UK Live

So, another festival day bites the dust, and with the sun shining pretty much all day, I can vouch for the dust!  Not that I’m complaining as I sit here with the sun rising on the final day, because it’s been raining overnight, as predicted so we’re not so much in for a day of metal as mud.

First person I spoke to today, as I tied the Trig banner to the fence between the signing tent and the busy Terrorizer magazine stand (it’s all about visibility folks), was Luke Bell, the singer from Panic Cell (check out their profile).  Panic Cell had their new album “What Doesn’t Kill Us” reviewed in today’s (Friday) copy of The Sun newspaper, no small achievement, and as I had a copy I caught Luke’s reaction to reading it for the first time.

First band I caught today was Scar Symmetry, and they sounded great. 



Bands will be properly reviewed later (with more shots going in the gallery) by me and new Trigger Bruce, a walking encyclopaedia of musical knowledge, who is staying at Festival Central (aka my house) this weekend.

I was really looking forward to seeing Wolf play, and they kicked off really well… until guitarist, Johannes “Axeman” Losback started having sound problems … and then the sound went altogether.  It’s a festival, it’s live, these things happen right?  They came back on … and the sound went again (I’m having flashbacks to another recent gig here and wondering if maybe I kicked a plug out while I was on stage this time?). 
These things DO happen, but it took an absolute age to get things sorted out.  Instead of pitching a fit, the band pitched cans of beer out to the fans who were chanting “Wolf. Wolf ,Wolf” (ok I did instigate that at least once to grab a video on my cell phone).  It’s never easy for a band to maintain momentum when they have to stop and start their set, and to keep the crowd of probably still drunk metal heads happy, but these guys did.  They talked, screamed and taunted the crowd, partially stripped, went along the barrier pouring beer down the eager throats of the fans and Johannes even gave them a drum solo.  He also said a brief hello to Trigland for my cell phone video (new kit required maybe?). 



When the technical hitches and glitches were finally sorted (or as the crew announced afterwards, all the gremlins had been exterminated) Wolf played a blinder as if nothing had happened, with band and crowd as energetic as each other.  Lacuna Coil may have been headlining, but Wolf were the stars of the day, hence the well deserved mention. 



Yep, I met up with the guys backstage and have trigged them up, so hopefully we’ll see them on here soon.

Thankfully Korpiklaani didn’t suffer the same sound issues and the crowd went mental for the Viking folk metal band. 



Continued in part 2 

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