8:41PM – Thursday – Hotel Mercure, Tilburg

A little bit ago, I watched Wovenhand lay waste to both the crowd and every other band I’ve seen today. Seriously. Heaviest Roadburn set so far was Wovenhand. David Eugene Edwards put more passion into the song “Your Russia” than I’ve put into anything in my entire life. I was embarrassed to be alive watching it.

He did this kind of combination Native American war whoop and toughguy posturing thing, and at several intervals told the audience – the main room of 013 – to “bring it.” Honestly, I think most people were afraid to. The folk dude in the skinnyjeans kicked everyone’s ass. Go figure.

Pentagram is on stage as I type this. It was excellent to see Victor Griffin on stage with Bobby Liebling playing those songs again, and the crown was eating it up, but I wanted to get out for a bit, to take a break, to unload pictures from the camera, and because I knew that I didn’t want to handle the task of completely writing up the day when the show was done tonight. Roadburn is like a really good museum: there’s just no way you’re going to see everything the day has to offer, and I knew if I tried to capture it all in one post, I’d either be up until five in the morning (less than preferable option number one) or suck at it (less than preferable option number two). Like Amorphis says, there’s too much to see.

I have my handy pocket schedule, and according to that, the day kicked off with Alcest in the main room, and though I vaguely recall breathy French post-black metal, it seems so long ago now I can hardly stand it. Niege’s vocals were flat. There, I said it. Other than that, the band sounded really good. It was an odd sequence of first bands – Alcest in the main room, Quest for Fire in the Bat Cave, and Year of No Light in the Green Room. Both the Green Room and the Bat Cave were packed, the latter so much so that I couldn’t even get in to see Quest for Fire, which I’d been very much looking forward to.  I stood on a bench outside the door and took a couple pictures, but basically had to keep moving. There wasn’t any room to stand.

Whether or not it was the right decision, I don’t know, but I sacrificed seeing Zoroaster in order to catch Acid King and retro-spookies Ghost, and I have no problem admitting that. Acid King were ultra-heavy, as you’d have to expect, and Ghost not only pulled off every move they make on their Opus Eponymous debut, but they did it while bringing to life a killer stage show. Not easily done. If it was, more people would do it.

I was in and out of the photo pit most of the afternoon. I took shots of everything I saw, and I did some shopping over at the merch area. There’s still Godflesh, The Atomic Bitchwax and Count Raven to go tonight, and since my eyes are starting to close as I type this – I slept for an hour on the plane here and that was it – that was also a day ago – I don’t know when I’ll get to posting again, either tonight or tomorrow. I also did the “fall asleep sitting up” thing upstairs waiting for Wovenhand to go on, and I’m dreaming every time I close my eyes, so I’m gonna wrap it up for now and head back over to the 013, see if I can get some caffeine in me. It’s the responsible decision.

More pics after the jump. Click to enlarge any of the images here.

Alcest

Year of No Light

Quest for Fire

Acid King

Ghost

Wovenhand

Pentagram

Tags: Roadburn 2011 Adventure, The Netherlands, Tilburg

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 14th, 2011 at 6:35 pm and is filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.