On 16th February, Radio City announced the nominees for their annual Freedom Awards. This year saw all of NINE nominations in the ‘Best Metal Artist’ category, spanning cities across India. The nominees are as follows, VOTE for your favourite:
BHAYANAK MAUT– ‘Now Creation. Forever Destruction’| Man
INNER SANCTUM– ‘Guardian’| Legions Awake
AMORPHIA– ‘The Lieber Code’
AGAINST EVIL– ‘War Hero’| Fatal Assault
ALBATROSS– ‘In the Lair of Dr. Hex’| Fear From the Skies
ABERRANT– ‘End Game’
DEMONIC RESURRECTION– ‘Even Gods do Fall’| The Demon King
Metal isn’t for everyone, and the reception it got at the Grammys night on the 16th of February 2016 was proof to this! Ghost won the award for Best Metal Performance for ‘Cirice’ which was received with hardly any applause, and an almost awkward silence.
Frontman Papa Emeritus made a brief acceptance speech where he said “A nightmare has just turned into a dream – thank you all for that.”
The other bands nominated in the category were Slipknot, August Burns Red, Sevendust and Lamb of God. But do metal bands really give a damn about the Grammys? Not Randy Blythe at least, who in a recent interview said – “I don’t give two flying fucks. It’ll be probably the fifth one we didn’t win. I’m not going to go to Hollywood and sit around and be excruciatingly bored while all these people with nice evening dresses clap. I don’t give a shit.”
Photo by Kevin Winter/WireImage
Lemmy was also remembered with a tribute performance by Hollywood Vampires, with Alice CooperJoe Perry, Johnny Depp, Matt Sorum and Duff McKagan. They performed Motorhead’s “Ace of Spades” to an unreceptive audience.
Music festivals can be strenuous. Camping in tents, lack of proper nutrition, lack of proper sanitation and unrelenting weather conditions. Sounds almost like a mountain climbing expedition. When you’ve already been to a few festivals over the summer, the only thing you want to do on a free weekend is sit at home, probably Netflix and chill (literally or otherwise) and get food delivered to your doorstep.Exactly, what I wanted to do that after Wacken 2015. The majority of the bands were unimpressive, Wacken in itself had lost its charm to someone who had been there religiously over the last 6 years. I had no intention of visiting another festival where I’d be subjected to more rain and mud and bad music. Which is why when Marc, a friend of mine over at myrevelations.de insisted that I join him at Party.San Open Air 2015, I was quite apprehensive about another festival spread over 3 days and far away from home. But because he was so insistent, I decided to give the festival a dekko and visited the website. First thing I noticed was that the line-up was quite different to all the festivals that I had been to last summer. A very aggressive, enticing mix of Extreme metal and Death metal bands that got me interested. And then I read that it probably had no more than 10,000 metalheads who visited the festival and I knew that this was going to be a festival that I was going to love. I immediately sent an email to the Press Liaison of Party.San requesting press accreditation, even though it was just a week away. Surprisingly, almost a couple of hours later, I received a pleasing confirmation email and I was all set to visit the festival I had almost zero clue about a few weeks earlier. Transport had to be sorted, being as Party.San is unfortunately not as easily accessible by rail as some of the other larger festivals. Once that was arranged, rucksack was emptied of its contents from Wacken and refilled with fresh clothes for what would most certainly be my last festival in the summer.
Party. San Open Air takes place in a quaint little town in Thüringen, called Schlotheim. An old East German airfield serves as the venue for this extreme music festival, spanning from usually the third Thursday to Saturday in August. Getting there is a bit of a hassle if you do not have some sort of private transport. Trains are not that frequent to Schlotheim but are more regular to Mühlhausen which is a slightly larger town than the former. However, Party.San does have shuttles to both train stations. Registration was a breeze, luckily, as temperatures soared to around 30-35°C in the afternoon. This was not what I had expected, my wellington boots and my rain coat being testament to my unpreparedness. The skies were clear and the sun just did not stop being the sun for even a minute. Tents were pitched in record time, because all I wanted to do before heading out to watch the first band was catch up on some R&R.
Morbus Chron took stage about 30 minutes late because the sound console just refused to continue working after a set by Degial, who hail from Sweden kicked off proceedings. Morbus Chron played a mix of Doom & Death and despite the sun beating down on us, the set was well received. Midnight, from Cleveland, Ohio was up next and was the find of the day for me, personally. The band plays a fast, speedy mix of black and heavy metal and certainly brought the crowd up on its feet and got it finally moshing. Midnight is a band that can make it bigger but are musically perfect where they are right now, and their underground status is certainly a well coveted one.
Photo Courtesy: party-san.deNuclear Assault was the first high profile act of the day and did not disappoint, furiously belting away their thrash metal classics one after the other. Their composure on stage is quite admirable, soaking in the sun with their cooling glasses and yet not letting go of the tempo they started their set off with. The evening was loaded with lots of theatrics and pyrotechnics, as Secrets Of The Moon, The Ruins of Beverast and Primordial brought their dark extreme brands of metal to stage. Behemoth is a band that I have watched often and I have had experiences that varied from tremendously entertaining to very pedestrian. On this day though, Behemoth brought their A-game and were brilliant from start to finish. The pyrotechnics and the band’s overall performance as the day’s headlining act, delivered and how. Nergal did take a tumble midway through the set but continued to play without any sign of injury. Be it At The Left Hand Ov God or O Father, O Satan, O Sun; the Polish black metal giants ensured that no fan left the infield of the festival disappointed.
Photo courtesy: Toni B. Gunner
Day Two began early and not because the first band took stage early, but because the heat in the tent was unbearable. I was willing to rather be sun burnt than baked in my tent. A festival breakfast (bread and cheese) later, I was up and ready to enjoy some good old fashioned gore-grind the Dutch managed to churn out in the form of Cliteater.
Photo courtesy: Toni B. Gunner
There are bands that take the whole gore/grind scene very seriously and get on stage, belt their tracks out, screech and growl about murder or gore and violence, and then there are bands like Cliteater, who, whilst taking their music “seriously”, also ensure that the crowd gets involved in their antics. A fun 30-40 minutes later, I headed off to seek some much needed shade and refreshments, whilst Vanhelgd, Gehennah and Aeternus occupied the main stage. Soulburn, also a Dutch band and influenced heavily by the likes of Bathory, took stage and played exactly as well as they did when I caught them with Bolt Thrower and Morgoth a couple of years ago. The band up next however, was the find of Day Two for me. I had heard of Deserted Fear before, but had hardly given them any of my attention as I had expected them to be just a flash in the pan sort of a band. I could not have been more wrong. Deserted Fear, from the region, enjoyed what they do and played a very energetic and relentless set, packed with their version of modern death metal and ensured I had to skip Melechesh and Agalloch, because I was certainly not going to endure another couple of sets under the hot sun. Asphyx was however, not a band I was going to miss. Old school death metal is something too enticing to let pass and when it is packaged as Asphyx, you do not say no. Up next was a band that I had seen for the first time at Wacken a couple of weeks earlier and was not impressed by, at all. Bloodbath with Nick Holmes fronting the band was drab and mediocre at Wacken. At Party. San however, Bloodbath simply blew my mind. Powerful and loud, Bloodbath was tight and brutal, despite a 20 minute delay to the set. It was definitely the concert I needed to erase memories of the horror show I’d experienced a few weeks ago. Ensiferum, oddly, played to a very sparse crowd, most of whom even, were the least bit interested in what the Finnish pagan metallers had to offer. Luckily, the end of their set meant that the band that I travelled all the way to watch, was finally going to take stage. Another delay of 30 odd minutes meant that Cannibal Corpse was going to take stage at 1 AM.
Photo courtesy: Toni B. Gunner
When the band is Cannibal Corpse, you wait. Come what may. Because it is guaranteed to be brutal and neck breaking. Scourge Of Iron to Devoured by Vermin, the band just does not ease up and leaves you euphoric and done for the night. I must mention here however, that the sound for CC was much better at Wacken.
Saturday, meant Day Three of Party.San, but would also mean that I would have to begin my day with packing up my tent and my bags, because I had a train to catch back home, as my ride into Party.San would not be returning to Hamburg any time soon. Considering that the last train back home from the nearest station would be at 6PM, I would have to make my way to the shuttle at 4PM and hence miss almost all the bands that I wanted to watch at the tent stage, namely Ophis, who hail from Hamburg, Germany and Mantar would have to be given a miss. My early departure from Party.San would also mean that I would be missing My Dying Bride, Toxic Holocaust, Ghost Brigade and Rotting Christ. I did manage to however catch a little bit of Cowboy Bob And Trailer Trash, who played at the tent stage. I would rather not go into the details about the band, the name should suffice. Holocausto Canibal, Portuguese grind-core, were mildly entertaining and have potential. Evil Invaders were a bit out of place in this festival, I must say. The heavy metal that they play has too much of a power metal influence for my liking and many who attended the festival did seem to agree.
Party.San Open Air was an experience that I will not forget. The ride to the festival, the sun burns, the fatigue, the bands, the cheap (!!!!!!) drinks and the atmosphere. The festival is a very well organised one, with extremely friendly and accessible staff and a zero problem crowd. If you are a fan of extreme, hard hitting, death metal, Party.San should be the festival you prioritise over any other in the region. You should be here and plan all your other festival trips around it. I know I will be doing that this year on. 2015 was my first time at Party.San Open Air and I can ensure you that 2016 won’t be my last. Because true to their tagline, hell IS here.
P.S – Much gratitude to Toni B. Gunner of Mondkringel Photography for the concert photos that were used in this article.
The year is new again. It is time for use to look back on the year that was in terms of metal and release another staff pick list. This time, we chose to have everyone pick 13 tracks instead of albums because while the experience of a good album is undeniable, there are often songs that stand out so tall that one keeps wanting to go back to them instead of sitting through the remainder of the album. We also managed to get opinions from the founding couple of this website and that’s a big deal because they usually like to stay low key. So without wasting further time, here are our lists. Click each track name to enjoy it and see what the fuss was all about.
The history of music is peppered with incidents of artistes freeing themselves from the clutches of oblivion to break out into the mainstream. One can cite many artistes across genres that are examples of this. Every country that has had a major artiste that was responsible for the popularity of a particular genre or a style of music inadvertently owes it to its respective Indie scene. India, therefore, isn’t an exception.
For almost 5 decades, independent musicians from India have released music that transcended the boundaries of language and genre. Some of these artistes also went on to find worldwide fame as a result of sheer perseverance and honing their respective crafts. Names like Pentagram, Parikrama, Kryptos, Devoid, Demonic Resurrection, Indian Ocean etc. come to mind. While most genres languished in the shroud of restricted exposure, there was hardly anybody interested in anything that wasn’t being sold by a record label or was not being hammered into your brain by the gargantuan marketing machines of ruling media houses. The genre that suffered the most, and still does, was Metal.
Metal and India were barely synonymous in the 70s. Any trace of metal could only be found in Vinyls and cassette tapes, and for an Indian Metal artiste to exist was a laughable idea. However, over the last two decades, India has seen some noteworthy metal acts like Bhayanak Maut, Demonic Resurrection, Devoid, Zygnema, Providence, Undying Inc., Inner Sanctum, Kryptos, Wired Anxiety, Primitiv etc. While there have been commendable efforts to honour metal in India, there hasn’t been an awarding platform that keeps metal at the same pedestal as other genres. Enter Radio City Freedom Awards, 2015. With two successful editions successfully executed, Radio City Freedom Awards is an ideal platform to celebrate the essence of ‘Indie-pendent’ music. Radio City Freedom Awards invites entries from Indian artists across the globe in 11 categories viz.Best Hip-Hop Rap Artist, Best Folk Fusion Artist, Best Pop Artist, Best Rock, Best Metal, Best Electronica Artist, Best Video, Best Album Art. ‘Best Young Indie Artist/Band’, ‘Best Indie Collaboration of the year’ and ‘Indie Genius- Person of the year’.
We believe that this is a wonderful opportunity for all the metal bands out there (and also the non-metal artistes) to showcase their released work and be recognized for it! Last Year’s Winners of the ‘Best Metal Artist’ category were Mumbai based Progressive Metal / Experimental outfit ‘Symphony Novel’.
Entries are now open & Radio City invites all the independent artists to submit their compositions on www.planetradiocity.com/rcfa. Post a successful event in Delhi last year, the celebrations & award night would be concluded in the City of dreams, Mumbai in the end February 2016. This season RCFA rejoices music and art with ‘Music and Beyond’ by showcasing spoken word artists in a special segment in the grand finale.
For all Social Media Updates regarding the Radio City Freedom Awards, visit any of the links below:
RCFA:
The badass in heavy metal, founding member and frontman of Motorhead- Lemmy Kilmister, passed away today. He was 70 years old.
In a statement posted to Facebook, Motörhead wrote, “There is no easy way to say this… our mighty, noble friend Lemmy passed away today after a short battle with an extremely aggressive cancer. He had learnt of the disease on December 26th, and was at home, sitting in front of his favorite video game from the Rainbow which had recently made it’s way down the street, with his family. We cannot begin to express our shock and sadness, there aren’t words. We will say more in the coming days, but for now, please… play Motörhead loud.”
Apart from cancer, Lemmy had been suffering from a number of other health issues, including hematoma, which had caused the band to cancel a number of performances in recent years. The team at Headbangers India themselves saw Lemmy walk away from the stage at a festival, unable to continue his performance. Quite unlike the badass, but this was just one more hiccup in his career, which kept going strong till the very end.
Lemmy has been the founding member, vocalist, bassist and songwriter of Motörhead since 1975. The legendary band has released over 20 studio albums with sales of more than 30 million worldwide.
In an interview with The Guardian in 2014, Lemmy had said- “Apparently I am still indestructible.” He is also quoted to have said “As long as I can walk the few yards from the back to the front of the stage without a stick, or even if I do have to use a stick,” he would continue playing music.
The heavy metal world mourns your loss, Lemmy.
“Blasting The North – rain or shine!”
Wacken’s slogan hasn’t changed in a long time. In the last two years that Headbangers India have been press partners at the festival, it was pretty much shine and shine as the sun beat down upon us from dawn to dusk for 4 days in a row.
2016 was different.
A day before the festival, I found myself at the city center in Hamburg and chanced upon a shoe store with gum boots for a measly 10€. The weather didn’t look good and I thought, hey, it can’t hurt to own a pair. Best 10€ I’ve spent in recent times.
The 26th edition of the biggest metal festival in the world was a rain and sludge filled affair – the worst storm in many years, said the organizers. And in those conditions, I watched some of my favourite bands put on the best shows I’ve seen in ages.
Day 0
The unofficial start was a generally slow day. We missed most of the Wacken Metal Battle, including Indian representatives Sycorax, because we took a while to get to the festival and set up our tents, but were lucky enough to catch Vesperia – the Canadian folk metal band, fronted by the ex-bass player of 2013 Metal Battle winners, Crimson Shadows. The Canadians must have something in their water that spawns such a tremendous display of metal, because for the second time in three years, the Canadians ran away with the show and were crowned the winners of the Metal Battle once again.
The day ended with Swedish 80s glam rock/metal band Europe, who played tracks both from the new 2015 release ‘War of Kings,’ and from earlier releases such as ‘Superstitious,’ ‘Let The Good Times Rock’ etc. The band ended their gig with, you guessed it, The Final Countdown. And while it was a rather cheesy affair, it was great to hear several hundred metalheads packed into a tent, fists in the air, singing “it’s the final countdown” at the top of their voices.
Day 1
We woke up on the first day of the festival to heavy rains. After deciding that hiding in our tents was evidently not the solution, we found our way to the press lounge where we looked through the lineup for the day. The rain had turned the festival grounds to a sea of slush and muck, and we decided that trudging out to check out the Metal Battle bands was not the best idea.
A few beers later, Skyline, the ‘original’ Wacken band opened up the main stages with their renditions of popular tunes like ‘Highway Star’ and ‘Smoke On The Water,’ and quickly made way for the denim and leather of ex-Accept frontman UDO, who with the German Armed Forces Orchestra, put on a fantastic display of old school heavy metal. From the intro of the Star Wars theme music to the to the Accept classics ‘Metal Heart’ and ‘Princess Of The Dawn’ with tracks from ‘Faceless World’ and ‘Dominator’ in between, the German metal legend showed us why he is still one of the premier voices of heavy metal.
We took a break once again after UDO while In Extremo played and missed Rob Zombie to catch a bit of Dark Tranquillity’s performance, but were back soon enough for a historic moment in Wacken’s and heavy metal history – the reunion of American heavy/progressive metal act Savatage,’ who along with Trans-Siberian Orchestra, played simultaneously across the Black Stage and the True Metal Stage at the festival. Savatage started with ‘Gutter Ballet’ and ran through the classics (‘Hall of the Mountain King,’ Jesus Saves’ etc) too soon and made way for TSO who started with ‘Madness of Men’ and went on to play both TSO and Savatage material with vocalists Zak Stevens and Criss Olivia. Definitely one of the highlights of the festival – the rain and the wind played their part in recreating the magic of one of the greatest bands in history.
Picture taken from the Wacken Facebook pageDay 2
Where do I begin? The interview with Queensryche, that’s right! I got up and got out of my tent early enough for an interview with Queensryche founding member Michael Wilton. [Read the interview here]. After a comfortable chat and a short selfie-session with the band, I made my way to the main stage to watch Sepultura. With the sun peeking through the clouds, the Brazilian thrash metal band ran through an all classic setlist on the Black Stage to a sea of black tshirts. The heavy winds caused the sound to waver all through the show and I did not feel completely convinced with their performance, having seen them destroy Backstage (Munich, DE) a few days earlier with Kryptos, Death Angel and Dust Bolt. I’m also disappointed that I missed Falconer for the show. Falconer famously announced a few months back that the Wacken show would be their last live show in Europe and that they would stick to writing studio albums going forward.
Truckfighters, on the other hand, were one of the highlights of the festival. The Swedish stoner/desert rock band kicked off a storm at the Headbangers Stage with one of the most exciting live shows I’ve seen and definitely made up for the fact that I was missing Kvelertak on the main stage. However, I did come back for At The Gates, who were hands down the best band of the festival. A rich setlist of classics and music from ‘Death And The Labyrinth’ made for a great listen and I wish they could have played a longer set.
Queensryche were on the money and on the button. Having watched them three times in three years, I can say with much conviction that Todd La Torre has really moulded himself as a perfect frontman for the band. As Anarchy-X faded and as the double bass/riff for Nightrider kicked in, my heart skipped a few beats and I found myself almost in tears through their set. Yes, the band does that to me. Queensryche to me is years of memories and emotions all rolled up. Listening to ‘Arrow of Time’ from the new album Condition:Human was another highlight of the festival. For their first appearance at the festival, all I can say is that they have definitely made a lot of new fans.
I won’t say much about Opeth because I’m not a big fan of their newer ‘progressive’ material. What I will say, though, is that Opeth just are not a festival band any more. The acoustic stuff is great but not something I want to stand around listening to with a beer in my hand at a big festival. I did love the last three songs though – ‘Heir Apparent,’ ‘Grand Conjuration’ and ‘Deliverance.’
By this point, the sun had started shining and the weather report was starting to look a lot more positive. What did happen, though, is that the effect of the searing sun on the slushy mud caused the mud to get thick and sticky, which I’d argue is worse than the liquidey muck we had to deal with on the first two days.
Dream Theater’s debut Wacken performance was also nothing much to write home about. As a big time fan of the band, I felt that James Labrie just was not hitting the right notes and the overall mix was just not loud enough. I definitely need to watch DT in an indoor venue once again to gauge their live act better. Meanwhile, on the W.E.T stage, Death Angel ripped the tent apart with their furious mix of Bay Area thrash metal. Having watched them multiple times on tour in Europe, I must say that Mark Osegueda is a phenomenal frontman and the entire band is the epitome of thrash metal, both in their music and in their live performances.
The day ended slowly after that as we drowned ourselves in whiskeys and beers, listening to In Flames and Running Wild in the background. This would mean that we missed Ill Nino and Nuclear Assault as well, but at the end of the day, it was just too hard to convince ourselves to walk all the way for the bands.
Day 3
As the final day of Wacken dawned upon us, we started with packing our tents up, taking care as to not let water seep through. We were quick enough to catch the tail end of Powerwolf’s performance, which for all purposes, sounded as good as they sounded on record. Neither Amorphis nor Danko Jones interested us much and the Rock Meets Classic with the Bohemian Symphony Orchestra was a party band with Dee Snider, Michael Kiske and Joe Lynn Turner taking turns, playing popular covers from their respective bands.
Bloodbath, for all the hype surrounding the inclusion of Nick Holmes as frontman of the allstar death metal band, was a timid affair. The band sounded listless and lacklustre – the music seemed to sound like it was played without passion; like a radio running in the background at the biggest festival in the world. Cannibal Corpse though, was an altogether different affair. From ‘Scourge Of Iron’ to ‘Devoured By Vermin,’ they were all killer no filler. Absolutely skull-crushing riffs from the true masters of death metal in a performance that will go down in Wacken history as one of the best instances of “we came, we saw and we destroyed.”
There was no band in the festival I loathed more than Sabaton and I used to time to capture prime real-estate in front of the True Metal Stage, for the Metal Gods Judas Priest were next. ‘Dragonaut’ on to ‘Metal Gods’ on to ‘Devil’s Child…’ It was a setlist of hit after hit, set up perfectly to end the 26th edition of Wacken Open Air. Richie Faulkner and Scott Travis are the modern day heroes of the band; there is no doubt about that. Ian Hill and Glenn Tipton seemed quite content to stay in the shadows, providing the soundtrack to the show, and Rob Halford showed signs of ageing with his waning voice but at the end of the day, it was a Judas Priest show and no one was disappointed at the end.
I’d have loved to stay back and catch Cradle of Filth and Within Temptation but it seemed like our time was up – 4 days of rains and cold weather, sleeping bags, and alcohol abuse was more than we could handle and with the thought of a 12 hour journey ahead of me, I couldn’t wait to get on my way and get into my comfortable bed.
All in all, Wacken Open Air 2015 was a success in terms of the bands and the music, and it was clear that the organizers and support start were working around the clock to ensure that the festival stayed largely fun and habitable for everyone involved. What the 2016 edition of the festival will hold, who can say?
Wacken Open Air have announced Motorhead, Twisted Sister and Whitesnake as the final set of bands on their annual Advent-Calender reveal, rounding up a well balanced mix of classic and modern metal at the 27th edition of the biggest metal festival in the world.
Other bands include Iron Maiden (who will bring their ‘Book of Souls’ tour to the festival), Lamb of God, Symphony X, Blind Guardian, Dragonforce and many more.
Complete lineup and details about tickets at the official Wacken website.
Wacken Open Air have announced Motorhead, Twisted Sister and Whitesnake as the final set of bands on their annual Advent-Calender reveal, rounding up a well balanced mix of classic and modern metal at the 27th edition of the biggest metal festival in the world.
Other bands include Iron Maiden (who will bring their ‘Book of Souls’ tour to the festival), Lamb of God, Symphony X, Blind Guardian, Dragonforce and many more.
Complete lineup and details about tickets at the