Well, it’s official: There’s a whole buttload of audio streams from Roadburn 2010 for you to check out. I thought on this Monday afternoon, posting a few more to get you through whatever it is that has you sitting in front of a computer would probably be the way to go. Hope you enjoy:

Church of Misery live on Roadburn 2010 Main Stage

Church of Misery live at Roadburn Afterburner

Altar of Plagues live at Roadburn 2010

Ancestors live at Roadburn 2010

Monarch! live at Roadburn 2010

Karma to Burn live at Roadburn 2010

Mouth of the Architect live at Roadburn 2010

Suma live at Roadburn 2010

Troubled Horse live at Roadburn 2010

Witchfynde live at Roadburn 2010

It’s unreal how many bands they packed into the Roadburn festival. It could have been three separate killer fests and no one would have complained. Being there was like being at the Metropolitan Museum in New York — you couldn’t possibly see everything on offer in one day. Though it was fun to try.

Walter and the good folks at Roadburn have made available more live audio streams, and they sent me the links to share with you. I remember Fatso Jetson‘s performance was especially killer, but I wouldn’t count out any of these bands, because I’ve yet to hear one of these streams I didn’t think was awesome. Enjoy:

Fatso Jetson live at Roadburn 2010

Sons of Otis playing Templeball live at Roadburn 2010

Ahkmed live at Roadburn 2010

Night Horse live at Roadburn 2010

I missed Eyehategod when they played their Thursday set at this year’s Roadburn festival, which is a bummer. But now, thanks to the wonders of technology, even I can pretend I was there with this live audio stream. If you missed the last two batches of streams, they are here, and here.

And if you’d like to read what Mr. Bower Power himself, Jimmy Bower, has to say about playing Roadburn, check out our interview here. Please enjoy the set and thanks once again to Walter and the Roadburn crew:

Eyehategod live at Roadburn 2010

If you missed the last batch, check them out here. Of course, I’m stoked beyond belief that after all the kindness the festival showed in allowing me to show up, drink their beer, eat their food, rock out to their bands and basically pollute their beautiful country with my terrible presence, Roadburn is letting The Obelisk host these audio streams of the 2010 festival performances, which took place April 15-18, at the 013 Popcentrum in Tilburg, The Netherlands. Awesome.

Click the links below to listen:

Sons of Otis live at Roadburn 2010

Eagle Twin live at Roadburn 2010 (Thursday performance)

Eagle Twin live at Roadburn 2010 (Friday performance, featuring Greg Anderson)

LongDistanceCalling live at Roadburn 2010

Astra live at Roadburn 2010

Jex Thoth live at Roadburn 2010

Jex Thoth live at Roadburn Afterburner 2010

Once again, special thanks to Walter and Roadburn for letting me post these links. Please dig into the complete audio stream collection here.

Today The Obelisk is proud and thrilled to have been given permission to host the next batch of audio streams from the 2010 Roadburn Festival, which took place April 15-18 in Tilburg, Netherlands at the 013 Popcentrum. Please click the links below to listen, and enjoy.

Bong live at Roadburn 2010

Death Row live at Roadburn 2010

Karma to Burn live at Roadburn 2010

Moss live at Roadburn 2010

The Lamp of Thoth live at Roadburn 2010

The Machine live at Roadburn 2010

Valborg live at Roadburn 2010

More streams and info on the Roadburn audio crew available here. Special thanks to Walter and the Roadburn festival.

Whether you actually sit for an hour and watch the following pro-shot footage of Cathedral‘s performance at Roadburn 2009 in its entirety, or maybe if you minimize the window, keep the sound on and check in periodically, it’s still a great way to get rid of an hour of your Monday. Filmed by Lee Sakura, this set includes the song “Open Mind Surgery,” which was intended for inclusion on Cathedral‘s latest album, The Guessing Game. If you’d like to know why it didn’t make the cut in the end, you can find out in my interview with Lee Dorrian.

The clip comes courtesy of Roadburn‘s blog. Enjoy:

Dutch witch rockers The Devil’s Blood issue a sprawling invitation to buy in with their first Ván Records full-length, The Time of No Time Evermore. Based out of Eindhoven and thoroughly in league with Satan, the as-many-as-six-piece play high-energy classic occult prog with sonic references to Jefferson Airplane, Heart, Coven and Black Widow, most notably showing up in the form of the powerful female vocals that front the band. They’re on a no-name basis, so all you get with The Devil’s Blood is The Devil’s Blood, but we do know that Erik Danielsson of Swedish black metallers Watain co-wrote “The Yonder Beckons” with the band, and that that dude knows the Devil personally, so at most there’s one degree of separation there.

In listening to The Time of No Time Evermore, I was surprised in comparing it to the prior Come, Reap EP that Profound Lore put out last year at how relatively metal it is. The guitars don’t shy away from carrying across an ‘80s metal vibe, as heard in songs like “Christ or Cocaine,” the stomping “Queen of My Burning Heart” and even the soloing on “The Yonder Beckons.” Think Iron Maiden, Scorpions, Vivian Campbell’s work on Dio’s The Last in Line and so on, both tonally and in terms of the riffs, The Devil’s Blood seem to have superimposed ‘70s acid prog and classic metal on top of each other in an offering to their (and, they hope, everyone’s) dark lord.

Read more »

For those who weren’t able to make it either for fiscal or volcanic reasons, the first audio streams from this year’s Roadburn are online now. If you’re still reading and haven’t yet clicked that link, here it is again. Go on, then.

The first batch features YOB, Brant Bjork, Horisont, Trinacria, Nachtmystium, Firebird, Earthless and more to choose from, so you know, life is pretty awesome. I’ve got the YOB one on now and it rules as you’d expect.

Here’s what fest-organizer Walter had to say about it and a poster of why I want to make it through the next year:

Finally, the volcanic dust has (almost) settled! For everyone no longer fighting short term memory loss and extreme fatigue caused by sleep deprivation and sensory overload, get ready to relive the highlights of Roadburn Festival 2010.

For everyone who could not make it due to the mighty Eyjafjallajokull eruption, now is your time to enjoy the festival without any hassles. And for everyone who could not magically clone ourselves to simultaneously catch all of the action in the Bat Cave, Green Room, Midi Theatre and Main Hall and felt kind of bummed about it, cheer up!

We are pleased to announce that VPRO 3voor12, which is the leading cultural media network in the Netherlands, has posted additional on-demand audio streams for your Roadburn 2010 listening pleasure.

The 2009 Tilburg haul, that is, the batch of CDs I bought while at the 2009 Roadburn festival, was unquestionably the year’s best. Nothing else even came close, and though I didn’t get nearly as many records this year, I think I may have trumped it in a quality-over-quantity kind of way. Time will tell on that one, but in the meantime, killer discs were purchased by Comus, We, Pentagram and more, and I think the dude working the table where they were selling the Roadburn/Burning World Records merch remembered me from last year’s fest. I had a little laugh.

Here’s the list, with notes where necessary:

Anathema, Alternative 4 (digipak version)
Black Shape of Nexus, Black Shape of Nexus (metal tin)
Comus, Song to Comus: The Complete Collection (signed by band)
Fu Manchu, No One Rides for Free (the reissue)
Gomer Pyle, Idiots Savants
Horisont, Tva Sidor av Horisonten (tight-pants Swedish retro rock; meh)
The Machine, Shadow of the Machine
The Machine, Solar Corona (man this band sounds like Colour Haze)
Master Musicians of Bukkake, Totem One
Master Musicians of Bukkake, Totem Two
Pentagram, Sub-Basement
Pentagram, Show ‘em How
Red Sparowes, The Fear is Excruciating, but Therein Lies the Answer
Solitude Aeturnus, Adagio (rules; catalog now complete)
Spiritual Beggars, Mantra III (2007 reissue)
Temples, Temples (On the Radar here)
Totimoshi, Untitled (a demo with three new songs)
The Desert Sessions, Volume 3 & 4 (life is good)
VA, Welcome Back to MeteorCity
We, Livin’ the Lore
White Darkness, Nothing (given to me for free because it’s on Roadburn/Burning World and I’d spent a bunch of money)
Witchfynde, Play it to Death

Some of it I bought just to own. Like Black Shape of Nexus. I got their other full-length last year and listened to it all of once, but figured I’d keep tradition alive by buying this one and probably not listening to it. Plus it was in a metal tin. And yeah, that’s my third copy of that Anathema record, but fuck it. I’m looking forward to getting to know many of these albums — Temples, Fu Manchu‘s first (I’d been holding out for the original but couldn’t find it, so finally acquiesced to the reissue), Comus — and with The Desert Sessions and those Spiritual Beggars and Solitude Aeturnus discs, I managed to find some stuff I’ve had an eye on for years. Good times all around. Mark it eight, Dude.

This is the last of my Roadburn video (I think), but I figured you’d get a kick out of it. As promised in the headline, it’s the first song of Eyehategod‘s set at the Afterburner show on April 18, preceded by some killer stage banter from vocalist Mike Williams. My favorite part is when he says, “I like The Rolling Stones. I must be a dick or something.” Classic.

2:44PM: Train en route to Brussels: I went to Schiphol this morning to see if I could find someone from British Airways, and found when I arrived that there was no one to talk to. No counters open, nobody around, no helpful fake smiles. That, like Icelandic volcanoes, wasn’t exactly my worst case scenario, but it was certainly bummer enough.

I stood on line for the hi-speed rail and got into a conversation with a middle-aged husband and wife who were trying to get to I don’t remember where, when a young man said through an overmodulating boombox loudspeaker that all the international trains were booked through Wednesday. I no longer had it in my head to get to Paris since I was told by The Patient Mrs. that British Airways doesn’t fly out of there yet, not till May 3, apparently, but I decided to head for London instead, where at least I wouldn’t have to feel like a dick for not speaking the language (purely an internal thing; no one of Dutch descent has ever given me crap for being ignorant).

A young man tapped me on the shoulder while I was chatting and asked me if I wanted to go to London. Coincidentally, in the book I’m reading now, a late-20s African freedom fighter has just made illegal passage into the UK, so the whole thing smacked on a level that Ricky – at least that’s what he said his name was – couldn’t understand. He offered me a train ticket that he couldn’t use for 50 Euros, and with literally nothing to lose beyond the money, which I’d have gladly spent even more poorly if given the chance, I took it. So here I am.

The ticket is a computer printout. He said he lived in The Netherlands but worked in London and made this trip all the time, had booked his spot well in advance, but that work had told him not to bother coming back for the time being. He even gave me a pen with his company’s name on it: S.T.W. BV Duiven. I didn’t ask what he did – nice pen, though – and I’m still not sure how his story made sense, but it was potential passage and he was only charging face value, so I took the ticket. I don’t know if it’s a real ticket or a fake one, but it’s all I’ve got and I figure if they ever come around to check it and find it’s a fake or it’s no good for whatever reason, I get off at the next stop, pay whatever fine I need to pay and, short the embarrassment, am ultimately no better or worse off than I was when I boarded: Still stuck. Fortunately I’m used to making an ass of myself, so that’s not really a problem.

So off I go, unless curtailed, to Brussels and then change trains for London. If it works, if it doesn’t work, I don’t care. Provided I don’t get pulled out of line at customs because my name doesn’t match the name on the train boarding pass, I should be fine. But yeah, that’s weighing on me a bit.

First and foremost, I don’t know how many times I heard it said over the weekend, by bands, fans, me and just about everyone else there, but thank you, Walter. The hospitality you showed in having me at the festival I can’t possibly repay, so I’ll just say thanks. What you’ve built in Roadburn could never be duplicated, could never be imitated, and although you endured less than fortunate and less than preferable circumstances this year due to forces well outside your control – in other words, “fucking Icelandic volcanoes” – you and your crew still pulled off an amazing fest and you should be proud of the achievement. I hope you get to sleep a couple days before planning starts on Roadburn 2011.

Second, I know there’s a certain amount of snobbery in heavy music, a bent to ascertain some kind of legitimacy. You see it these days in the whole idea of what’s “tr00” and so forth. Let me tell you, authenticity doesn’t exist, but Roadburn is about as close as humanly possible. If you ever wanted to experience something that was truly about the music and nothing else, book your flight now.

Actually, you might want to wait until European carriers are back online before you make that reservation. But you see what I’m saying.

In hindsight, looking back over the previous XI posts (why not stick with the Roman numerals?), I did a lot of bitching. That’s my personality, I can’t help it. I’m not a very pleasant person to be around. From the whole Goatsnake moanfest – talk about not seeing the big picture – to the running toilet, I just complain, complain, complain. Look, the basic fact is this: What I saw this weekend I was lucky to see. I’m lucky to have this cold, lucky to be stuck under this cloud of dust, lucky to have been here at all, never mind in the position of privilege what few credentials I have garnered me. I hope that came across at least half as much as all that pissing and whining.

I’ll still be updating on the whole “trapped in Europe” thing, but this is going to be the last of the Roadburn 2010 entries, so I’ll once again express my gratitude and appreciation to Walter and his crew for having me as their guest, and to the people of Roadburn for making room for my expansive American ass.

Let’s do it again next year. Please?

Cheers,
JJ Koczan
Hairy Pheasant Taskmaster

Like all the other videos I’ve shot on this trip, it’s not the best quality, but here’s Garcia Plays Kyuss doing “Thumb” live at Roadburn last night, April 17. Killer.

12:05AM: City Hotel, Tilburg, The Netherlands: You know, before the day started (and by day, I mean the show, which started at 4PM), I didn’t think it was too ambitious a plan to review all of the Afterburner special post-Roadburn event in one sitting. “Nah, I can handle it,” I said with confidence that only my first shots of caffeine since last Wednesday could have given me. “No problem.”

Well, the thing is that Afterburner, while not quite as intense to witness as Roadburn itself because it only runs on two, not four, stages at the 013, is still a great deal of show. Even in this allegedly more laid-back setting of just the Green Room and the Bat Cave, I found myself unable to see absolutely everything, leaving me once again to pick my battles. This is not a complaint. I want to make that perfectly clear. It’s like trying to choose what to see at the Met in New York. Pretty much whatever direction you head in, you’re gonna see some cool shit, but to do it all in one day can’t be done.

In other words, bear with me. This could be a while.

Jex Thoth opened in the Green Room at 4PM. For a nifty comparison, I’ll put their opening slot today in contrast with Death Row‘s yesterday in the main hall. You know those Windows 7 commercials where they take the already exceptionally good-looking people and they all start talking about how they thought of Windows 7, and then it cuts to a dream sequence of even more cartoonish exceptionally good-looking people? That’s like the jump from Death Row, who already ruled, to Jex Thoth, who were good at what they were doing, but a little silly at the same time.

It’s no real puzzle why the San Francisco five-piece got such a huge response from the crowd (which Death Row could have used some more of yesterday afternoon). Be-caped lead singer Jessica Thoth being some kind of ritualistic cult doom sex symbol certainly doesn’t hurt. Yeah guys, she’s the cute redhead who’s into Pentagram and plays with candles and incense on stage while wearing a cape and singing about serpents and flame vigils. Have fun living in the woods together after your pagan wedding, raising naked children of the forest.

Because that’s supposed to be the fantasy, right? I don’t know. I didn’t get into the set. The music was cool, I guess, but nothing really mind-boggling, and I just have a hard time taking that kind of band seriously. You know, if you were a fat bald dude hitting those same notes, playing with incense and wearing a cape, you wouldn’t be playing Roadburn. You’d be playing Dungeons & Dragons. No, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. In your mother’s basement. Where you live. Oh, and you’re 47.

I think I’ve made my point. Looks matter. Even in doom, being the proverbial hot girl is helpful.

When they were done, Orange Sunshine‘s late-’60s obsessed garage psychedelic rock was a refreshing change of pace and a nod to the stoner rock purist set, who surely appreciated the lack of posturing. I know I did. I had to chuckle though at how much one of their riffs reminded me of Blue Cheer‘s version of “The Hunter,” but I’d soon learn just how honestly they come by it, since after an extended heavy jam on The Rolling Stones‘ “Gimme Shelter,” drummer/vocalist/Euro-Chong lookalike Guy Tavares shouted out their set to the memory of Dickie Peterson, then they closed with “Summertime Blues” and “Rock Me Baby,” in that order. There’s a word for that, and that word is “charm.”

And I’ll pause here for a quick side note. Nachtmystium played this fest. Where else in the world are you going to have the opportunity to see Nachtmystium and Orange Sunshine in the same building? These kinds of things only exist at Roadburn.

Church of Misery continued their assault on common decency with their set, playing mostly the same stuff as Friday when they were on the main stage, but killing nonetheless for the smaller capacity venue that is the Green Room. Hell, I’m relatively certain Walter could have had Church of Misery play the same songs every four days in a different room and people would have migrated from one stage to the other to see them again. It’s not a chance that comes up every day, and watching guitarist Tom Sutton do his stoner rock softshoe while vocalist Yoshiakki Negishi pretends to shoot people in the crowd — well shucks, my eyes get all misty just thinking about it.

Having seen them three times now over the last two years (all Roadburn performances), I can say they haven’t yet put out a studio record that captures just how heavy they actually are in a live setting. Houses of the Unholy came close, but the sheer volume they wield might be too powerful for modern recording technology. In this way, they are truly ahead of their time. As for their riffs, I think we all know they fall under the heading, “born too late,” which is just fine.

It was almost cruel to have to witness them do it, but Sweden‘s Graveyard followed in a sonic twist that came on like a big break between Church of Misery and Eyehategod. No complaints, it’s just not really my thing at this point. But hey, if you like skinny Swedish dudes with expensive equipment, vintage t-shirts and tight flannels, ’70s mustaches and hair looking like something off an Allman Brothers album cover, playing the rock and roll their dads probably listened to, then have I got a band for you.

To be fair, they were incredibly tight across the board, and the Green Room was so crowded that for most of the set, the only vantage point I had was through the doorway. It’s like there was a sign outside saying, “Must Be this Cool to Enter” with a line drawn under some guy with bellbottoms’ ‘stache as a measure. I’m nowhere near that cool, so I got some falafel and waited for Eyehategod. Things could have been worse.

I never fail to be surprised that I’m not the world’s biggest Eyehategod fan. According to my records, I own all of theirs (which isn’t saying much since they haven’t put out a full-length in a decade), but if you were to ask me to name six Eyehategod songs, I don’t think I could do it. Well, maybe six, but probably not 10. And I’ve dug it every time I’ve seen them, tonight included. They were fucking great, but in terms of what I listen to on a given afternoon, I’ll rarely reach for Eyehategod while sitting on the porch and sipping a beer.

A fun note; when bassist Gary Mader broke a string, vocalist Mike Williams, guitarist Brian Patton and drummer Joe LaCaze did a quick couple songs under the moniker of their “side-project,” Fuckmouth, and I managed to catch it on video, which you can see below.

Williams was good and fucked up tonight. When he came out on stage, I said to myself, “This looks like a guy who’s going to fall over at some point during his set,” and sure enough — toward the end, to his credit — he went backwards into LaCaze‘s drums. Where was Jimmy Bower in all this? Over up front on stage right, mostly in the dark, playing to the crowd. Kicking ass like he will.

Eyehategod was a good note to end Roadburn on. A slow, rung out, feedbacked note that seemed to last even after the amps were shut off. But being the greedy son of a bitch I am, I wanted to see what Dutch locals The Machine were doing in the Bat Cave, so I meandered in the middle of Eyehategod‘s set into the other room, only to find the young trio jamming out heavy Colour Haze style with vocalist/guitarist David Eering throwing in some “Stone Free” and not sounding like a complete jackass while doing it, which is nothing short of an astonishing feat for so junior and so caucasian a player.

Jamming is apparently their thing, but they do it well, and have two records out already with a third written and are looking for a label. I can’t imagine one of the sundry European heavy rock labels wouldn’t be interested given the opportunity. I know I would.

But alas, I only caught their last two songs — both jams — and they were done, so I went back to the Green Room to close out the night and the fest with Eyehategod. They slammed their way through an astonishing amount of material, and I’m pretty sure I heard Williams at one point start singing Pantera‘s “I’m Broken,” though it could have just been a coincidence of cadence. In any case, good times, and when it was done, I split out on the quick (no afterparties for my unfriendly ass) and came back here to write about it, stopping only for some pommes frites along the way.

This review is long enough, so I’ll save any grand reflections on Roadburn for another time under the consideration that even the most interested of Obelisk attendees has failed to make it this far (I don’t take it personally). My plan for tomorrow is to get up, be out of here by 11AM checkout and head — where else? — to Schiphol airport in Amsterdam to see when and if I can reschedule my flight. The Patient Mrs. says it might not be until next weekend, but I need to go in-person anyway since British Airways‘ sundry hotlines and website have proven useless in this volcanic clusterfuck. I expect to spend a good deal of time waiting on line only to find out nothing, but these are the things we have to do, aren’t they? That’s a small price to pay for the weekend I just had.

And I’ll tell you something else: If I am stuck in Europe for another week, you bet your ass I’m getting my francophile self to Paris tout de suite. I’m pretty sure I’d be the first displaced American ever to do that. Ever. In the history of the world. Ever.

Until then…

1:30PM: City Hotel, Tilburg, The Netherlands: I have a little time before I’m due over at the 013 for the start of the Afterburner show, and yes, astute attendees, you are correct to notice I’ve switched hotels. Nothing against the accommodations across the street at the Mercure, which are ample, but they just didn’t have a room for the night, and as British Airways has announced the cancellation of all flights out of London through Monday, I figured I’m better off in Tilburg at least for the evening than anywhere else. This way I can stay for the Afterburner and not have to worry about leaving early to catch a train to Amsterdam to make my flight. Can’t catch it if it doesn’t exist.

Checkout at the Mercure was at noon and the alarm on my watch went off at 10AM. I checked in on the airline only to find out both my flights were shitcanned (you’ll recall I already knew the first was), and essentially that I was stuck for the time being. Worse places to be, certainly.

The real kicker is that my phone doesn’t work. I can’t make outgoing calls. I can text, check my voicemail and call T-Mobile, who graciously told me they don’t know what the problem is and tough shit. “Good deal,” I said to the kindly, apologetic woman on the phone.

I texted back and forth with The Patient Mrs., interrupting her night’s sleep back in the valley, and once I found out I couldn’t stay at the Mercure again, I naturally assumed the worst and that I wouldn’t be able to find a hotel in town at all and would end up on a train going from city to city trying to find a place to sleep for the night. My approach to this eventuality was to do what any decent, blog-fearing citizen of the United States would do: Let someone else handle it while I get lunch.

The Patient Mrs. booked this room in the nick of time, since, as the girl downstairs at the counter confirmed for me, it was the last empty one in the hotel. And as I’m on the top floor all the way in the corner, I believe it. Out my window is the Heuvelkerk church, whose mighty bells ring out at various parts of the day to mark the time. One can only hope they and I have in common that we are not early risers on Mondays.