After a thunderous version of Night Goat, Eyehategod’s Jimmy Bower takes over Dale Crover’s side of the kit. The evening ends in typically weird Melvins fashion. Then Phil Anselmo forces his way onto a kit.
Some things are just good for you – regular exercise, fruit, reading Hunter S Thompson and listening to Melvins.
If you are an adult and you are not already a Melvins fan, then you probably never will be. Melvins albums range from electronic noise albums to drone to stoner to sludge. They have an album that will annoy a fan of any of those genres. I ain’t going to recommend an album to you. I ain’t going to try to convert you.
However if you are still with us, some kind soul has just uploaded pro shot footage of Melvins’ recent set at Hellfest.
Man, why didn’t I go? This set comes off the back of their series of “Endless Residency” sets in the states, where they played entire albums from their back catalogue. The endless residencies focused on their early to mid nineties albums – from the end of their sludge era, Bullhead, through the drone of Lysol, through the grunge-y major label era of Houdini, Stoner Witch and Stag. There are classics in these albums that Melvins rarely, if ever, play.
Melvins not only brought a swag of these tracks to Hellfest, they are also brought their latest album, The Bride Screamed Murder,which they are yet to tour Europe with.
This is the highest quality video and audio of Melvins that I have ever seen (and I regularly trawl YouTube for Melvins). The clarity of the video and the unique location of the set enable the viewer to see sludge metal royalty getting their groove on side of stage – Phil Anselmo, Mike Williams, Jimmy Bower (in fact the entirety of Eyehategod). Phil Anselmo is the most animated behind King Buzzo. You can see Anselmo constantly gesticulating through the performance. He even elicits an awkward fist knock from Buzz just before Night Goat. Funny stuff.
The set is as close to a greatest hits set as you’ll ever receive from Melvins. Sure, its Melvins, so it is going to have weird passages, and the droney Lysol album is the glue of the night. Still, from midway to the end of the show, is a pretty damn rocky set for even the casual listener.
I ain’t going to attempt to convert you, but if you know what is good for you, you will do as Anselmo, Bower and Williams do… And by that I don’t mean spend a chunk of your life addicted to heroin. I mean listen to Melvins.
Society had well and truly broken down by the third night of Hellfest… The temporary urinals were overflowing, and now every fence, bush and corner smelt of p!ss. In previous evenings, partied-out festival goers passed out in quiet, non-urine-drenched corners. Tonight punters were taking drunken, fatigued kips not far from stages and moshpits. You had to dish out a friendly nudge to a comatose body every now and then, just to check that they were still breathing…
Clisson seems to experience every season, everyday. When the sun was out it was too warm to wear my tired Dillinger hoodie. But as soon as the sun hid behind a cloud, I needed to brave the stench of that hoodie which has been worn almost continuously for 7 months touring the world.
Overnight, it was cold in the rotated field, but the day break brought a hot sun on my tent. It was not easy to sleep at any stage. Also any possible snoozing wasn’t aided by the party surrounding my tent. I’m pretty sure I was encircled by partiers conversing over my tent. I guess they wanted to include me. That was nice of them… In the morning I felt like shyte – so I can’t imagine what they felt like, having a hangover on top of 3 days of no sleep…
Day 3 had almost as long a schedule as day 1. So while there were interesting bands early in the day, I was trying to avoid crashing and burning in the evening before the big boys surfaced. I was also trying to avoid another kebab breakfast – so I headed out of the festival site, to the supermarket. But being a small French town on a Sunday, everything was closed except for the local McDonalds… and I’ll take a kebab over McDonalds any day.
Weedeater
Weedeater were the first act that I caught for the day. They brought harsh-vocaled, stoner rock that effectively varied tempo. I’m a sucker for stoner rock, but Weedeater do it well. I don’t need to smoke – I’ve got these guys, out there on the dope front line, everyday, smoking it for me. They’re willing to make that sacrifice, just so that civilians, like me, can chill the feck out to the muzaque that they create… In fact it was stoner acts all day in the small Terrorizer tent. Why didn’t I stay there? There was just to much to check out around the grounds….
I wasted a lot of that potential stoner rock time waiting for Dying Fetus to show up at the Rock Hard Tent. The audience was only notified 15 minutes after the scheduled start time, that Dying Fetus had cancelled their appearance … Someone fecked up there.
That left me too much time to sit around, being hit by the stench of my own hoodie, without any musical distraction. I could no longer put off its replacement. While I waited in the cash machine queue in order to fund the long overdue wardrobe addition, Polish extreme metallers, Behemoth, were playing the main stage.
Behemoth
I have only heard Behemoth previously via their videos. Man, they have the evilest videos around…
Now that is what a good video is capable of – making you interested enough to check out the band. Behemoth opened with the track from the video above, Ov Fire and the Void. Of all the black-ish bands that played the main stage (and these guys are allegedly blackened death metal – whatever that is), Behemoth were the ones who could pull of the big stage the best.
They sound like a death metal band, but they look like a black metal band… but at the end of the day man, whatever you want to call it, it’s all riffs. Their sound was heavy and clear and it felt at home in front of a big open field. These guys embrace the theatre of black metal, wearing corpsepaint and armour, but they aren’t trying to fool anyone that they are actually evil. It’s part of the show. I think their sound and their approach worked.
Devin Townsend
Devin Townsend walks a few fine lines. Some of the synthy parts and melodic vocals, during heavy passages, do border on cheesy. But I think the most dangerous path he takes is with his outright silliness.
I saw most of Townsend’s set before I left early to obtain a decent position for Suffocation. I think Townsend came out in front. The music is cheesy in parts, but it is interesting. He is silly – but he’s a nerd, and he embraces it. That’s better than him trying to put on some tough metal guy act. In fact he makes fun of the metal cliches – and for all Hellfest’s strengths, there were a lot of metal cliches coming from the mics on stage.
Suffocation
Back under the Rock Hard Tent, the ground had seen no sun and no rain for at least three days. Instead it had been moshed on for 16 hours a day. I had seen dust rise from the torn-up surface, during the more frenzied moments at both the Rock Hard and Terrorizer Tents. Then one of metal’s most charismatic frontmen demanded that we stomp the ground until the dead rose. When Suffocation’s Frank Mullen tells you to raise the dead, you raise the dead.
I’m from a dust bowl of a city, but I’ve never lost a stage in a mosh-pit induced dust cloud. Through the haze, I could occasionally make out the band pummelling through Igniting the Crypt, and Mullen grinning at the mayhem he had created.
Suffocation alternated between slower, chunkier passages, where they sound like they are scooping your guts out, to faster, intricate, pummelling parts that ferociously stab you… If you only ever check out one death metal band in your life, make sure it is Suffocation.
Motorhead
Never before had I seen Motorhead, or the first man of rock n roll, Lemmy. It just didn’t seem right to pass up the opportunity.
Motorhead’s set sounded… a lot like Motorhead. I stayed for over half of their set, but I didn’t hear any of the classics – there was no Ace of Spades, Orgasmatron, Killed by Death or Overkill. Still as Angus Young once said about AC DC “we’ve been writing the same song for 20 years”, the same idea applies to Motorhead. Like AC DC, the Ramones and even Slayer, Motorhead do one thing – but they do that one thing well. So you don’t necessarily have to hear any one song in particular, as they are all kinda the same song.
They are Motorhead. They play rock n roll.
I’m glad to have sat in front of Lemmy and Motorhead. It warms my heart to know that Lemmy is still out there, drinking more than his share, and yelling upwards into a mic. The world is a better place for it.
Kiss
I may have to hand in my metalhead membership after choosing to Dillinger over Slayer. I always love Slayer live, but Dillinger is Dillinger, dude.
For the remainder of the evening I alternated between the old school, Swedish death metal of Bloodbath in one tent, and the desert rock of Kyuss Plays Garcia in the other. Garcia had special guest after special guest, including Nick Olivieri. In the other tent, Bloodbath were pile of fun, between making awkward Swedish jokes at the expense of Kiss, themselves and bad kebabs.
I only caught Kiss when passing between these stages and on the way out of the festival. I’ll give them this – visually a Kiss show is quite spectacular. They have an extensive stage show, with all the tricks – pryo, big screens… But I’m sure that it is not a music experience. I think the live music is not the most important thing to Kiss when they put together a show…. Just as I arrived back at my tent, Kiss hit their final note, and fireworks lit the sky…
Back to Reality
The next morning, I packed my tent and prepared to re-enter a non-metal world. I hadn’t showered for 4 days. I hadn’t shaved since entering France 10 days ago. I looked like cr@p and smelt much worse. Much, much worse.
I boarded a train to Nantes, and then a shuttle bus to the airport. Both modes of transport were filled by fellow Hellfesters. The big surprise was the plane though. At least half of the plane were wearing metal band t-shirts. Can’t say that I’ve ever experienced a metalhead plane trip. I was almost expecting to hear over the PA “this is Captain Bruce Dickinson, I’ll be your pilot for today…. Scream for me Cityjet. SCREAAAMMMM!!!!”
Any train, bus or plane that we Hellfesters boarded, reeked. I felt sorry for the non-metalhead passengers on the flight. They had paid hard-earned euro’s to be subjected to a Dutch oven of festival stench. The collective pungent odour almost made me oblivious to my own foul scent… But in London I separated from the rest of the Hellfesters. I now had no one to blame for the scent that followed me. It was a long smelly train ride of self loathing to Southampton. I can’t remember ever taking a longer shower to cleanse the layer of filth on my skin.
The filth was a small price to pay for the most metal experience of my life. And with Wacken Festival tickets in my hand, I’m counting days until I can forget about anything non-metal, and work up another solid body odour.
The Dillinger Escape Plan are the best live band in the world.
A credible blog would have to qualify that statement with words like “best live band, in my opinion”, or “best live band that I’ve seen”, or “my favourite live band”… But I ain’t making any attempt to run a credible blog.
I’ve blown my load previously over Dillinger in this post…
Dillinger played late on the final day of Hellfest in Clisson, France. I had paced myself throughout the day to make sure that energy reserves were solid for Dillinger. It was a challenge to restrain myself, as about an hour earlier, Suffocation’s frontman, Frank Mullen, had worked the crowd into a frenzy… But the fact that I had a laptop in tow, prevented me from lurking too close to any punters letting loose at Suffocation.
Wait… you took a laptop to a 3-day camping metal festival? For reasons too boring to go into, I needed that laptop for my travels in France prior to Hellfest. So unfortunately I lugged my macbook around the festival for 3 days. I treated my previous laptop with the up most respect, and it died two months out of warranty. This laptop has now seen the barrage of the front rows of Dillinger in France and Converge in the UK. If it fails, at least this time I will have deserved it.
The best way to experience the chaos of Dillinger is in amongst it. There’s nothing like pushing towards frontman, Puciato, as he hurls the mic into the crowd, for the punters to participate in the cathartic call of Sunshine the Werewolf … Or having guitarist Jeff Tuttle launch himself into you, as the band’s designated crowd provaceuter… A laptop strapped to your body is no excuse to down size your Dillinger experience.
Dillinger opened with the spastic heaviness of Panasonic Youth and Fix Your Face, before changing up into the bar-meets-90′s-alt rock choruses of Milk Lizard…. phew, is my laptop going to make it? Is the pit behind me sporadically surging my 90 odd kilos forward, going to crush the brave, but petite, French girl between me and the front barrier? Will she be left with a laptop print in the middle of her back? I expect that the French don’t take too kindly to foreigners crushing their local women to death.
I saw the Dillinger dudes just a few months ago in Brussels. And their show has even improved since then. So what’s the difference?…
For a start, latest recruit, Billy Rymer now seems fully integrated into the band. The kid is a bundle of energy on that kit.
The latest album, Options Paralysis, hadn’t been released when I caught their show in Brussels. With each release, the Dillinger set becomes an increasingly potent, diverse and interesting show. The kick @rse rock n roll of Chinese Whispers was a highlight of the new material. But we also heard Room Full of Eyes and Farewell Mona Lisa. Farewell Mona Lisa is probably the best summary of what Dillinger do. Puciato displays a near Patton-like vocal versatility. Check it out…
The old songs also appeared reinvigorated. I have caught Dillinger several times, but it was only on the previous tour that I heard them play Mouth of Ghosts. It is the quietest and most different song of the set. In Brussels that alone provided a new dimension to the show. The performance of Mouth of Ghosts had been stepped up in the months since. It was now the highlight of the night. Like in Brussels, main man, Weinman, stepped out of his guitar strap to board the keys. But unlike that previous experience, he was now replaced on guitar by a tech, which allowed Tuttle to wail on lead guitar. Liam Wilson’s fusion bass lines also seemed far more prominent tonight.
Still not sold on Dillinger live? Obviously they are extremely talented musicians, that take a set from their spastic riffing base of 43% Burnt, through the pop of Black Bubblegum, and the jazz fusion of Mouth of Ghosts. But words may fail to convey the energy of the show.
Their set was held in the smallest tent of the festival, and I assume it was packed. I was never given enough room to turn to look backwards. All I know is that there was a mass of energy, continuously surging me in every direction. With the amount of movement and Dillinger’s preference for smokey, low lit stages, it’s a miracle that I obtained any vaguely useable photos for this post.
The band fed off the energy from the fans. As usual Puciato launched at the crowd for Sunshine the Werewolf. During the frenzy of the chugg-chugg passages of 43% Burnt, he found a novel solution to the eternal problem of “what does a vocalist do during an extended instrumental passage?”. His solution involved dangling from the light rigging.
Weinman continually throws himself and his guitar around the stage. However, in the last few years he has developed an interesting “peek-a-boo” move. At some point in the show, he turns his back to the crowd, the hands go up in the air, in a praise-the-lord style motion, while he conducts a full body shake. I’m not sure what its all about, but I laugh every time I see it.
Guitarist Tuttle is the new nominated Dillinger stuntman and towards the close of the set, he ventured deep in the crowd. All this energy is circular. The crowd give it to the band, the band return it and the room reaches a fever pitch of intensity.
I left the best set of Hellfest, sweaty and happy… Also my laptop still appears to work.
When I surfaced from my tent on day 2 of the festival, not only were some festival goers still drunk from the first day, some hadn’t even stopped drinking.
A steady diet of kebabs meant that I could no longer put off a visit to the toilets. You don’t want details of what I found there. We were now hanging on to civilisation by the slenderest of threads.
Day 2 looked like it was going to be the least busy day for me. There were a lot of hair bands and lots of straight up hardcore on today’s bill. So I decided to rest up and have a quick look around the outskirts of Clisson.
Usually at this time of year I’m losing a lot of sleep to the Tour de France coverage. I am no cycling freak, but I do admire just how far past the human body’s breaking point that these athletes are prepared to push. After a fall, athletes complete day-long tortures, with broken collarbones, for weeks.
I am also somewhat entertained by the murky ethics. Rife drug use is nothing new. It stretches back decades.
Chemists are way ahead of the officials. They’re working on new endurance-enhancing chemicals before the officials discover drugs two generations old. This sort of technology has got to hold similar benefits to humanity as the technological spin-offs from the space race.
But France itself is the reason I lose hours to the Tour de France. Every stage, the competitors seem to pass castle after castle and crazy old churches. Obviously they’ve chosen some of most scenic parts of France. If you travelled randomly through France, you wouldn’t see any of these sights… Would you?
I can’t say I’ve seen a lot of France – but from what I have seen, it IS one spectacular sight after another. The train from Paris to Nantes to Clisson was full of historic sites. If there is any country that I would like to aimlessly wander in, it is France.
After a quick walk amongst the vines, historic buildings and winding river, I arrived at a supermarket overrun by metalheads. The festival must be great for the local economy, but it must be a rough site for the local oldies to have to pick up their bread and milk amongst festival goers, sporting gas masks and expletive laden, band t-shirts.
Strolling back to the festival grounds, I felt pretty d@mn French with my baguette and jambon tucked under my arm. I felt less classy with a 6 pack of toilet paper under the other arm.
I entered the grounds as Airbourne were doing their best AC DC impression… again… Still after 7 months without, it was kinda nice to hear a fellow soothing Australian twang from a stage. Not nice enough for me to sit through a whole song though.
When I returned to the main stage, one punter was dancing up a storm to the sounds of Nevermore
This old fella had been dancing non-stop since the warm up bands on the festival eve. When I become a burn out, I want to burn out like that. No matter the style of band playing, this dude danced to it. Sepultura, Twisted Sister – it was all the same to dancing man. Life must be one raging party after another.
Unearth were taking far too long to set up, so morbid curiosity found me back in front of the main stage for Slash. Guns n Roses’ album, Appetite For Destruction, is one of the 2 or 3 greatest party albums. I don’t know if I’ve ever thrown a party without spinning Appetite or Van Halen’s 1984. I was hoping for a spectacular train wreck from Slash – but it wasn’t awesome or a train wreck. It was a bit dull really.
I was served my first beer of the day by an unshaven Frenchman, with a ciggie loosely dangling from his mouth. I don’t think I had a more French moment over the length of my trip.
While nursing my beer, I caught corpsepaint in the sunlight with Dark Funeral and finally the last couple of songs of Unearth’s set. Their music wasn’t quite my thing – but it had sincerity. I’d much rather the kids jumped aboard this kind of band, instead of the Walls Of Jericho guff I sat through yesterday.
I gave Candlemass a few songs, before deciding to head to the Terrorizer Tent for Discharge. The old geezers in Discharge covered the front rows with snotty punk. I’m sure it was better back in the day, but they were still nice and offensive. They enjoyed reminding the locals of the failures of the French in the World Cup.
Discharge wrapped up their set just before the end of Twisted Sister’s set. I’m sure Dee and the Sisters played We’re Not Gonna Take It – but they didn’t close with it. And no matter how much fun I have singing that track to the Cooper’s Alehouse jukebox after a bellyful, I wasn’t going to sit through an hour of Twisted Sister waiting for it.
Immortal/Agnostic Front
15,000 people for a black metal band on the main stage – is that a sign of the apocalypse? For all Immortal’s talk of holocausts, there was a lot of Kiss to their performance – there was makeup, pyro and fire breathing. Surprisingly to me their brand of black metal did translate well on a big stage. It wasn’t a muddle of blast beats. Their riffs were clearly defined… But back to the side tents for more old school hardcore…
Agnostic Front’s drummer was hospitalised earlier in the day – but they soldiered on with a shorter set and a borrowed drummer. Even with those limitations, they were still the best of the hardcore bands for the weekend… The other hardcore acts played the main stage, where Agnostic Front played the smallest tent. Does hardcore make sense on a big stage? Isn’t hardcore meant to be experienced in tight, sweaty spaces? Their shortened set had all the trademarks of NYHC – sing along choruses and harsh New York voices. I think every other East Coast hardcore band at the festival joined them onstage for a song. It was only a 25 minute set – but it was a good 25 minutes.
Alice Cooper
Alice Cooper has always been theatre… and he’s been a best of set for 2 decades. So expecting anything else is to miss the point. I mean there is an element of the pop princesses here – with Alice’s multiple costume changes… But you have to accept it for what it is worth.
The old Alice songs are solid man – School’s Out, No More Mr Nice Guy, Ballad of Dwight Fry, Billion Dollar Babies, Under My Wheels, Elected… There isn’t much filler in an Alice set. I ain’t a ballad man, but if you are going to ballad it up, if it ain’t as good as Only Woman Bleed, put that acoustic guitar back in its case buddy.
Only Women Bleed brings up another interesting point. That song describes an abusive relationship – consequently violence against women was acted out, on stage, a few times during the set. The Alice character is always punished by some cruel death at the hands of the victims or the authorities, but still… All I’m saying is that I hope that Cannibal Corpse never go theatrical with their performances. I don’t want to see F_cked with a Knife or I C_m Blood acted out.
As you would expect, Alice is killed off in ever more elaborate ways throughout the set – he’s hanged, gutted in the iron maiden and beheaded in a guillotine. I could use slightly less of the 3-4 minutes of guitar w@nkery after some of the Alice deaths – but I suppose they had to fill time somehow during the next stage set up.
All up, I’m glad for the chance to experience an Alice Cooper show.
Carcass
Jello or Carcass? Jello or Carcass?
You’ll remember Jello Biafra as the frontman of Dead Kennedys. Or maybe you remember him as a former San Fransisco candidate for mayor, whose platforms included making businessmen wear clown outfits within the city limits. Surely he would put on an entertaining set… And Carcass are pioneers of grind and melodic death metal.
I decided to do half of Carcass’ set then head over for the second half of Jello. But it never happened. Carcass was just too good to leave.
At the start of Carcass’ set I wasn’t too worried about having to leave early. A large screen sat above the band, displaying disturbing images throughout the set. Most of the time these images were dissections – not so odd for a band called Carcass. However, the first song showed image after image of… pussy, diseased pen!ses. Yep. I found it hard to even look at the stage. But then I felt stupid for not looking at the band performing, so I would look up and see another oozing, rotting pen!s.
Thankfully those visuals came to an end. And I was able to concentrate on the music.
Carcass didn’t sound like a former band that occasionally plays festivals. They sounded huge. Musicianship with intensity. The music grinds hard while Jeff Walker spews forth evil on the mic, then it slows for intricate harmonised passages between guitarists Steer and Amott. And I was going to leave this halfway through? It was clearly the best performance of the day.
They closed on the everyone’s favourite, Heartwork. If you don’t know Carcass, start here…
What was meant to be a quiet day, turned out to have a few big surprises – French castles, ever dancing burnouts, and Carcass! What will day 3 bring?
