Audiovisual Ohlsen Overkill: ROADBURN FESTIVAL 2024 • THE SPARK: Wednesday, April 17th

2024-04-24

ROADBURN FESTIVAL 2024 • THE SPARK: Wednesday, April 17th

- Laser Jaguar Sex Vampire Rebellion! -

feat. FINAL GASP, SONJA and RIOT CITY

You get up early in Northern Germany, put an USB stick with new-ish music in your car, listen to one album each of Aksel Røed's Other Aspects, Alessandro Parisi, Alice Coltrane, Asagraum, Atonia - and uuuuüüaaaäärrgghh with Autopsy you're suddenly already in the Netherlands.

Still a third of the way to go, refuel before passing Tilburg, learn too late that fuel is much cheaper on the other side of the border, enjoy the ugly houses of rural Belgium, return to the Netherlands on a slippery muddy sand track through a national preservation, arrive at your destination and begin your new life in a former monastery.
Well, at least during the coming five nights and mornings, since the most important part of the day is of course reserved for the state of musical and spiritual exception which is the Roadburn Festival, starting with a free entry warm-up show on the Next Stage in the smaller room of the 013 venue.

CLASHBURN:

What? Clashes already on Wednesday? There's just one stage with three bands. However, it's worth mentioning that Bell Witch, whose festival shows have all been legendary, played a show not too far from Tilburg in Eindhoven, which surely was a tempting alternatice for many fans. If for some reason I had missed their transcendent performance of last year I surely would have considered going there.

But as it was I was very happy to put on my imaginary spandex pants and Metalkutte to start my Roadburn experience with the surely not too typical package awaiting us at "The Spark":

Aaaaaaaaaahhh! Metal gymnastics with Jordan Jacobs, excercise one: Step onto the monitor speaker with one foot, bend your knee as well, spin sideways and... screeeeaaaaaam!!!

Manowar and Van Halen shirts could be seen on stage, and if they had brought copies with them, we could also have seen the cover artwork of their latest album "Electric Elite", which shows a cyborg jaguar shooting a laser beam from its eye, at the merch table. Yes, all signs were on fist-raising fucking Heavy Metal!

And boy, especially with that ridiculously sharp and high vocal delivery of their frontman Riot City immediately set the room on fire. Their show was an amazing tribute to Iron Maiden here, Ronnie James Dio there, but most of all and most over the top "Painkiller" style Judas Priest.
If you want your Metal to be pure and true, these Canadian electri-cats know how to give it to you in the most smashing way.

I already felt strongly reminded of that Speed Metal package with Bütcher and Speed Queen in 2018, when the warm-up was still in the Cul de Sac. Banger!

The only downside of starting the night with Riot City was that any singer would have had a hard time leaving an impression after them. It didn't help either that Melissa Moore's voice needed a while to warm up and felt a bit off in the beginning.
However the singer / guitarist of Sonja eventually got there, so that not only their own brand of NWoBHM with a touch of Goth Rock worked excellently, but also the two cover versions in their set succesfully transferred Danzig's "Devil's Plaything" and Iron Maiden's "Deja-Vu" into their lumbar regional aesthetic.

All in all a great catchy Hard Rock show which knew exactly what elements of the genre to cherry-pick.

Keeping the night pretty consistent - at least for Roadburn standards -, but with enough variety not to bore anyone the third band also blended raw Metal with (a sizably bigger) Goth influence and also added some Hardcore and various other elements. Ultimately this led to a sound which could in one moment could sound like a Black Metal version of Danzig, in others like Killing Joke or sometimes even like D.R.I. with eyeliner. So yeah, this was another cool banger, which only missed the audience wearing sunglasses at night.

Even though Riot City still remained my personal winner, this whole package was a great Spark to lit the festival wildfire, which would of course burn through much wider multidtude of genres within and far beyond the boundaries of Metal...