Chuck Billy and the band come out on stage to a huge roar and kick off with Brotherhood of the Snake which they have started many other gigs with this year, followed by The Pale King, the first two tracks off 2016’s ‘Brotherhood of the Snake’ record. These two songs have everything you’d expect from Testament, plenty of thrashy tempo changes, face-melting guitar and, of course, endless air guitar from Chuck! The album itself is one of the band’s most successful yet released, both commercially and critically.
Next we’re treated to More than Meets the Eye and D.N.R. from albums released either side of Chuck Billy’s illness in the early 2000s. Also from The Gathering is Eyes of Wrath which I get a great view of now that I’m out of the photo pit. While Chuck Billy’s vocals are still great, Eric and Steve’s guitar and bass sound great and Gene Hoglan’s drumming is dead on target but for me it’s Alex Skolnick’s guitar that steals the show, he is note perfect with huge scales and tricky artificial harmonics. No wonder Lamb of God paid tribute to him earlier in the day!
It was a little disappointing not to see more material off Dark Roots but it would be hard to complain about seeing this concert if it was your first time seeing Testament, jam-packed as it was with great metal.
Their European Tour this time around has taken in 11 countries and 14 concerts so far but with more to come at big events like Wacken OA and Pol’And’Rock before going back to the States in September. Testament had planned an album, their twelfth studio album, for release in 2018 but it was then pushed back to 2019 and now looks to be pushed again to 2020 breaking the band’s promise that it wouldn’t be another 4 years between albums. The fans here today don’t seem to be complaining too much about that!
The rip-roaring Disciples is next and then we finish off our evening with Testament with The Formation of Damnation. A great show, by a great band.
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And so here we are, two insane days down in the small town of Viveiro in northern Spain. Welcome to Day 3 of the 14th Chapter of Northern Spain’s finest: Resurrection Fest 2019.
Fans have already had plenty of metal leading in to the Saturday of the festival, having seen Slipknot, Slayer, Arch Enemy, Gojira but there are still great acts to come today. Our third day mostly focusses on the Main Stage again with great bands like the legends of thrash metal lore Testament and American metal icons Lamb of God before departing the festival to make our flight on time! We also find time to fit in some photos of the very entertaining Vhaldemar on the Ritual Stage.
Just like with Copenhell in Denmark I was once again surprised at how few people from the UK and Ireland were at the event, I spoke with loads of people over the course of the week and overheard thousands of people as they walked past and spoke in the bars and food stands and I met literally not one person from the British Isles. This is baffling to me considering how amazing European music festivals are and how easy to get to most of them are (granted Resurrection Fest might not be as accessible to people from Ireland) as well as offering great prices and a fun vibe!
Your Power Of Metal.dk Resurrection Fest 2019 team
Words and Photos: Joseph Cullen
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I had imagined writing so many things for this show but the truth is… you had to be there. I know, cliché right? There is a gigantic shimmering Slipknot banner covering the construction of the set and lit by stage lights behind it, it’s an iconic logo and even the sight of it gets fans gathering around the stage way too early for the show.
To let fans know to get in place (as if they didn’t know already) AC/DC’s For Those About to Rock is blasted over the sound system and once it ends abruptly it is replaced by the uncomfortable sounds of (515) from ‘Iowa’. The dialing code for central Iowa including Des Moines, (515) is a perfect opener, it’s squealing, squirming sounds are designed to let you know one thing: you’re in Slipknot territory now. Just like on the record itself the song is followed by the iconic People=Shit which I saw previously in Ireland from them but there was no way Dublin’s RDS could match the vocals of this Spanish crowd crucifying the chorus on Slipknot’s fiery altar in front of them. It was breathtaking. The banner covering the stage is whisked away and the 9 are revealed beneath.
Slipknot have transcended a generational boundary and now a whole new wave of younger people get to experience Slipknot as well as their original followers. Veteran maggots are eager to welcome more to the fold.
In between (sic) and Get This, Corey speaks to the crowd about the importance of family and how so many things in our lives are designed to divide us but that music is a uniting force. We move onto new song Unsainted off their upcoming August release studio album ‘We Are Not Your Kind’ named after a line in their first single off the album, All Out Life.
Slipknot’s catalogue is so jam packed now that it allows the band to put together any ass-kicking setlist you can think of. It was a veritable anthology of many of their greatest songs spanning most of their records. Hold on to something because Disasterpiece is next up followed by Before I Forget and the band’s national (Heretic) anthem “if you’re 555 then I’m 666!”.
This is a carnival of sound, light, and action. A show, a trip to the theater. Fully controlled poetry in motion. And right now, Slipknot would put any band in the world to shame for their sheer effort both in designing the show and performing it all. From 2008’s ‘All Hope Is Gone’ we get Sulfur and Psychosocial interspersed with Custer and The Devil in I from ‘.5: The Gray Chapter’, the first record not to feature deceased bassist Paul Gray.
We are now twenty years on from that iconic first record from Slipknot, released two years after their initial demo recording, they came to the world with a heavier more impulsive brand of metal than ever seen before and that great sound continues today. They may not have the original nine members they started their journey with, in fact the newest member who’s been performing all tour with the band has yet to be revealed, but the message is the same; we are not your kind.
They come back on for their encore, a 1am rendition of Spit It Out. Just like the last time I saw them, everyone was instructed to sit down and even though I’d seen it before and taken part it was a joy to behold so many people doing it once again.
I’m pretty sure I headbanged myself unconscious because when I woke up we were on to the high pitched screeches of Surfacing. I saw Slipknot opening for Metallica more than a decade ago in Dublin, Ireland and they were amazing. At the time I was more than convinced that they were an incredible live act but this thing they’ve become is a whole new beast. A beast number 666!
Slipknot’s European tour has reached new heights. I do wish they had played Eyeless or Wait and Bleed but that’s just being greedy. In all honesty, this was probably the best metal show I have ever or will ever see. Slipknot have set the bar very, very high.
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Nine o’clock on a Friday night and there are few better places to be than at Resurrection Fest 2019. The acts so far today and those still to look forward to tonight are mouth-watering. Now, add in the fact that everyone has that Friday night feeling and you get an idea for where the crowd is at when Swedish death metal melody-masters Arch Enemy take to the main stage.
They opened with The World Is Yours from 2017’s ‘Will to Power’ album, a song designed to be a jump cable to get crowds started, and why not? It works everytime! ‘Will to Power’ is the first album with current guitarist Jeff Loomis and we’ll be sure to see plenty of material off that album today hopefully.
Just like last time I saw them in Denmark, Alissa White-Gluz’s vocals are perfect. Alissa was Angela Gussow’s replacement in 2014 after her departure from the band to become their manager and the band has gone from strength to strength under her stewardship. Next up is War Eternal from the record of the same name, a song that has loads of individual great headbanging moments.
The Race and My Apocalypse follow, mixing older material from ‘Doomsday Machine’ with their latest music, it all blends seamlessly and the crowd is completely engaged with the band throughout.
Alissa White-Gluz is an awesome front-person for a band, engaging, talented and passionate always as the guitars lead us into You Will Know My Name, taken from the first album she sang on with the band after their line-up change.
Arch Enemy have a full hour-long set to showcase their sound to the waiting Spanish crowd and they waste none of it, playing through loads of their newest material and some older classics too, they had everyone clapping along and headbanging to tracks like The Eagle Flies Alone and As the Pages Burn. A great set complete to tee us up for the mighty Slipknot next on the main stage!
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The group is together for twenty years this year and what better way to celebrate than hitting the road for a European Tour. Resurrection Fest is the last stop on a tour that’s lasted for around six weeks now, starting on June 7th at Rock im Ring in Nuremberg and ending at this show in Northern Spain.
The Grammy-nominated band are still touring off the embers of 2017’s well-received ‘The Sin and the Sentence’ which we’re going to hear plenty of tonight we hope. As a way of goading the crowd, frontman Matt Heafy lets everyone know that the previous show (in Lisbon) had the best crowd of the tour. Predictably booing ensues and Matt challenges the crowd “Well if you want to be the best you need to give us more!”
Challenge Accepted.
The performance was non-stop, no breathing room, no respite between the tracks. It was a metal blitzkrieg, shock and awe starting with the title track off 2017’s ‘The Sin and the Sentence’ and the excellent drum sound of Beyond Oblivion from the same record. They are lightspeed songs, easy to enjoy for metal fans of any creed.
Older songs Like Light to the Flies and Down from the Sky are sandwiched in with newer material like Sever the Hand off their most recent album. It’s a cracking setlist and one they’ve used most of this tour which is no bad thing because by the last show we get to listen to a perfectly polished sound!
They close out the set with Pull Harder on the Strings from ‘Ascendancy’ and In Waves from the record of the same name. This felt like a band wanting to give their everything to the last show of the tour and they really did make it a memorable one. Trivium set the bar high for Arch Enemy and Slipknot to follow them. They may not have had the theatrics or pyrotechnics but what they did have was a wall of pure rock fury.
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‘So What?’ was released in March of this year after four singles and a behind the scenes rockumentary. While the band has their own label, Sleep Brothers, they are releasing this latest album in conjunction with American metal masters Spinefarm Records. This is the label behind acts like Bullet For My Valentine, Children of Bodom, Nightwish, Rammstein, etc., which should ensure this latest record reaches as many future fans as possible.
The set kicks off with rapid fire songs You Are We, Anti-Social and Brainwashed to get the crowd moving. If you’re not familiar with While She Sleeps’ sound it might be described as uplifting punk metal. Formed in Sheffield, UK just over a decade ago and winning Best Newcomer at the Kerrang! Awards in 2012. Since then, they’ve kept the same line-up throughout and continued from strength to strength. What better way to continue showcasing their talent to the world than at Resurrection Fest 2019 where they’re playing on the exact same stage that one of their influences, Slipknot, play on later tonight!
Before we move onto Civil Isolation, singer and guitarist Mat Welsh has a special thank you; one for the crowd and another one for Bleed From Within singer Scott Kennedy who has stepped in on short notice for singer Loz Taylor who has had to depart the tour. Loz Taylor and the band announced on July 1st that he wouldn’t be completing the rest of the tour for personal reasons but the band insisted that the show must go on.
For a guy who has just learned another band’s work to perform in front of thousands of people Scott Kennedy has done amazingly well and dare I say the crowd don’t seem to mind missing out on seeing Loz all that much! Kennedy has stepped up to the plate here big time and nailed his performance which deserves an awful lot of credit. Not only were Kennedy’s vocals great but Mat Welsh was as well, screaming every part with passion.
While She Sleeps are full of energy now and whipping the crowd into a circle pit frenzy with crowd surfers raining over the barriers. Then, everything slows down a bit for Four Walls but it doesn’t stay slow for long and the tempo ramps right back up again. The band close out their set with Silence Speaks and Hurricane both from 2017’s ‘You Are We’.
]]>Our second day mostly focusses on the Main Stage again with great bands like local heroes Brothers Till We Die, England’s While She Sleeps, Resurrection Fest veterans Trivium, Arch Enemy and the hugely anticipated Slipknot.
We also find time to fit in some photos of the awesome Megara on the Ritual Stage.
A special shout out to the food staff catering the event, they were so many well-organised food suppliers feeding thousands of people all week and the bar staff throughout the event were really hard working too. The site itself was well-staffed as well with plenty of security staff and organisers present, a special mention for the communications team headed up by Estaban the organisation and coordination was great throughout, well done everyone!
Over the next week, we’ll be publishing our reviews and photos from Resurrection Fest 2019. Let’s go!
Your Power Of Metal.dk Resurrection Fest 2019 team:
Words and Photos: Joseph Cullen
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