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Brutal Assault 2011 (Thursday) - Day 1 @ Jaromer, Czech Republic |
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Brutal Assault Festival
Day 1 - Thursday
11.08.2011
@
Jaromer
Czech Republic
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Brutal Assault is one of the biggest extreme metal festivals in Czech Republic with approx. 17 000 visitors yearly. The festival area is situated directly inside of the old military fortress in a small town of Jaromer, which is 130 km away from Prague. The two big stages are placed next to each other so you only need to make a few steps to see the next show. The bands do theirs soundcheck while the previous one is still playing and it turns the Brutal Assault to a non-stop metal marathon.
Expecting anything from the UNEXPECT you’ve been still blown away by their extreme avant-garde. And even being acquainted with their studio records you could hardly follow the show. The beautiful Leïlindel gave her best but you couldn’t see her face expressions from the distance and be nothing extraordinary happened on stage, no freaky costumes, no explosions or something that could catch your attention.
This years billing promised lots of brutal mood and style changes every day. And so it happened. When the Dutch ASPHYX came, all the sissies left the festival area in terror. The music made by the real men made the hearts of the old-school metalheads beat faster. In spite of some problems with the bass ASPHYX gave the fans a very intensive show with the songs like "Death the Brutal Way" and some classics from the legendary ‘The Rack’ album. Van Drunen, the singing metal-icon, seemed to be very touched by the warm acceptance and apologized many times for cancelling the signing session because of the missed flight.
The masses fell into some kind of euphoria after this murderous performance so that even such dinosaurs as KREATOR had to give more than their best. Starting with the ‘Hordes of Chaos’ followed by ‘Pleasure to kill’, ‘Enemy of God’ and ‘Violent Revolution’ they kept on spreading the feeling of good old times but still didn’t reach the level of previous band.
The SUICIDAL TENDENCIES gathered a rather a funny audience - punks and old-school metalheads enjoyed the groovy crossover together. The amazing self-contained rhythm section with Eric Moore on drums and Steve Brunner on bass and their crazy funky improvisations were one of the festival highlights. During the last song the singer invited the fans to join him on the stage and the fans did so and soon there was no spare place left.
After the breathtaking MOTÖRHEAD show (oh, Lemmy!) the evening came to the highest point of excitement with the MORBID ANGEL. With lots of new songs on the
set list they rocked the Jaromer fortress to dust.
The SEPTICFLESH was the biggest disappointment of the whole festival. As good as their albums are, as bad was their performance. The guys turned out to be another great studio band, which is just not meant for the live shows. Lots of bands use playbacks during the concerts (which is actually okay – everybody understands that you cannot bring the orchestra on stage everywhere you go) but SEPTICFLESH managed to spoil even that. The Vocalist Spiros Antoniou kept on screaming ‘show me your devil horns!’ and asking if the audience was ready every minute. Oh hell, it was ready and willing to hear that great epic mysterious music known from their brilliant albums. Unfortunately, it got ridiculous at some point and many people simply left the festival area. And it was about time to do so, in spite of a great desire to see EXHUMED; TYR and TSJUDER later that night, because the next party was about to begin at 10 a.m.
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Reviewed by Kate Maus
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Festival Reviews