Gig Review: Sonisphere Festival 2011, Knebworth, UK

You know the set-up by now. All scores are out of 5 and I’m gonna try and get through three days in one page so, blink and you’ll miss it. I’m at the home of rock, Knebworth, for their annual Sonisphere Festival and the gods above are furrowing their cloud-esque brows at me. The promise of The Big Four looms. First up though, Lower Than Atlantis (3.5) who give us a brutal rendition of “Beech Like A Tree” and a storming sing-a-long-a-”Deadliest Catch” but the rest of their set falls a little short. They are followed by Diamond Head (2.5) who chunter along pleasantly until they chuck out “Am I Evil”, simultaneously delighting and whetting several thousand appetites for what follows.

Kicking off the first Big Four get-together in the UK, Anthrax (3.5) rock the place with Joey Belladonna belting out hits like “Got The Time” and “I Am The Law”, before Megadeth (5.0) step up to the plate and hit it out the park with a storming set. “Symphony Of Destruction” and “Hangar 18″ are nothing short of staggering and the crowd goes nuts. Throw in “Sweating Bullets” and “Peace Sells” and you’ve got goddamn perfection, baby. Slayer (4.0) are on fine form with plenty of novel audience interaction coming from the stage in between the classics like “Hell Awaits” and, yep, “Raining Blood”. Metallica (3.5) always try to steal the show and usually end up succeeding but they lose something mid-set with a slackening of the pace. The real moment of truth arrives as all the Big Four members are invited back on stage to play Diamond Head’s classic “Helpless” with Brian Tatler leading them a merry dance as Mustaine and Hetfield hug it out.

Sylosis (3.5) kick off day two with a dose of heavy, before Richard Cheese (4.0) breaks out his crooner suit and serenades us with his lounge version of songs like “Baby Got Back” and “Enter Sandman” – a swaying honey at the front of the crowd and keyboardist Bobby Ricotta’s face-splitting grin are the real stars. Cavalera Conspiracy (4.0) release the beast and assault us with “Warlord”, before Bad Religion (2.0) and Sum 41 (1.5) send us all back to sleep – yes we’re only here for your hits, Whibley.

Into the Bohemia Tent as the rain descends for Periphery (4.5) who break out “Jetpacks Was Yes!” early to great effect. Spencer Sotelo simply stuns us with his vocal range while Misha Mansoor gets his own chant for his blurring fretwork. The Wildhearts (3.5) make a welcome appearance in a Ginger-only listed slot and Sonic Boom Six members pop by to seal the deal at the end. Then, the surprising pinnacle of the festival arrives as Gojira (5.0) turn the tent into a futuristic battlefield by firing up “Ocean Planet” and then “Backbone”. At this point the circle pits open up and the resultant crush-and-release sends our heads spinning on to some other astral plane. Un-fucking-believable! Hitting fresh air once more, reinvigorated, Black Spiders (3.0) give us their usual enjoyable schtick and we all stick our middle fingers up at them (at their request), rock out for a while and then start seeking out the fairground rides.

Day three brings bright sunshine and an awesome set of metal prospects. Over on the tiny Jagermeister Stage, The Safety Fire (2.5) are a bit disappointing as their feisty tech fails to shift anyone from stasis, including themselves. That’s not the case for Feed The Rhino (5.0), who as midday strikes, transform the Red Bull Tent into one vast circle pit. Both stanchions are consumed by it and every band member ends up in with the fans at some point – even the drummer, who actually downs tools and walks through his kit, sending toms and cymbals flying, to reach the outstretched hands of his adoring people.

The heavy shit begins with Kylesa (3.5) who throw sonic nirvana at the Bohemia crowd and get a thousand nodding heads grinning back, whilst Mastodon (4.0) do the same and get an arena-full – “Oblivion” kicks them off and “March Of The Fire Ants” reduces those watching to a sea of pumping fists. Airbourne (3.5) is all about Joel O’Keefe’s mad aerial acrobatics these days, and he doesn’t disappoint, standing proudly atop the Saturn Stage with axe raised. They do need to start stepping it up from here – AC/DC-style blow-up stage props, perhaps? As we ruminate, Motorhead (4.0) start rocking our world with “Iron Fist” and send us into raptures with “Overkill”.

Over to Fred as Limp Bizkit (4.0) let the crowd “choose” their set and end up playing just “Douchebag” off Gold Cobra. You can’t complain when they’ve got so many greatest hits to back it up. The crowd is divided for comedian/musician Bill Bailey (2.5) between those booze-soaked souls (who’d give the horns to Enya right now) and those just plain soaked from the rain. “Insect Nation”, Bill’s dance remixes and his take on the cockney knees-up go down well, but his sub-par “Leg Of Time” was never gonna get these cats moving. Still, he improves as the set goes on and, perversely, as the rain subsides. Slipknot (3.0) stick with the day’s Paul Gray worshipping (we had a two-minute silence earlier), by displaying his number on the big screen virtually throughout (with his inevitable replacement, playing off stage, being beamed to a smaller screen). Come the climax, they haul out his suit and mask to centre-stage and take turns to hug it, with kiddies in tow. I’ve never been a massive ‘Knot fan but I’m confused and caught between crying and wincing. Many aren’t confused and openly burst into tears. The music? Oh, they tear up “Psychosocial” and “People = Shit”, so… it’s okay. Thankfully, Orange Goblin (3.5) send us home with a smile on all our faces, so that is a bonus.

Also online (with more photos) @ The New Review = http://thenewreview.net/show-reviews/sonisphere-festival-knebworth-uk

Gig review of Sonisphere Festival 2010 = http://johnskibeat.blogspot.com/2010/08/festival-review-sonisphere-2010.html

Interview: Malefice

Malefice, the UK kings of groove-swaddled melodic metal, are generally to be found close to the meat… their first love… heavy music. Any fan of metal will have seen them loitering at the fringes of gigs or wandering the festival highways and byways. They’re learning from the best and, if their incredible live performances are anything to go by, they have been paying close attention. John Skibeat spotted them happily rooting around the backstage area of Sonisphere and grabbed guitarist Alex Vuskans for a chat.

How’s your day going so far?
Not well. I’m hanging out of my arse. I’m trying to drink to play well but it’s having the wrong effect. I’m just getting pissed again! I was running around, literally, with my pants off last night...

Full interview = http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2010/08/tlobf-interview-malefice/

Gig Review: Sonisphere Festival 2010, Knebworth, UK

Last year, the inaugural Sonisphere, held at Knebworth, proved to be a massive success and dispelled fears that the UK might not be able to support another major heavy festival to run alongside the monster tha Download, at Donington Park, has become (especially when you take into account the clutch of minor heavy festivals that have cropped up recently). Offering much the same layout as last year’s event (still with opposing main stages taking it in turn to play), but now having been boosted to a three-day event, rather than the quick-stop two, it’s surprising to see so many folks milling aimlessly around. There’s no time to ponder such frailties of organisation, however, because my ears are beginning to swell to the sounds of battle metal...

Full review = http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2010/08/sonisphere-festival-2010-%E2%80%93-knebworth-3007-01082010/

Interview: 65daysofstatic @ Sonisphere 2010

Being strong advocates of playing live, 65days were never ones to turn down a hearty festival slot, but it still beggars belief that John Skibeat finds them preparing to play at a hard rock and heavy metal festival like Sonisphere! Joe Shrewsbury (vocals/guitar/keys) and Paul Wolinksi (guitar/keys) seemed almost as stunned as our interviewer.

You’ve played a wide range of festivals already but this must be the heaviest you’ve done so far.
Paul: Ever. We were quite surprised when we got the call ‘cos it is really heavy but as we’ve realised heavy metal music fans are fairly open-minded. Hopefully they’ll give us a break and we’ll get away with it!
Joe: We’re not going to pretend to be anything other than what we are.
Paul: We’re not going to get our Jacksons out and start down-tuning them.

You've played a wide range of festivals already but this must be the heaviest you've done so far.
Paul: Ever. We were quite surprised when we got the call 'cos it is really heavy but as we've realised heavy metal music fans are fairly open-minded. Hopefully they'll give us a break and we'll get away with it!
Joe: We're not going to pretend to be anything other than what we are.
Paul: We're not going to get our Jacksons out and start down-tuning them.

Are you changing the set-list at all to suit the occasion?
Joe: No. We're just gonna do what we do. We're loud too. We're certainly not going to be out-louded. We've got a lot of sub-bass, we may not be down-tuned but we certainly fill all the right frequencies.

Do you think it's an advantage or disadvantage to stand out from the other bands?
Paul: It's got its disadvantages on occasion but it's usually an advantage. We wouldn't want to sound like any other band. In the past we were probably quite stubborn about not sounding like anything else whatsoever. These days we've got a new appreciation of genre music which is a totally different discipline, but it's not for us. I think we'd get too restless.
Joe: We've got four heads. We do write together a lot so we have to find a middle ground between all that.

You seem to tour almost endlessly, cramming in hundreds of shows a year. Where does your desire to play live come from?
Joe: Well, firstly touring is our bread and butter and we're very lucky to love it. Long story short, we exist on a shoestring really so it makes sense for us to be on the road as much as possible. Also, until the last album, we always felt we represented ourselves best live. And it's a really great thing to do.
Paul: When you're locked away playing music it's really hard to know how useful you're being. It's quite a selfish thing being in a band and we want to know we're doing something that has an effect on other people. On the road, you get to experience that every single day. It's quite addictive really.
Joe: It's not like anything else. If you like it, you want more... like skag!

[Laughs all round]

The new album, 'We Were Exploding Anyways', is a whole new ball game to your previous material. Even your PR was claiming that you were "a band reborn". Where did the inspiration for it come from?
Joe: Oh, so many things.
Paul: It was a strange couple of years after our third album.
Joe: We're not a band that takes a concept into a studio. We're very hands-on. Our whole lives are the band. We've been doing it coming up to ten years so that really dictates everything we do. It would be hard to pinpoint a single inspiration. But we certainly felt that with 'The Destruction Of Small Ideas' we'd really side-stepped and explored a way of making music that was very satisfying in a studio sense but not in a live arena. The only thing we agreed on when we came back into the studio to write 'Exploding' was that we wanted to be the band that we were when we started who made people feel something visceral.
Paul: We wanted a record that could be recreated live from start to finish.
Joe: Except for Robert. He plays the only instrument on the album who doesn't turn up. [Joe and Paul exchange knowing smiles]

So, are there little bits of ideas taken from the dance music that you grew up on?
Paul: I kind of grew up listening to dance music instead of guitar music at first. Even when “65” started we didn't have a live drummer. It was all electronic beats and less weird time signatures. So it wasn't wholly new to us but, like I was saying before about genre music, listening to house music before and as we wrote this record revealed to me that you can use obvious rules in your favour. It's not cheating or being lazy, it's things that are effective. It's a totally different skill being inventive and being exciting within a genre. So we definitely pulled a lot from Daft Punk and Underworld and amateur producers.
Joe: To write something behind a 4-4 kick, and very little else, is actually a lot harder than to write melodies behind 5-4 time signatures which is what we've done in the past. So that was almost a learning curve for us. It was actually more about taking things out. 'Tiger Girl' is a really good example, because it came at the end of 18 months of writing when we'd already thrown out maybe 40 songs that we thought were old “65”. So we thought 4-4 kick and a melody and let's do what we want. So that was a really enjoyable song to write. That song is kind of an indulgence really.

How would you describe the album to someone who hadn't heard it yet?
Joe: Everything all at once... with no singing! [Laughs]
Paul: Hopefully not inaccessible. It's noisy but not without melody.
Joe: Mid-level band finding its place in the harsh face of stardom. [Laughs]

Robert Smith does guest vocals on 'Come To Me'. Did you write it specifically with him in mind?
Paul: Not at all. It came really late in the day. We were working on trying vocals in different songs but it didn't work. We'd tried recording it and abandoned it. It was finished and arranged but we just needed something to lift it. We talked about trying vocals on this and we were thinking about which vocalists we knew. We know Robert Smith.

From your tour with The Cure?
Paul: Yeah. So we thought, send him an email, what's the worst that can happen. And he said “yes”. He didn't come to the studio 'cos we were busy, so we sent him some tracks and he recorded them in his studio. He sent them back a few days later and said we could do what we want with them - which is cool in itself, because he's very precious about everything he's involved in. So to get permission to cut him up and cover it in distortion was... well... he liked it!
Joe: We didn't want to do it just to have his name on the record. We wanted it to fit; to sound right.

Have you any plans where to take your music in the future?
Joe: We never have a plan. I don't think people believe us when we say that. Schedule-wise, we know… but we never know what we're going to write. And this time, we really mean it.

So the next album could be heavy metal after all!?
Joe: Yeah, we could write a metal album! Could be anything. I think we're still enamoured with the idea of how to write a good pop song without it compromising the integrity of your music. I don't know if there is a way.

Also online @ TLOBF = http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2010/08/tlobf-interview-65daysofstatic