FortaRock 2009

For a new festival FortaRock was pretty decent.

Pro:
- clean toilets (wow?)
- performances were following eachother in high tempo, as there were two stages.
- a lot of merchandise (I finally managed to find and buy Neurosis - Times of Grace!!)
- good bands

Con:
- expensive tokens
- not the fault of the organisation, but once more I was baffled at how people just dump their rubbish everywhere. Many garbage bins were provided, but people are too lazy to walk a few metres and dump their shit in them.
- sound at the open stage was low. Yet again it was not the fault of the organisation as they weren't allowed to turn it up, but it ruined many a performance. Only solution was to get real close to the stage.
- the food I had (the vietnam food) was the worst rice I ever tasted in my life and super expensive too.

Warbringer: saw it only for a few minutes and as I was still getting in the mood for metal it didn't awake much feelings in me.

Heidevolk: always fun, but never totally awesome. Nice songs, but it sounds all the same to me. They managed to give the festival some atmosphere though, the band is very enthusiastic!

All Shall Perish: not my cup of tea. I browsed the merchandise, met my friends, admired the clean toilets....

Delain: Uhm yeah. This sucked. I had to see this because it was my duty to write a review for www.zwaremetalen.com but else I would have run away. I used to be a big fan of symphonic metal, listening to Nightwish, Therion and Within Temptation but this is rubbish. I have to review the occasional female fronted metal cd for zware metalen and I have heard much better stuff than this. Also, the lead singer Charlotte doesn't have a great voice for this kind of music. Her vibrato sounds very 'made', I don't know how to describe it but it sounds awful.

Dillinger Escape Plan: seen them two times already, and didn't get it two times. A lot of people like this band, and I can see why. For me though, it's just a bunch of noise. Believe me, I dig noise, but only when I see the structure in it. In the case of this band, I tried and failed. Energy and aggression were rife, so I think many people really enjoyed it.

Candlemass: my jaw almost dropped watching this band. Not because the music is genius, but because of their lead singer. That is one mother fucking scary dude that I would NEVER want to run into in some dark alley at night. From his hair, to his face, to his slick moves on the stage, everything about this dude was CREEPY! He could sing though. I can still vividly see how he looked, how like a snake, he slithered all over the stage. Fascinating it surely was, but also disturbing!

Death Angel: for many the highlight of their day, for me dinner break! Time to eat the worst nasi in my life (from the Vietnamees stand). 3,5 tokens (= 2,90 * 3,5 = 10,15 euro OMG???) you got some rice with, if you scrutinized your food, vegetables and some loempia's. Gahh..worst rip off of the day. In the meantime, Death Angel was unleashing their violence and I enjoyed myself by watching it from a safe distance.

Satyricon made my day, TOTALLY!

Their performance was worth all the waiting for me! I know a lot of people started to dislike the band when they shed their tr00 black metal roots (although some people also might question if they were ever tr00 black metal), but I am digging their new style. Their latest album The Age of Nero is on my iPhone for a long time already and has been helping me through bad moods on public transport, during work and on the bike. Their new sound is more polished, but it's still 'nasty' (in a good way). It makes me want to bang my head really hard! I normally don't do that when I listen to them so this gig, seeing them for the first time, was THE opportunity to finally kill my neck. And so I did, with pleasure.

They opened with Commando, which my friend Christiaan captured with his new camera. It can film in HD quality and it shows!



They also played: Black Crow on a Tombstone, The Wolfpack, Mother North, Forhekset, Now Diabolical, and even Fuel For Hatred!

Their performance was way too short for my liking, but my neck was quite dead at the end of it.

After Satyricon it was Meshuggah's turn to blow us away with their craziness. I managed to kill my neck even further as this set was also totally insane. Of course they played Future Breed Machine, but also three songs from their latest album ObZen. Christiaan captured the first part of Bleed.



We were both very tired after this gig and after seeing the first few minutes of Moonspell decided to embark on our big journey homewards. You gotta see 'big journey' in Dutch light, because a two hour journey to get home is considered a long time in this country. And it is a long time when you just want to take a shower and get to bed! Christiaan has had the pleasure of getting beer spilt over his clothes twice so he was eager to get rid of the constant stench of old beer that was surrounding him. You might think he was a drunkard, but no. They served Bavaria at the festival, so we only had 1 beer, then realised it tasted like piss and only drank soda's for the rest of the day. I don't understand why they didn't serve Grolsch!