjoying a good part of the exhibition by
WITCH MOUNTAIN. These guys and gal from Portland, Oregon (i.e., one of the most fertile doom scenes in USA) deliver some mammoth-heavy doom blues burning with passion. Uta Plotkin is a truly luring witch with her exceptional voice and her innocent, girlish look. Uta’s amazing performance is backed up by a way cool, experienced team of doomsters who do honor to the scene they come from and which contributed to create! Well, the Witch Mountain guys may look almost like youngsters, but they have been around since the 90s, you know …
By the way, drummer and founder Nathan Carson is also owner and manager of one of the most active promotion agencies for the underground doom-sludge-stoner scene in USA, Nanotear Booking Agency. He will give one of the master classes organized by the Roadburn festival on the next day and devoted to giving advices to non-US bands and illustrating strategies and pitfalls for organizing gigs in USA. I am going to attend it! Back to today’s concerts, let’s change range of doom! After the boiling hot, palpitating, strongly passionate frankly American blues doom vibes by Witch Mountain, it is the time for some creepy, mossy retro horror pedigree British doom done by young (oh, they too look so young!) yet highly talented
WITCHSORROW. Their cool second album definitley consecrated them a one of the coolest bands in UK. I had seen them for the first time at the Loud Howls festival in London back in 2010 at The Gaff music club, just after being “discovered” by Rise Above Records and with the old line-up. A subsequent rearrangement of the line-up included the volcanic drummer David Wilbrahammer, who is well-known to all people digging those devastating and nice sludge rockers in XII Boar (one of those kickass bands I would so much like to see live sooner or later …).I would like to attend the whole concert by Witchsorrow but in the Main Stage some other British rockers are about to start,
UNCLE ACID AND THE DEADBEATS. Most of you know them already: this is one of those bands that happen to rapidly raise to phenomenal success and popularity, a bit like Kadavar. And, as their German colleagues, also these Brits are totally and shamelessly devoted to retro sounds.
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The huge Main Stage hall is incredibly overflowing. I remember something like that for Sleep last year or when John Garcia came here for playing Kyuss. It seems that almost all the Roadburnians are curious to listen to and see these cool retro-acid psych rockers who like melodies which are equally dreamy and nasty. And they start very well by proposing their hits from their second album Blood Lust plus some new tracks from the brand new album Mind Control. Their setlist swings between intimate and hard rocking moods and rhythms. However there is something that is striking me. In this festival where visual features are becoming more and more important, this band is rather somber as far as light effects are concerned. Many bands devoted to psychedelia, or other genres too, use light effects and background projections or stage movies that contribute in creating the trippy or whatever mood. On the contrary the Uncle Acid set definitely looks “acid” in their bluish ligts but all in all ends up being a bit monotonous. Pity! Anyway, the time comes for leaving the Main Stage hall and try and steal a dose of bone-crushing super sludge-doom by the British band MOSS from outside a fully packed Green Room before moving back to Het Patronaat church for the dreamy gig by
LES DISCRETS. Les Discrets are strictly entwined with Alcest and Neige, who is artist-in-residence for this edition of Roadburn festival (so I guess he also involved the other cool French bands that played yesterday, Crown and Lântlos).
The gig by Les Discrets is very beautiful for the shoegaze melodies, the proggy contruction, the rich yet delicate style, the vocals, everything (but my opinion is biased, I would go on listening to Les Discrets and Alcest for hours …). And probably I like it a lot because the live dimension imparts some slightly “metallic” kick and vigour to the leading dreamy melodies. Therefore the purchase of at least one of their LPs is consequent. At a certain moment I get a text by a friend telling me “rush because
THE PRETTY THINGS are doing a killer set!”. Oh, let’s run then! (Lots of sport at Roadburn, eh, you keep fit!) The Pretty Thngs are playing in the Main Stage. I had chosen to devote to Les Discrets instead of the reunion of this legendary UK hard rock band from the 60s because I wanted to avoid some sort of clone of Rolling Stones and one of those often pathetic reunions from the crypt. How wrong I was! The Pretty Things literally set the Main Stage to fire with their flood of genuine, authentic retro rock punch that made all of us travel back in time and in space! We were definitely in London back in the 60s. The line-up still includes original members, founder guitarist Dick Taylor and Phil May on vocals, but the seasoned age of these rockers didn’t prevent us to enjoy some very fresh and shameless rock even during a long and warmly acclaimed encore. You know, seeing nasty-looking metallers as well as Jus Oborn of Electric Wizard (he was right aside!) headbanging to The Pretty Things can be something, eh eh … So, yes, it has been quite a revelation, for me for sure but, as I read, not only for me.
Some relax, some caffeine and food, one attempt for accessing the super-packed Green Room for some
COUGH (impossible). So I have the excuse for … shopping in the V39 merch hall! Dangerous place …In the meantime we get to the time for the monster set of ELECTRIC WIZARD in the Main Stage theater.
They play several by now classic as well as new songs like “Witchcult Today”, “Drugula”, “Legalise Drugs And Murder”, Black Mass” etc.. Distorted sounds during the extremely dragged and ossessive jammings are booming and vibrating in the vaults and in the darkness of the theater. In the meantime the huge screen behind the scene hosts a stage movie made by a psychedelic patchwork from some Italian cult vintage erotic-horror-satanic movies (I didn’t recognize them in my abyssal ignorance, but many experts there did!). So undoubtedly an impressive show aiming to mass hypnosis and drug-satan worship! I don’t even try to join the long queue for
GOAT playing at Het Patronaat, but I tactically enter the Green Room well ahead the first of the two gigs by
SATAN’S SATYRS, the US, Virginia-based lo-fi “scuzz rock” trio which like to blend punk, noise rock, retro acid rock, doom, and loads of nastiness! These guys are devastating. They are like a machine-gun for weird riffs ranging from frankly hendrixian to crust-punk and odd and whirling tempo changes. The blond, thin frontman singer bassist Claythanas looks like a teenager, sings in a sleazy and deranged way and he doesn’t give a f***! And the fully packed mob go crazy, have a huge time, and start moshing wildly. Many many people are left outside the Green Room. This time I’m one of the lucky ones inside, yay!!! After the gig I get hold of my own copy of the debut LP by these crazy folks, duly called “Wild Beyond Belief!”, and I come to know from them that their cool early tapes, rapidly sold out, will be reissued as vinyl soon. Just a quick sneak into the Main Stage is for catching the last part of PSYCHIC TV’s exhibition. I miss
AMENRA completely but I’ll see them when I’m back to Italy (they will play a monster gig there, and when they come here in my city as well …). It is time to rush to bed, it has been a loooong day full of cool emotions! And some pleasant Dutch sun …
Saturday, April 20th 2013
The third super-intensive day of the festival has come. Definitely Mother Nature brings some nice weather to the festival. Today there is a pleasantly warm sun with fresh air and so more than ever people enjoy the pic-nic benches outside. Luckily in general the new, big, stylish transparent protective canopy outside is only rarely performing its role of shielding people and food stalls from rain. My personal Roadburn Day 3 does not start with a gig but with a seminar! As mentioned above, by now the Roadburn festival is almost acquiring a status like a congress with its multiple activities and interests: parallel sessions for music and events even outside the boundaries of the 013 Poppodium centre, exhibitions of graphic art, movie sessions, conferences, seminars and master classes! It is a bit intimidating, eh, but … why not? Moreover many Roadburnians are not only listeners but also musicians in underground bands, graphical artists, writers that make much effort to practice their art and passion and spread it around in many ways. On my side I decide to take advantage of some of these opportunities and I follow a seminar in a room of the Hall Of Fame, a venue established in the big complex of nicely restored ex-railway warehouses a few minutes walk from the festival. The theme of the seminar is surely of great interest for the Euro bands especially, but not only for them. The topic is the discussion of several, very practical issues and problems that might be encountered by underground bands while planning a (diy) tour for “conquering” USA. The one hour-long talk is held by
NATHAN CARSON, drummer and founder member of Witch Mountain and manager of NANOTEAR BOOKING AGENCY. This very interesting talk ends up being also a way for speaking about a certain type of “philosophy” of touring and for denouncing abuses or macroscopic pitfalls on any side in a very sincere attitude. The added value of this talk is also given by the fact that Nathan has experienced and is experiencing both sides of the business, as underground band touring in USA and Europe and as booking agent for many other bands. So he saw and knows much about logistic aspects in a wide sense about this topic. Pity that the public was quite thin! After the seminar it is time for music. I am able to catch the second part of
BLACK MAGICIAN in concert at the bottom of the hall at Het Patronaat, already boiling hot even if the activity has just started.
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These British doomsters are able to make the ancient stained glasses of Het Patronaat vibrate with their powerful creepy doom. Their style is deeply inspired by Cathedral but it is made precious and more occult by the Hammond organ, a bit like in Italian beloved Abysmal Grief! I had the luck of seeing these lads last year at the Dublin Doom Days festival, just after the release of their début LP “Nature Is The Devil’s Church” in blood-red vinyl! And they are getting better and better. A fat encore of this cool slab of doom evoking moor and mossy graveyards in the fog would have been so great … But Alcest are about to come in the fresher Main Stage hall. The big theater is not fully packed although there are quite a lot of people there to enjoy the intensely melodic and ethereal, shoegaze chansons by Neige and his mates. Useless to say, the concert, one of the several gigs I saw by these guys, is very involving and charming, in a word beautiful. I can recognize some songs by the magic album Les Voyages De L’âme. It seems almost unbelievable that these guys were playing with bleak Peste Noire! Outside the climate is full spring and the metallers lay down and, goodness gracious, get the suntan!
I have some curiosity for the German band
THE RUIN OF BEVERAST that is playing at Het Patronaat. Nominally this band is tagged as atmospheric doom-black metal band. I had heard a few songs during the full immersion before leaving but I had not been able to get into them, and my short visit to the gig doesn’t help either. Don’t get me wrong, their sound is powerful, but I am actually in the mood for what those monster swamp beasts WO FAT will be going to deliver in a short time. Wo Fat are one of my fave swampy raaawk bands, and I know I’m not the only one. Whenever stuff by Wo Fat is released blogs and forums get crazy. Incredibly here Wo Fat have been assigned to that small Stage01 room. And again and again I hate that room. There are so many people clogging up not only the room but also the corridor outside that one wonder why such a band was confined there and not in a wider place more adequate for this very popular and sincerely kickass US trio. Impossible … So if you want to know how badass they were, again go and read he report on
The Obelisk. Being not too crazy about
CULT OF LUNA, ready to start in the Main Stage theater, I go back to Het Patronaat and wait for the start of another historical band,
ANTISECT.
Antisect are a legendary British band that was blending anarcho-hardcore punk/crust and some metal back in the 80s. The gig is explosive, political and libertarian slogans flow on the screen between the stage while these seasoned but energetic punks vomit their rage over the adoring audience. For the occasion some guys among the public boast their t-shirts praising the “departure” of the hated Iron Lady Thatcher and jump into the mob busy in some lively moshing. We get back from the gig of Antisect covered with sweat and some bruises as well, probably, but really charged, in the best mood for chatting with some friends in the nice climate outside.
The classic and balming re-fuelling with caffeine and fresh drinks are due before starting again in “assaulting” the smaller rooms where something quite cool is going on (
VICTOR GRIFFIN’S IN-GRAVED and LO! From Australia), but it is hard. In the Main Stage HIGH ON FIRE are back and start drawing streams of wildly adoring people from all the other rooms for a second, devastating gig and for the definitive appointment of Matt Pike as Roadburn’s absolute god ... So I am able to enter the Green Room for catching a good part of the exhibition of the Finnish
JESS AND THE ANCIENT ONES. This band belongs to the stream of female-fronted occult retro-rock bands which are very much appreciated in these days. So this is a somewhat “fashionable” band, yet Jess & The Ancient Ones rule! Jess has a beautiful voice and their songs are catchy and involving and make you dance after. It is nice to enter the room just when your fave song, Astral Sabbath, from the new Ep, is starting … At a certain moment it is time to slice through the thick mass of people and migrate back to the main Stage because
DIE KREUZEN, the other legendary hardcore-punk band of the festival, are about to start playing.
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Die Kreuzen are from Milwaukee, IL, USA and are well-known for their being so much influential for grunge as well as Voivod, and more. It had been written that “Die Kreuzen is an influence on all things Roadburn”. Their presence is almost an automatic consequence of the blitz of frontman Dan Kubinski singing, with his amazing voice, together with Voivod at Roadburn last year and the tribute album to Die Kreuzen in 2005. Today they play the first of two gigs in the Main Stage theater which is probably too big, lacking of the squat-like ambience and is not as filled up as this band would deserve. Pity because Dan and his mates are nicely going through the repertory of the band which is quite varied. Songs exploring the rageful hardcore-punk stage of Die Kreuzen alternate with more “experimental”songs where the band was steering towards post-punk territories or else incorporating groove-laden funk metal elements in their multifaceted style. But many people are outside for food, for the merch as well as for hopelessly queueing up outside Het Patronaat for the other great and much expected band, ELDER, that is going to play in partial overlap with Die Kreuzen. Pity! The access to the Elder gig is impossible and many people will miss another gig which will be then described as “memorable”! A taste of blackest pessimism via
ASH BORER in a fully packed Green Room is due while waiting for steaming hot Het Patronaat to be emptied. I’m bound to attend the second gig by
SATAN’S SATYRS. I enter the hot and humid hall for installing somewhere: the hall is almost full of people sitting down on the floor for a rest and sweating like fountains. Many people come in this oven after seeing
GODFLESH in the fresh air at the Main Stage. Many of those who had not been able to see Satan’s Satyrs in their first gig yesterday are hoping the band will play a twin gig. Actually the US “retro doom punk” trio is going to play a tribute Blue Cheer and in hommage to the recent death of frontman Dickie Peterson. Some people who had missed the announcement on the Roadburn website are a bit disappointed. Nevertheless the concert is super as Satan’s Satyrs outlaws possess the same freshness and the same raw and shameless sound and attitude of Blue Cheer in their time.
The tropical heat at Het Patronaat is such that we just make a quick blitz to the Green Room for catching some improvised jamming by
MY BROTHER THE WIND (cool Swedish psych band related to the mythical Transubstans Records) and forget the even higher cramming at the Stage01 for
THE COSMIC DEAD. Sob … The Main Stage offers some fresh air and some space where to sit down a bit as there is not much crowd while
ENDLESS BOOGIE get ready to start. Their retro bluesy rock is soothing and relaxing, so after a while it is time for yielding to the curiosity for the local death doom metal legends, ASPHYX, that have already started playing at Het Patronaat. The hall is full of Roadburnians back to their nasty metal roots, and so it gets quickly sickening hot both for the hellish ambience and for the lack of fresh air. Not easy to resist, sorry, old age or long day, but it is far too much heat for today.
Sunday, April 21st 2013 (Afterburner)
This is the last day of the Roadburn Festival, or actually the post-festival, also known as Afterburner. It is normally a very pleasant and relaxing day. Many people have already left, and also the city center is sleepy and quiet. In the many coffee bars and restaurants in the centre you can still see the boards advertising foods and dishes like “Roadburn Hamburger”, “The Endless Boogie Burger”, “High On Fire Tofu”, “Satan’s Satyrs Spareribs”!
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Maybe in town and near the Poppodium you won’t meet the guys of Dark Tranquillity and Enslaved as in the previous days, but you can spot (again) Matt Pike somewhere while eating (no, it didn’t seem tofu …) or else John Baizley and family strolling around. This is also the best day for quietly enjoying the exhibition of Baizley’s graphic art in the gallery near the Poppodium. Today there are less people than the previous days yet there is a substantial amount of people as this day as well has got a juicy program band-wise. I start my Afterburner with
ASTRA, coming from the Californian heavy psych scene but proudly linked to the British Rise Above Records. Astra’s style of psychedelic prog rock is classic and easily reminds of King Crimson, early Genesis, Yes, but the flow of jammings produced by these guys is amazing and very much involving.
The concert will go through songs from the new and old album. I was particularly struck by Richard Vaughn in charge of vocals, keyboards and occasionally also guitars (!), as well as guitarist Brian Ellis, who is wearing a hippy shirt with some luscious yellow flowers stitched on the front! The other amazing prog band in the roster of Rise Above Records, i.e., Diagonal, didn’t manage to come to the festival, so
PALLBEARER are going to play instead, in the Green Room, saluted by the many people who missed them in the first day. In the meantime there are workers on the Main Stage busy with setting up something “weird”, like a sort of altar covered with some items good for wizardries (skull, candleholder, etc.), that will be part of the no less than flamboyant show coming soon:
SIGH in concert. These bizarre, “maniacal power-prog-thrashers/black metallers” from Japan had been announced with some intriguing words on the Roadburn website: “… perfect band for the Afterburner show because no matter how strange the bands are in the first three days of the festival, Sigh will offer up something unseen and unheard before!” … Well, all true!
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Sigh like to play a variety of odd, hybrid, avantgarde black metal style contaminated by basically anything, including psychedelic rock and Japanese pop music! The band offers a flashy show, maybe a bit excessive or gaudy, but quite entertaining. Skulls and occult demonic masks will emanate or be set to fire, occult- or sacred-looking books will be eaten by fire while frontman Mirai Kawashima, singer, keyboard player and founder of Sigh, and the attractive lady singer and saxophone player Dr. Mikannibal are busy in wild duets. Dr. Mikannibal surely catches a substantial dose of attention. She enters the stage dressed up first as a sexy geisha in a mini red satin kimono and then in a black lace petticoat and angel wings. But, hey, she growls like a demonic beast and, at a certain moment, she grabs a sort of tabernacle or sacred-looking chalice and pours quite a lot of some dark red sticky liquid resembling blood all over her face and body. Yuuuuk! A real nasty banshee looking like a sexy doll! Very dangerous! Lol … Aside from theatrical aspects that may or may not be appreciated (but hey, we are not at church or at a congress!), the concert unfolds with a frenzied and lively pace and is duly closed in a rather “classic” way by Sigh’s cover of Venom's “Black Metal” as it was done in the band’s recent tribute EP devoted to the British masters. Maybe also just a way to remember that this band started playing nasty metal not too long after the birth of that song …
What will follow in the Main Stage will have a completely different attitude and definitely minimalistic look: Michael Rother is playing the pristine krautrock of his legendary band
NEU!! with his other band HARMONIA. This is a further, charming jump back into the past, into the roots of the music we like. However I feel a bit perplexed and uneasy while seeing the drummer standing near a tiny drum set and hitting it with some touches while the sound is actually booming in the hall. Obviously it is a sort of electronic drumkit, and sincerely I don’t like it. Sorry, I’m old age and old school if not primitive, I like to see drummers sweating over their skins, so this rather aseptic exhibition is not able to catch me emotionally … On the contrary the
GOLDEN VOID guys grab my attention and my soul much more.
You all know them by now, for sure, such a cool band from California lead by Isaiah Mitchell. Friendly Isaiah looks like a car-mechanic from deep rural America. You would never imagine him to be the man behind one of the top coolest present-day heavy psych bands on earth, Earthless. In the Golden Void ballads Isaiah plays guitar and sings alone or in occasional duets with keyboard player Camilla Saufley-Mitchell. I would like to enjoy the full stream of raaawk, passion, groove and intimacy emanating from this overly cool band in the Green Room but
SPIRITUAL BEGGARS are about to start in the Main Stage. It is the first time I see them and I don’t know when I’ll have another chance like this in the future. One of my friends says that it is like seeing Deep Purple, “too classic”, “too rpedictable” or so. Probably some people didn’t cope with the changes involving the frontman. Anyway I long to see them at least once. So I’m there, right under the stage, in front of the keyboard wizard Per Wiber.
The “new” singer Apollo Papathanasio, previously in the Greek power metal band Firewind, is imposing and lively. I must say I like his warm voice. Obviously there are substantial stylistic and tonal differences between Apollo and the previous singers, legendary Spice e dark lord JB Christoffersson, however I enjoy Apollo’s warm way of interpreting new songs and old classics. The Roadburn public is cheerful but Apollo makes efforts for involving people more and more. At a certain moment some people will move to the Green Room where
DIE KREUZEN will give their second gig. This time Die Kreuzen crew will deliver a blasting, super charged gig in the perfect intimacy of the Green Room in front of a big, adoring and enthusiastic crowd.
Next on the Main Stage is
IHSAHN together with band
LEPROUS for a very long show, one hour and 45 minutes. I miss the start of the show, but as soon as I find a place where to sit down a bit I get immediately the feeling that this is going to be one of the most powerful ever concerts that I happened to see here at Roadburn.
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It is impossible not to be caught by the immense stream of sounds and by the emotionally powerful background stage movie made by artistic reworking of black and white images somehow evoking glacial and gigantic natural phenomena. The prog metal style built up by Inhsahn and his mates in Leprous (a band that I didn’t know, guiltily) is monumental. Often Ihsahn recalls his black metal roots especially in the chanting style (I know you know, but let’s remember he was in mighty Emperor), but this feature does not hamper the magic of these cyclopic ballads. I was liking Ihsahn’s style on disk, but seeing and listening to this music live is stunning at the utmost and deeply haunting. The spell cast on me by Ihsahn will make me miss almost completely the exhibition of
ELECTRIC MOON in the Green Room. I can just catch the final part of the last heavy and trippy acid psych jamming so typical for this cool German band involving Sula Bassana.
So I get ready for my last gig at Roadburn, the Swedish sludge-drone duo
SWITCHBLADE with Per Wiber on keyboards as guest. Maybe it is a gloomy way to close my Roadburn experience this time, eh eh … As expected, Switchblade are able to intoxicate the crowd with their funereal sludge-doom/drone style à-la-Khanate, although the contribution of Per Wiber’s hammond sound imparts a unique character to the sounds and creates particularly haunting atmospheres. Halfway through the concert there are a few technical problems: a signal to my old bones. It is time to go to sleep as tomorrow there is an early train to the airport. Roadburn 2013 is finished. Back to reality. I missed a lot of bands I would have liked to see, but on the other side I saw some shows that are probably unique, if not just for the magic atmosphere permeating this mythical festival. What else can I say if not “hopefully I’ll be back next year” … ?
Words:
Marilena Moroni (exchanging opinions and impressions with Fabrizio Garau and my hardcore-punk guru Adriano Di Gaspero)
Credits for some of the photos go to my friends
Adriano Di Gaspero and
Alessandro Mattonai
Check out all the updates, awesome photos, videos and “highlights” at the official website of the Roadburn Festival
Roadburn.Com
