|
The First Day
The first artist I caught in action was Mr. Uli
Jon Roth and of course all us hard rock fans should remember
he played in Scorpions in the past. His gig was mainly based
on the instrumental songs which was in my opinion an excellent way
of starting the festival more in the relaxing spirit.
After Roth’s instrumental set I faced a
difficult situation in choosing either Manny Charlton Band
(Ex-Nazareth) or Ken Hensley Band (Ex-Uriah Heap). After all I
ended up witnessing Manny’s band. His set was like a return
back to the old Nazareth days and he did a bunch of classic tunes
for instance “Hair of the Dog” and also some newer material.
Then it was time for Glenn Hughes. Glenn was
once the bassplayer/singer of the legendary hard rock combo Deep
Purple. He played many classic Purple songs like "Strormbringer"
and "Keep On Moving". As far as his own stuff is
concerned it was quite bluesy, even funk oriented. But it was nice to see him alive and in damn good shape.
The legendary vocalist of the last Accept, Udo
Dirkscheiner conquered the stage with his own U.D.O. band.
Unfortunately we had to miss most of the songs because W.A.S.P.
had the public press conference at the same time. Perfect
timing I'd say. Nothing new came up in the press conference to tell
you about, apart from Chris Holmes’ departure from the band was the hot
topic. In this case I can’t help but tell about one minor
funny thing that happened in the press happening. Some Hungarian
journalist smartly asked “What does W.A.S.P. mean - Is it
something like We Are Satan’s People?!?” Blackie reacted to
the question rapidly answering kinda sarcastically “We’re Ain’t
Sure Pal” and everybody laughed.
After the press I had to run like a manic to
the other side of the festival area to catch the rest of the set
of U.D.O. and managed to hear a couple of songs from U.D.O.’s
set. Despite being late I was lucky enough to hear encore tracks “Balls To
The Wall” and “Fast As A Shark” I was kinda pissed off at
missing the gig anyway. Although Udo Dirkschneider must be much
more than 50 years old, he still seems to be in very good
shape and rocks like hell, gotta remember he has suffered from a
few heart attacks. The band itself was very “metal” and I got
to shock you by telling all of you now that guitarist Stefan
Kauffmann (ex Accept drummer) had shaved his head bald a couple of
weeks earlier.. Arghh!
After the show I had a chance to meet Udo and
interview him for Metal-Rules.com. He appeared to be a real
gentleman in every aspect. While doing the interview with Udo I
once again missed the most of the set of the Swedish power metal heroes
HammerFall. Damn schedule!! However I saw
something. HammerFall used a lot of pyro techniques on the stage
and during one song some guy appeared on the stage swinging a huge
hammer in his hand which definitely looked quite amusing. Of
course their set included tunes from their latest album “Renegade.”
The long waited gig from my personal standpoint
was definitely W.A.S.P. without any doubts. The show kicked off with
“Helldorado” and followed by “Inside the Electric Circus”
and “Chainsaw Charlie”. To my big surprise they did the only
one tune off from their recent album “Unholy Terror” which was
eccentric indeed as the album is excellent. All in all the set was
great.
The whole band was in the fine form and of
course in good shape, racing through a selection of their greatest
songs - including surprisingly (as stated above!) the only one new
song from their current "Unholy Terror" album - which was
really strange. But instead of new songs we were treated by very
rare choices from “The Idol” and “The Great Misconceptions
Of Me” from their brilliant “Crimson Idol” album. Somewhere
in the middle of the set the concert had to be stopped, when a few
between barriers were almost broken and had to be temporarily
mended. Afterwards I heard that the same thing would have happened
during the HammerFall performance. W.A.S.P’s show included
typical classic show tricks when Blackie concluded the set by
pouring 'blood' out of a wineskin into his mouth. The absence of
the inimitable Chris Holmes was noticeable, leaving Lawless the
main character in W.A.S.P. but actually nobody was really
longing for Chris to be honest. The set-list contained at least
these following songs:
Helldorado
Inside The Electric Circus
Chainsaw Charlie
The Hellion
Wild Child
Let It Roar
The Idol
Sleeping In the Fire
L.O.V.E Machine
I Don’t Need No Doctor
The Great Misconceptions Of Me
Animal Fuck Like a Beast
Real Me
I Wanna Be Somebody
Gary Moore started to play after WASP but we
decided to pass and to be honest ignore that show cos Moore has
ignored all the great hard rock stuff and focused on doing mainly
the blues stuff .
And that was just the first day... |
