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Witnessed
Graspop 2010, Belgium: Day 1
06/08/10 || Altmer
Who: A fuckload of bands.
When: 25-06-2010.
Where: Boeretang, Dessel, Belgium.
After making my way through an extremely hot and sunny Low Countries’ morning, traveling to my destination in the fields of Flanders – I realized one thing. I am going to a festival. It is big. There will be lots of bands there. I will hate half of them and not go to see them because they can go fuck themselves with a very big stick. The other ones look pretty cool though. I am going to see them. And thus another witnessed report came to pass, this time NOT written by IG, but by me – for our very own Europe has festivals too, and we get just as drunk as Americans.
Some fumbling with the tent aside, me and my festivalian companions made our way to the stages. The first thing we all noticed was that there was a band involving tits playing, and thus we made our way to the main stage to see a Dutch band called ReVamp. This is a band that seriously needs to ReVamp (sic) their music, because it’s of the boring Nightwish variety – think some semi-heavy riffs with the chick from After Forever singing and very cheesy keyboards – that’s pretty much what you get. In fact that is pretty much all you get since actual good songwriting or sound is too much to ask for this band. I don’t care if the chick is hot (not that fanciful, really), the music is shit. There’s no eye-candy for Altmer to sink his teeth into, and there’s no interesting music to care about. ReVamp get a 4 and that is because the band can play, and one bonus tits point. Use it wisely, fuckos.
After that me and the girlfriend hurried our way to see a favourite band of mine – Anathema. Anathema are a good, solid band, but their sound was plagued by muddiness and volume issues – meaning the subtleties in their music seemed to not come to life as much as it would in a smaller venue, or on record. The band itself retains their charisma, but with a relatively weak setlist (what is “A Natural Disaster” doing on there) and the aforementioned dreadful sound, it was not as good as the previous time I have seen them (nor the two times I have seen them before that). Because I love them, though, the setlist was as follows:
Kashmir
Deep
Closer
Universal
Empty
A Natural Disaster
Fragile Dreams
——-
Sleepless
Anathema receive a 8 out of 10. If you are not a fanboy you can subtract three points.
Third up was a choice between Devin Townsend or Slayer. Since I have already seen Slayer, and since you lot will get a full Slayer coverage from the Wacken report, I went to see good old Devin instead – and that was no bad choice. Devin is a fucking wackjob, and his stage antics are just the same – the man may have lost his skullet, but he has lost none of his charisma, and his faces, his “turn my ass towards the crowd for a booty dance”, his absurd scatological humour, and the plain awesomeness of the material ensures I had quite a good time during this set. If you’re going to do some prog metal, do it this way please. Devin’s stuff does get somewhat repetitive, so there will be no mindblowing score here – but it was a solid good set from a solid, good institution. 7.
After that came the good old Swedes of Therion, a band that I personally do not care much for, but should appeal to me given my track record of liking this sort of sympho-metal bla bla thing. The sound was again extremely awful, drowning out any of the beautiful nuance you are supposed to find in this type of music. This may be a good band, but based on this live performance I couldn’t hear it – I could barely even discern songs, let alone if the band were any good. By the end the sound was slightly fixed, so I could enjoy the only Therion song I know, “To Mega Therion”. Maybe I will like this band in the future. Maybe they won’t sound overly pretentious. Maybe they will fire their sound guy, who knows? I don’t, but all I know is that this way I can only give this band a shit score, and that will equate to a 5.
Next up was Tarja. Four songs or so were enough for me to realize that boobs alone cannot save this travesty of a backing band. Tarja may be the world’s biggest cumbucket for all I care, but her music is absolutely fucking awful. I walked out on it and I never walk out on bands. Never. This is that bad. Tarja can go fucken suck it and take her “metal” back with her to Finland’s popular radio stations. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you very much. 1.
It was eating time now, so I chose not to see Nile, but I did witness a few Motörhead songs from a distance. I don’t hugely care for this band but I can appreciate the style more when I’m a bit tired, hungover and eating. They are not bad. Maybe I will investigate more the next time they around when I am not trying to satisfy that feeling of “legs, walk” after a good day of festival trekking. Maybe I won’t. Motörhead receive a superficial 6.
The last thing I saw tonight (because Aerosmith can completely go and fucken suck it) was My Dying Bride. They are a really good band, live as well as on record, but this is the kind of stuff it needs to be cold and midwinter for. I enjoy this music a lot, but I wasn’t in the mood for it, so I hung to the back of the tent while enjoying a few choice comforts. It was a good gig though, and the sound was for once not execrable, so they too get the very agreeable grade of a 7.
Stay tuned for more live updates from Graspop – you will find I am going to cover the last two days too. Expect the worst. Expect penises. Expect a review of cooler bands than the ones on the billing today, because I will be covering Carcass next time. If that is not tr00 enough for you, then also expect Bloodbath, Amon Amarth, Behemoth, Cannibal Corpse, Hail of Bullets, and more of that stuff. Overall the first day of Graspop was a relative disappointment – good billings were marred by bad sound, it is a shame I did not get to see Slayer (who surely would have kicked ass), and it was livened up by some of the worst music known to mankind.
The average grade for the first day of Graspop therefore equates to (rounded up slightly) a 5,5 out of 10.
