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Witnessed

Getaway Rock Festival 2013: The experience chronicle

20/09/13  ||  sincan

Who: Some privileged bands.
Where: Gävle, Sweden.
When: August 8th to 10th, 2013.

Again I decided to go to Getaway Rock Festival because of some superb booking skills in the more obscure part of the line-up following a typical Roadburn manner (for last year’s festival press here). I don’t know if it was because of a good knowledge about the scene or if it was because of luck since the diversity of bands was rather broad, which is good if you want to reach a broader audience. If you look at the entire line-up you will find a frightening large portion of metalcore (or what the kids nowadays calls it) and other suspect things, however, someone must pay for the show, so why not trick the kids into doing it? In the aftermath of this summer’s festival I hereby give you a little something to read while preparing for next year’s adventures, anxieties and hangovers.

Before going to the festival I checked the weather forecast and saw that, what could be the best summer (in terms of nice weather) in Sweden since the Dinosaurs disguised themselves as penguins, was going to get radically changed. Instead of sun, sweat and fire, I’m talking about rain, rain and some rain. However I didn’t let such minor things ruin my attitude towards going to Gävle, so I just double checked that my raincoat was in the backpack together with my rubber suit, fuck swing, book collection, fancy unicorn named Ralph and my fave (nude) picture of Ironpants.

Well everything started pretty nice. I arrived, by train, in a sunny and warm evening. Well when I wrote train I realized that everything did not start nice and since I’m not a liar I will also tell you shortly why. About ten minutes from Stockholm where I was supposed to change train, one of the train’s doors thought it would be a nice idea to say “fuck you, I’m going on vacation” and just stop working. Calm as I can be in such situations my pulse went faster and faster as the clock kept ticking towards missing my departure. It took some time before the door was fixed and there were no chance in hell that I was going with the train to Gävle. The funny part was that my train blocked the Gävle train so everything was cool as a polar bear’s arse, if I only knew this before sweating myself into a desert.

Again, I arrived, and since I’m cool (and not that old/lazy… yet) I brought my tent and spent my few hours while sleeping at the camp site, because that is what we die hard metal heads do, right guys? So after I installed myself not much worth writing about happened that evening.

Thursday:

After waking up, or going up, since I hardly slept, I noticed that there was some rain just around the corner. Oh, and why I didn’t sleep? Yeah, I’m usually pretty good at sleeping during festivals, orgies and world wars, however when a large group of young laddish fuckups from a typical small Swedish town has their camp about one feet away from where your head is at while sleeping you will most likely be invited to their party. A party containing things like telling the same joke over and over again, hearing conversations about whether one has fucked already but most likely you will hear typical Swedish “redneck” music, gladly the same song over and over again. However I’m not angry, this is what you will suffer from while being at a festival in my country. What you also will notice in the morning is that the queue for the showers or the portable toilets will be much shorter than the queue to the local barista. So now you know everything about the Swedish ethics and behavior at the festivals, let’s talk some music shall we?

Dead Lord was the first band who had the honor of having me present, a band which I only knew by its logo (which is ace) a couple of days before the festival. But thanks to a friend which prior Getaway said that “anyone who does not see Dead Lord is stupid” and since I’m not stupid I checked them out quickly before going. Dead Lord can easily be described as one of those, now so popular, Swedish old school rock/heavy metal bands (no need for name-dropping, you should know by now!) looking back at the 70ties and so on, but as they all tend to do, have their own original sound (not to be confused with copycats).

Just before they started playing, it began to rain, but what is nice with Getaway (among many things) is that one of the stages is placed indoors in an old gasometer with a superb atmosphere for live concerts. The band itself is one of those band which not always catches everyone attention with their recorded material, some people might feel like a dimension is missing. This is compensated for when playing live since they adds extra of everything, thus being a great live band. And they should be great since they (according to the singer) has the best guitarist and the best drummer in the world, the vocals are not bad either, with a nice hoarse touch. But towards the end of this denim west reeking gig I felt that the songs got a bit (not much though!) weaker. Oh, and check out when they played one of their international super hits at Muskelrock here.

I give them 8 Flying V:s out of 10.

Cult of Luna was the next band out with their atmospheric sludge progressive metal post-hardcore (when labeling is on drugs), I would add industrial grey somewhere in there as well… Therefore the rain created a somehow rather appropriate framing around the stage during their concert. What is often so good with this relatively repetitive and sometimes minimalistic kind of sludge music can also make this music rather tedious while watching live, which sometimes was the case with this gig. However the sound was good, and the band was delivering what they should so I have not much bad things to say about that part. However, for me, the typical hardcore vocals are too monotonous throughout the concert and I would like to see some variation there. But overall it was a good gig, and it was fun to see so many people attending, which means that the kids actually sometimes can try music beyond the metalcore genre. Or was it the description containing “hardcore” which tricked them? Towards the end it was really wet and cold but I still managed to walk away with a pleasant feeling. If you are a hardcore Cult of Luna fan, you would have loved it, I guess.

Therefore I give them 7 short haircuts out of 10.

Then I passed by Gamma Ray and further confirmed why this type of music is nothing for me. I also saw the final tracks by Naglfar, a band which I find good, not great, on record. However the gig sounded nice and the audience was appreciating it. I’ve seldom seen such a massive “one more time” shouting after the band has left the scene and this time it paid off, Mr Wrath (vocals) himself was happy and surprised at the same time, and told us that he was not expecting that.

Finally (and yes it was still raining) I passed by when in In Flames was on stage and thus heard “Trigger”, this was not my intention. When I was young I really appreciated the band, but when I grow older and started to enjoy more trve cvlt music they thought it was a good idea to turn their music into a more easy listened variant of themselves (something they call “evolving”…). I mean, they are free to do what the fuck they want, but instead of understanding why they lost so many fans (and got so many new short haired ones) they just blame it on the lost fans being narrow minded and whatnot.

However, before “Trigger” Fridén was talking about him being very grateful that they showed up in this kind of weather and that he would not do the same (?!). But he said one wise thing which created a little smile upon my frost cold face and it went something like the band would take “this” (as in the great support by the fans) with them into their next album, “well, not this beer though” he clarified while raising his plastic mug filled with a typical boring Swedish lager and further asked the crowd about why it is so fucking hard to get good beers at festival, and by this I agree with him and ends the Thursday by showing a picture of a secret gig at the camp site.

Friday

While crawling out from my filthy tent of blasphemy during the mo(u)rning it was with a large portion of anguish and a dark mind I took my first steps upon what now was the empire of mud and wetness (and not in the good way). However, this would be subject to change.

Bombus was the first band out and I thought it was a good idea to check out what the hype was all about. What I experienced was a rather energy filled gig with a lot of guitar posing and such. The vocals reminded me of ye ol’ great Lemmy, but whit a more “metal” vibe in it. I was not fully convinced after the gig though, it was good but not super great. A plus was the present, now so typical, west coast mustaches.

Bombus receives 6.5 mustaches out of 10.

Behemoth was back this year as well. Since the gig last year was such a killer fuck, the festival crew thought that they had to bring em back for another virgin sacrifice slaughter fest. I was not fully convinced with this tactics regarding the subject, but afterwards I can do nothing but agree, they are such a well-oiled live band. You know, one of these bands you have to catch when they visit your filthy home town. And if you are one of those who like sexy biceps, I know from a serious source, that the bassist dude delivers every day, and boy he likes it.

Another thing, more relevant (at least for me), is their choice of corpse paint which has the typical sneeze in the flour bag characteristics. During the gig they went back to add some fake blood or something into the mouth, but it looked like they went back to add some lipstick, which was kind of cute. Well, I now feel like I’m talking way too much about their looks, I guess I have to add some more Cosmopolitan into my glass, oh, I mean mead.

Okay it has to be said that Behemoth isn’t one of those bands which I daily or weekly put in my stereo, even though I enjoyed their last offering pretty much. But for you who really tempts for their next album I can reveal (yeah, you might already know…) that they played a new track called “Blow your trumpets, Gabriel”, no I will note say something funny about that title, naughty boy. Here is a live clip from Getaway capturing the new song for those who are interested. They ended by telling the audience (or me) that “We shall return next year, watch out!”

Behemoth receives 9 metal alien motorcycles out of 10.

Then there was some hours of walking around and ingesting the atmosphere, first I went to see a couple of songs by F.K.Ü which, according to my notes, was rather beautiful. Then I went to see Year of the Goat and I still don’t see what the fuzz is all about really. It’s not bad, but I don’t find it that thrilling either. But a friend of mine (yeah, I got a friend) said that they were the best band during the Friday so I guess some people appreciate them more than I do.

Later that day I went to see my childhood idols System of a Down and I’m not lying when I say that they can’t sound any better live than what they did that night. They started with “Aerials” (from when they weren’t just a rock band) and after that just played hit after hit. I guess I would have cried (almost) of joy if I was 15 years old or something. Now that great concert was a bit late for the older me, and I don’t consider them that good any more, by that not neglecting how much I appreciated them back then. However I must say that when you see a couple of bands per day during a festival, the mastodon long set lists the headliners play are often too long when you aren’t a die hard fan. And it must be said, that it is not among the headliners Getaway is delivering this year (in my book=your law).

Saturday

Finally I woke up in a tent which was as close as hell you can get here on earth. After a freezing night, it was nice to feel the sun touching my pale skin. Before the bands started to play I went on a shopping tour which resulted in a couple of records and some pizza and before Entombed it was time for a couple of beers in the typical camping manner accompanied with microscopic raindrops.

Entombed had a huge audience, I don’t know if it was the sun which pulled out all the people or if everyone actually wanted some pure death’n‘roll to deny everything which the sun stand for. One drawback with Getaway is one of the stages (the one Entombed used etc) or rather the area for the crowd. The area is long and narrow, thus making it hard to actually see what’s going on at the stage if you come a couple of minutes too late. However, it is not hard to hear what’s going on and it must be said that the sound quality this year was really good (they had some problems last year at one of the stages)!

When you attend an Entombed concert you really know what you will, for better or worse, and by that I assume that everyone who reads this (yeah, you two creepy fuckers there in the corner) has seen them a couple of times before because they tour every day. Mr. LG himself lumbers around (on the left hand path) on the stage and delivers his vocals as if he has never done anything else. All in all a solid gig, as expected and they said goodbye by playing “Wolverine blues”. do you fancy it?

Entombed receives 7.5 beers out of 10.

A couple of hours later it was finally time for more or less all bands which I really went to Getaway for. During three and a half hour I was supposed to see three bands, of which I will tell more about later in this text, and how I nailed it, too bad I had to skip Deep Purple though.

Electric Wizard was finally, for me, going to get checked from my “to see” list. And there I was at the front rows talking to some strangers about how fucked up the world is in a discussion about how few people there were in the crowd compared to the other concerts during the festival. Here I must declare to you non Swedes, our national decease (regarding youth and life metal fans) of being totally ignorant to some genres, which other parts of the world seems to enjoy. If it wasn’t for a few local heroes in my home town I would only been able to chose between In Flames or Swedish house or pop music when watching a live gig. Again I find myself discussing other things than what I’m supposed to do, but hey, deal with it (I don’t have anyone else to discuss these matters with).

Well finally the band walked out on the stage and everyone was kind of prepared to, hm, doom around. But at the same time as they hit the first string the rain started, and it increased and increased beyond imagination until it was not bearable to just stand there so I escaped into a record shop tent which was placed close by the stage (out of sight though). From there I just listened to the heavy riffs, of for instance “Legalise drugs and murder”, from one of the most anticipated gigs being accompanied by the sound of this heavy fuck cunt rain. You know one of these rains which lasts for a minute or two, but no no, this fucker lasted for about one hour. It partly drowned the music from time to time!

Well after just seeing a few songs and hearing the rest I’m far from being satisfied. But must still give them a score, from what I saw and heard the tracks delivered were of high quality. I was kind of impressed by how close the vocals sounds the same as on record. Hopefully I will be able to witness them again. As far as I saw, not that much was happening on stage in visual terms but this kind of stoner doom metal is mostly about music I guess.

Electric Wizard receives 8 soaked joints out of 10.

One might, at least I did, think that the rain was soon to be over, but I was wrong, and had to run in this weather to another stage to see almighty Alcest. I thank the Lightbringer for placing that gig indoors.

Alcest is a band I by now have seen three times and I was very eager to catch them this third time as well and hopefully you will understand why. Neige might be one of the most humble, almost timid, frontmans in the world of metal. During the gig he didn’t spoke about things like “Fuck yeah, it is so great to be here in Switzerland, your chicks are super sexy” instead he spoke about how pleased he is that people showed up here in Sweden, were Alcest seldom (according to him) plays. Actually they played three shows with Katatonia in 2012 and one small one in my home town during 2011, which is more often than most of the Swedish band I care about, to be honest.

The gig started with the single “Autre temps”, also my favorite, from the last record. Afterwards Neige spoke for the first time: “Thank you so much, we are Alcest from France” and no offense but I guess it is kind of obvious, for some reason. Adding Neiges words spoken out of his heart together with the beautiful music of Alcest makes live music with them such a different experience compared to other metal gigs, and I say this as a positive thing. Change is always (in this case) good. It is organic, warm, beautiful and kind of an out of this world experience, which seems to be the plan also.

The super hit Percées de lumiére was also in the set list and is very nice to have there since it is kind of different compared to the other tracks. It’s not like the other tracks blur into each other and such, but “Penées de lube” just releases so much energy into the gig and stands out in its own perfect way. In total the set list was nice, mixing material from all their full-length albums. if I can complain about anything, which I obviously will do now, is that I would change the instrumental track “Beings of light” to something from the first record, which in my book is the best. If you ever get the opportunity to see Alcest live, take it and come with an open mind you dirty fuck.

Alcest receives 9.5 fairy lands out of 10.

So after two gigs after another it was time for the third, by a band I actually saw in London during spring, yeah, I’m that cool. Drop the b… acid.

Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats closed the festival for me and even though they had some technical issues (which the band emphasized a bit too much actually) everything else went rather smooth. If you know your Uncle Acid history the first record was released in a quantity of about minus 3 and had the hits like “Crystal spiders” and “Dead eyes of London” with a rather obscure production, the second album was that with all their super hits, making them all hyped up and shit, the third was just like, yeah skip the horror theme and make a stoned biker in the US album.

I like the second album the most, since those tracks are enormously catchy, but the new ones are pretty cool live as well, mostly slowing down things, like your mind and whatnot, if that could get any slower… However they are kind of not that interested about anything, it seems like, while one the stage and just play their fucken songs and walk away. I really liked all the buzz and weirdness around the band while they released the second album, and all of this seems to be far gone by now, too bad. Still, the music is the most important part and that they brought with ‘em.

Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats receives 8 H2SO4 out of 10.

Well, I guess that was everything worth mentioning from Gävle except that it’s a pleasant festival and that they should really think once or twice about throwing in more and more metalcore into the line-up year after year. Where the fuck is the black metal, guys?!

Witnessed