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Events and Reports - Sweden Rock Festival 2009 - Day 1 (Stuart) - Witchcraft, Amon Amarth, Blaze Bayley
Ahhh The Sweden Rock Festival, one of the finest Hard Rock and Heavy Metal festivals in Europe, if not the world. This years line up was particularly varied with bands like Amon Amarth right through to ZZ Top playing.
I made the trip over to Denmark with a few friends (Craig, Barry and Nicola) and we were kindly invited to stay at fellow RevelationZ writer Nina's apartment in Copenhagen for a couple of nights before the festival. Nina and her husband Mads were the most excellent of hosts and much drinking was done, especially when I learned that the drinking laws in Denmark were a lot lighter than they are in Scotland. Not only can you buy beer at any time of the night but you can even drink it on the street without fear of arrest. Result!
We were joined by Steen on the 1st of June and made our way to the festival the next day. On our way there we met up with Thomas and a mate of mine called Ross who was travelling over from England with his girlfriend Kim.
It took several hours, a fair bit of alcohol, plenty of good humour, much swearing (especially when Steen almost got trapped on the train as it was about to leave the platform at the station for the festival) and a fair bit of carrying heavy loads but we eventually got the tents set up and the beers cracked open.
The night before the festival is always a bit of a blur but I do remember Craig and myself watching some Space Rock band jamming on a stage set up in the back of a camper van in the adjacent campsite to the one we were staying in. That is until it started to rain and a hasty retreat was made of the safety of the tent.
This pattern of retreat sadly became the norm at several stages of the weekend. The weather at Sweden Rock is usually top notch, with sweltering sun being the rule. However, this year the sun wasn't quite as strong and the Rain Gods were in a poor mood on a couple of the days.
On the whole the rain wasn't too bad (I've certainly experienced much worse in my time as a festival goer) and certainly didn't dampen the party atmosphere that Sweden Rock is famed for. Anyway enough about the weather and onto the bands!
Wednesday 3th June
Thursday started off with a killer hangover which took up most of my morning and stopped me drinking till about 1pm. I persevered however and had packed away several cans of Carlsberg before the first band I was interested in Hysterica hit the Gibson tent. Dear lord I wish I had drunk more...
Mads had seen the band recently and assured me that despite being a little dodgy on record they were a good laugh live. I'm not sure if I go along with his assessment however. The band consists of five women wearing fairly revealing leather outfits who play "True Metal". Not complaining about the outfits but their idea of True Metal clearly differs from mine as it only took three songs for me to get a little bored.
Their songs all seemed to start with a fast riff before breaking down into a mid paced chug in the verse then speeding up again for the chorus. This formula became boring pretty quickly and by the time I realised their 3rd track contained a blatant lift from Walk by Pantera I was off in search of something a little better.
Luckily I found it in Torch, I was not familiar with the bands work at all but I soon picked up a very strong Accept vibe from their music, especially in the vocals of excitable front man Dan Dark. And with me being a rather large fan of Udo and the boys I was hooked immediately. Songs like The Dark Sinner and Electrikiss were highly enjoyable and had me banging my head down the front.
The band did have the unfortunate luck of being the first (but sadly not the last) band to fall victim to sound problems. Guitarist Tomi Peltonen's amp cut out during Fire Raiser, which was a shame as it was their last song and the crowd were really into the set by this point. Still they did more than enough to impress me and I will endeavour to check them out on record at some point
We then had a couple of hours to kill before the next band I wanted to see so we did the sensible thing and headed back to the campsite for a few more beers. On a side note there had been an issue between the festival and the land owner on whether or not the traditional campsite right beside the festival would be open. I'm glad that things were sorted out and the site did indeed open as it's a perfect distance from the arena and has excellent facilities. Hopefully they can come to the same arrangement next year.
Anyway, next on the list were Witchcraft a band that I am a massive admirer of. Their brand of retro doom really strikes a chord with me and I have seen them live already on several occasions. This was the first time I had seen them in an outdoor setting and I'm pleased to say they can adapt to it just as well as a small, dark club. Opening with Queen Of Bees and then playing one of my favourites No Angel Or Demon was a great choice (although they do seem to have taken the decision of play the latter at twice the speed of the album version for some reason). They played a good mix of songs off their three releases including Wooden Cross and If Crimson was Your Colour. Life seems to have been good to front man Magnus as he appears to have put on a few pounds since I last saw him. He was also in a particularly chatty mood that day but his banter was rather wasted on me since my grasp of the Swedish language is pretty much none existent. One of the few drawbacks of seeing a band in their home country I suppose.
As I rate the first Witchcraft album among my all time favourites the two highlights for me were the self titled opener and an awesome version of the epic Her Sisters They Were Weak. I had not seen the band play this before and I walked away rather happy indeed.
Amon Amarth are a band who in general work so much better in a live setting than on record. This is largely due to the imposing bulk of front man Johan Hegg who knows how to command a stage. I was looking forward to seeing them again but their show on the Sweden Stage was not one that will rank as one of the bands best for one simple reason, the atrociously quiet sound.
I had expected to have my head ripped off by drummer Fredrik Andersson's pounding beats alone but unhappily standing about 30 or so people back from the stage I could hold a quite reasonable conversation with my friends round about me and not even have to raise my voice. I later spoke to someone who was standing just back from the barrier and they confirmed it was the same for them
It was utterly frustrating as try as I might I couldn't enjoy the gig, going to a Metal show is supposed to be an ear destroying, ground shaking experience. On this occasion I could have made a louder noise with some pots and pans and a kazoo.
The band ploughed through their set to an still appreciative audience and even had some impressive pyro to back them up but after they had played their sing-along number Pursuit of Vikings we left to take our place down the front for Blaze Bayley. I'll be seeing Amon Amarth again in August and I wish them more luck with the sound for then.
Despite the fact that I had seen Blaze only a week before in Scotland (Check out my review here) I was looking forward to this gig as I had never seen him play in front of a large audience before. By the time Blaze and his band arrived on stage there must have been a good six or seven thousand people congregated in front of the Zeppelin stage to enjoy the show.
And what a show it was, Blaze is a singer built for the big occasion and he lead his audience through both his solo material and a couple of Maiden classics. It was pretty much the exact same set list as the previous week and yet again it was The Clansman that made the night for me; it's perfect to sing along to and you just simply can't beat the rush you get when it kicks in. It made me wish that we had brought the Scotland flag we had planted in the campsite along to the festival arena with us.
Blaze ended the gig by thanking us for coming and as always sounded completely and utterly grateful to have a captive audience then launched into Robot with its highly emotive chorus of "I am, I am. I think therefore I am".
I left Blaze feeling pretty tired after an hour of strenuous rocking out plus all the singing along had completely destroyed my voice but I still wanted to check out Uriah Heep who were headlining the Sweden Stage.
The Heep kicked off their set with the almost speed metal assault of Wake The Sleeper off their latest release of the same name, next up was Overload and then Tears Of The World. Bernie Shaw announced that they would be playing the entire Wake The Sleeper album interspersed with some old classics.
As much as I like the new album I was too drained to make it through the whole thing and after a couple more songs headed back to the campsite. I really wanted to hear Lady In Black but I guess that will need to wait till another time.
Back at the site, I found a party in full flow and begin impressing no one in particular with my rendition of the Alestorm version of Flower of Scotland. Not the cleverest thing to do when you can barely talk as it turns out, still that's the Heavy Metal spirit right there.
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Amon Amarth
Amon Amarth
Amon Amarth
Amon Amarth
Amon Amarth
Amon Amarth
Blaze
Blaze
Blaze
Blaze
Amon Amarth pictures taken by Lunah - Metal Moments | Written by Stuart
Sunday, July 19, 2009 |
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