GETAWAY 2013 – Day 2 – Gävle, Sweden

FRIDAY

Behemoth got the title for loudest playing band but clearly there were sound issues with Nergal’s guitar which did not sound good at times and the panning of the guitars was like in the early days of stereo: everything to one side. This was actually the only time during the whole festival I could say that there were issues with sound that to some extent degraded the quality of the music. They played one new song form the forthcoming album to be released next year. Behemoth was as you would expect them to be: loud, brutal and massive.

I catched Hatebreed as I was walking over to see Exodus and clearly this was one of the more popular bands during the afternoon, with a whole bunch of people jumping up and down to their songs. Not my idea of having fun, but clearly the crowd disagreed with me on that one. Frontman Jamey Jasta had firm control over the crowd as if he was ruling in a dictatorship and I was told they had a big pit later in the concert.

Knowing that there was a slim-to-none chance to get to see Gary Holt playing with Exodus my hopes for a good gig weren’t very high. Again: wrong. I was so lucky to get to see Heathen play at this year’s edition of Sweden Rock Festival and guess what? Both guitarists were playing with Exodus. Brilliant. Just brilliant. This edition of the band ought to be called Heaxodus or similar. You could instantly hear that Lee Altus was playing; his style of soloing sets him apart from everyone else.  The ever bigger-getting Rob Dukes thought he was in Stockholm until the booing from the crowd got so loud that he had to ask where he was. Not an uncommon mistake for a touring band to do. I feel sorry for Exodus’ manager who apparently had misinformed him. However, Rob Dukes was forgiven for this mistake when he had everyone shouting back to him: "You’re an A*#HOLE!!!" The man has self-irony after all.

(H)Exodus played a set where the songs were getting progressively older the further into the set they got and when tunes from The Toxic Waltz were belting out of the PA combined with Rob Dukes rotary motion of his index finger it was time… Time for a gargantuan circle pit. And even that was topped by The Wall of Death which for, say, ‘dental’ reasons they have banned at Wacken. This concert was definitely one of the highlights on Friday.

Soilwork also falls into the category of bands that you don’t have to like but still can enjoy immensely live. They have a great frontman and singer in Björn Strid who has an impressive voice being able to seamlessly switch between guttural and clear vocals. It’s been five years since I saw them and they still perform great live.

Some bands people either tend to love or ‘hate’, and System of a Down are one of these. They have not released any new material in quite a while, but it was very clear that they had not been forgotten. Not by a long shot.  It is quite usual that people sing along when a band is playing, but for a band that had a four year pause and factoring in all the other bands one can choose to listen to, it is just impressive to think about what an impact this band must have had when people knew almost every song by heart. SOAD really had a great crowd to play for, clearly showing their appreciation for the music.

 

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