Eurosonic Festival 2010
January 14&15, Groningen, The Netherlands

This is the first year that metal-exposure went to the Eurosonic Festival in Groningen.
Quite an extraordinary choice, since this is not a metal festival, but a general music festival.
But since there were some interesting (metal) bands playing at the festival, I went all the way to the far far north to check them out. The theme of Eurosonic this year was Norway, which means that they were a LOT of bands from Norway on the festival this year. Since I love Norway and especially their Black Metal, I had a good reason to check out some new bands.
Arriving a bit late in the evening on Thursday and getting lost ofcourse, I had to hurry up to get my wristband and be on time at the Grand Theatre for the first band that I simply just had to see… Wardruna.
It’s really hard to stay objective on this band since they’re one of the best bands I know. Even though the band was formed by former member of Gorgoroth Kvitrafn, and Gaahl singing in the band too, this band doesn’t sound a bit like metal. Wardruna makes atmospheric folk/pagan music about the old Runes, and with that, about the old culture of Norway. When I heard the cd for the first time, I was already amazed. But seeing them perform the songs live was even a bigger experience to me. The show was awesome, especially because of the atmosphere that was around this band. It was like being in another world for a while, almost magical. People were standing with their eyes closed, enjoying the music as intense as possible. The musicians themselves played really good. All the extraordinary instruments were played very well, and it was quite a happening to see. The singing was very powerful thanks too the strong voices of the singers. The voice of the female singer is one of the best live voices I have ever heard. If I had to name one thing that wasn’t good about this show it will be that just sometimes, all the voices together didn’t sound that harmonious. But that might be the lack of live experience of this band in combination with the very dry air in the venue. I heard a lot of enthusiastic voices after the gig, and it seemed that I wasn’t the only one that was very impressed by this band.

After Wardruna I left the Grand Theatre again and went on to the Machinefabriek.
Unfortunately my second favourite band that was announced for this festival, Keep of Kalessin, cancelled their show on Eurosonic (I guess they’re too busy with winning the Norwegian songfestival ). Their substitute was Norwegian band Kvelertak. The booklet said that this was a punk-rock band, and when they stepped on stage, for me it was confirmed that I had to survive 40 minutes of punk rock (not my cup of tea). This made that I was very surprised and almost shocked when the band started playing. This wasn’t punk rock.. at all… this band plays black metal!!! Happily surprised I was. I would describe the sound of this band as mostly black metal, but with other influences as well. It wasn’t only black metal they played. Some songs were more melodic, but I didn’t find this disturbing at all. I wasn’t the only one that was surprised about this band I guess. When they started playing, there weren’t much more than twenty people watching the band, but after just a couple of minutes I lost count of people getting closer to the stage, checking out this band. The band members know how share their own energy with the audience. An interesting band, that you all have to check out.

After Kvelertak I stayed at the Machinefabriek because I was very curious about the next band to play there, Shining, also coming from Norway (don’t confuse them with the Swedish depressive black metal band also named Shining). Shining is an experimental jazz band, or at least they started as one. They’ve developed themselves more and more towards a experimental metal band with still some jazz influences. Though I had never heard anything of the band before, I was looking forward to see them. All that I can say is “WOW!”. This band really rocks!! The energy and power this band has on stage is amazing. The energy they have, got the entire audience exited. It got pretty crowded after a few songs. The singer reminded me for some reason of the singer of Satyricon. Except for the saxophone he masters his looks, stage performance etc. are almost the same. He reminded the audience a couple of time of their new album ‘Blackjazz’ that got out a week after this show (25th of January). They played a couple of songs from this new album,(which by the way is an awesome album, since I just feel obligated to check it out after this great gig). There was a lot of interaction between the band and the audience which made it nice for the band to play and for the people to watch. This band is by far one of the best bands I discovered lately.
Since I was just alone, I wasn’t able to see many bands at the festival, so Shining was already the last band on Thursday for me.

On Friday there weren’t that many metalbands, so I decided to check out just the Dutch band Noir and the Norwegian band Audrey Horne.
Noir was the first of these two bands to play. Their show was in a small pub, café Koster. The pub might be small, but it was crowded like hell! Thank God (or Satan in this situation ) that I found a higher spot to stand than all the others, so I was actually able to séé the band instead of only hearing them. It was a free show, and you didn’t need a ticket to watch this band, so that’s probably why it was so crowded. The band started of with a small sound problem, but that got fixed pretty fast. The band was very energetic, and though the stage was very small, they tried their best to move around a bit. The people seemed to like it, and I thought the show was ok. I’ve seen them before, having not a great show, and though this show wasn’t totally great either, at least it was a bit better than last time. The band even played a new song for us, and I noticed a small moshpit during the last song. Unfortunately the singer was having a bad day. His singing wasn’t that great this day. I’m not used to this, since he’s a pretty good singer. So the gig was ok, but not extraordinary.

Second and already last band that day for me, was Audrey Horne. What else could it be than a Norwegian metal band! I had to run to the next venue, Vindicat, not to be late. It was already very crowded when I arrived, but fortunately I was still allowed to enter. Well, what can I say about this band. I had big expectations, but I think they were a bit too big. The band didn’t play bad at all, actually it was pretty good. But it wasn’t what I expected it to be. The singer got really excited. The desperately wanted the audience to share his enthusiasm with him, so he even jumped off the stage into the audience to get them going!! Besides that he put a megaphone in front of his microphone to get an extraordinary sound, and also to get the people move a bit. The band gave away a nice show! Though I have to say that I missed some grunts, because those would totally fit with this kind of music, and not just only the ‘clean’ singing!

So this was already the end of Eurosonic for me. I just saw a few bands, but what an experience this was. I got to know new people, awesome bands, and from now on, I hopefully even can find my way thorough the city of Groningen.
Eurosonic is quite an extraordinary festival. Having more than 20 different venues, there’s always some band or musician playing that you like. Your personal style of music doesn’t matter that much, everybody is welcome. All of it takes place in the centre of the city, so everything is walkable. Unfortunately we couldn’t be at Noorderslag, but Eurosonic was a nice start of the weekend!

By: Ingrid

Link:
Noorderslag

1234►