The Defiance festival was held at the Asylum venue in Birmingham. A few minutes walk from the city centre, the venue is located in a run-down industrial estate, and doesnt look much from the outside. Once inside however the venue’s appeal becomes obvious. The venue is a decent size, has good sound and lighting, cheap beer and barmaids dressed in sexy nurses uniforms (a fact that many of the guys in the audience seemed to appreciate for some reason). There is also a sheltered smoking area where smokers are able to sit in the dry and out of the wind – a rarity these days.
The festival was organised by tonights headliner, Lahannya, and she has chosen all the bands on the bill herself...
Category Gig/Festival Reviews
A first edition of a very successful festival took place on the days of 12th and 13th of November, 2010 in Helsinki at the venue called Dante’s Highlight. It is a venue that regularly hosts smaller sized concerts, having a capacity of about 650 people (including top floor/balcony) as far as I understood. Plus, downstairs there is a separate bar that opens before the venue hours and where eventually you can grab some food or maybe some of the drinks that are not available at the venue. But the most important ingredient for the success of the event was the crowd in my opinion. It totally rocked. Almost every band had at least few enthusiasts in front of the stage, while the headliners had half of the audience singing along and screaming their name...
Read MoreThe first band we caught on the Main Stage was John & Jehn, a French duo (lead singer and bass player, accompanied by two other band members). They reminded us of Joy Division, Interpol, White Lies and everything in between, but they were a nice appearance nonetheless.
In fact, they were the complete opposite of the next band, Pulled Apart by Horses, an energetic mixture of alternative rock, punk and power pop – with garage influences – from Leeds. They went crazy up on the stage – banging their heads, running all over the place – like they were playing a manic intro for Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster, that was coming up later.
Before that, though, we can’t not speak of the nutty appearance that was Chrome Hoof (apparently, an equine fetish is this fall’s latest trend), a ten peop...
Read MoreOne of this summer’s last festivals, Offset (set in Hainault Forest, a beautiful location in North London) came and went with no rain and lots of good music from all over the world – New York, Canada, Israel and, of course, UK.
On both days the gigs started early, at about 12, but on day one it wasn’t until 6-7 pm that people started gathering in front of the Main Stage, after having finished setting up their tents. They were right on time for Good Shoes and their funky groves that got everybody to start dancing in a split second.
But it wasn’t until the next band – Art Brut – got up on the stage that the party really started...
Read MoreSince a weekend in Oslo is pretty much equivalent of a bus trip to Western Sweden and some food drinks there, plus my current favorite band played at this festival in Gothenburg, plus I don’t mind a change in the concerts locations, I found myself in a bus towards the Swedish city on Saturday morning. The 4 websites I previously checked announced rain, so I picked some boots to help me keep my feet dry which turned out to be quite useless for the warm day. With some instructions from locals and the nice tram driver, I ended up at Villa Belaparc, the location of the free event. I was worried when I stepped off the tram since all I could see were trees and a highway. But then I heard the music and found the place rather close to the stop.
The place is something like a big restaurant by the s...
Read MoreEfter att ha lyssnat på några klipp på nätet från olika spelningar ett år tillbaka ställde man sig framför Black Stage med ett inte så taggat humör. Kommer Vince låta lika krasslig som han gjort på ett flertal spelningar den sista tiden och kommer Mars ramla av scenen? De negativa frågorna var många och snabb fick vi svar på dem. Med en rejäl örfil på köpet! Det visade sig att jag hade helt fel. Vince lät ju riktigt bra för att vara 2010.
Med en rejäl kickstart med inledande Kickstart My Heart och kaxiga Wild Side fortsatte det i högt tempo. Smällare och granater backas upp med en scen designad som ett americans getto med höghus. Tommy lee sitter ganska lågt och syns väldigt dåligt...
Read MoreAnkkarock, held in Finland’s capital region in Korso, about half an hour train ride from the Helsinki central railway station, is your typical Finnish festival: They try hard to brand themselves as a local festival, and are hoping to pull in people living nearby with safe bookings. In fact, at least 75% of the bands are exactly the same as on basically every other Finnish festival, and the rest of the bill is there to attract people from a little further away. The festival has a camping area, but since Ankkarock is basically a city festival, most people sleep the night in their own bed.
Two days of Ankkarock saw a total of thirty bands on three stages, and a bunch of local bands per day on the fourth mini stage...
Read MoreChildren Of Bodom played their only Finnish summer festival gig of 2010 at the Ankkarock festival. The concert took place in the middle of their studio sessions for the seventh and yet-untitled COB album. Judging by the completely mind-blowing amount of Bodom shirts in crowd, they were clearly one of the most anticipated acts of the weekend.
Having played the British Bloodstock festival the night before, the band hit the stage with little sleep. They’re seemingly used to extreme schedules, as this hardly showed through as they launched their set with Follow The Reaper, closely followed by Hate Crew Deathroll.
Bodom isn’t understandably too keen on showcasing their new songs on YouTube in cellphone video quality, so the setlist did not include any new material, and – perhaps due to the limi...
Read MoreIt’s 80s all over again, when Reckless Love hits the stage to open the second day of Ankkarock. Call ’em hair metal, glam rock or just plain faggotry, the leggings-and-make-up-wearing rockers your parents warned you about are back and here to stay. As the band hops on the stage without an intro tape, it remains a mystery if they came from behind the backdrop or a time machine of some sort, with their fluffy hairs and – up until it’s the time for the tracks for the ladies – 80s tees.
These guys are outrageous enough to throw the double ”S” from the KISS logo, as well as the ”V” from the Van Halen logo straight on their own logo, so it’s no wonder the live show is like it is: The pretty boy Olli Herman (vocals, ex-Crashdiet) showcases all the classic rock manners from scissor kicks to hip ro...
Read MoreIt had rain all morning of Friday the 13th but the luck smiled upon the festival in the afternoon, and it got way too hot at times. A bit of research on Spotify or main website, before heading to the festival grounds, made me decide to check out Trash Talk. I can hardly remember much about their music since from the very first second I got next to the stage, among a really shy crowd, I saw the singer jumping off the stage and going in the middle of the non moving attendants. There he started singing/screaming, running around, asking folks to start running in circle and altogether he barely spent some minutes with the rest of the band on the stage...
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