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Roadburn 2011 Adventure Pt. 7: Was it Illusion?

7:26PM – Saturday – Hotel Mercure, Tilburg

Caught the beginning of Evoken doing my beloved Garden State proud with their monstrously-paced death-doom, then decided to come back to the hotel for some respite, to empty out the camera, have another Palm Dobbel and regain consciousness. I don’t think I’ll have time to organize photos and put it online now, but I’ll get it written down, anyway, and post it later.

Since this series seems to have become as much a chronicle of my fucked up sleeping patterns as of Roadburn 2011, I’ll say I was barely conscious at 3:45PM this afternoon when Candlemass took the stage for the 25th anniversary show they were supposed to put on last year. I’d woken up only 55 minutes earlier, jumped in the shower and ran out of the hotel (well, okay, I walked quickly) to get to the main stage in time.

Well worth the effort. They started out with Robert Lowe on vocals and did a couple songs before bringing out Johan Lundquist to do the 1986 classic Epicus Doomicus Metallicus in its entirety. I’ve never seen Lundquist before, either on stage or on DVD – he might be on that 20th anniversary thing they put out a couple years ago, I can’t remember off the top of my head – but he fucking killed it. He wasn’t about to hit the super-high notes in “Solitude,” but he sounded great anyway, and had a stage presence that really helped pull off the drama in the material. Leif Edling looked proud, and rightly so.

They pulled in a decent bunch of people to start, but it was a long set at about two hours (they ended early of their appointed 135 minutes) and the crowd thinned out some by the end. Nonetheless, those who stuck around definitely appreciated what they were seeing, and I was among them, having stayed for the whole set to see Robert Lowe come back out for more songs, bring out Lundquist again and the two of them front a cover of Blue Öyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper” and Candlemass’ own “Darkness in Paradise” from Ancient Dreams. Lundquist and Lowe were both reading from a lyric cheat sheet, so there was a lot of dramatic pausing to look down – Ian Gillen tells a fantastic story about the tactic in an interview about his time touring with Black Sabbath for the Born Again album – but as they informed from the stage, Candlemass had never played the song live before, and it was something special just for Roadburn. The whole set pretty much felt that way.

Staying for their whole performance meant missing Black Math Horseman for the second year in a row, which is a bummer, as I was a fan of their Scott Reeder-produced album, Wyllt, but I had appropriate enough accompaniment for my sorrows in Candlemass’ classic doom. When they were finished, I shuffled over to the Green Room – or, once again, the hallway outside of it – to see a couple minutes of White Hills’ blown-out psych. They sounded pretty good, but I have the feeling a show of theirs in New York would be intolerable for the assholes it would draw. At Roadburn, everyone’s kind of on the same team. Team Weirdo.

Once finished with that, I grabbed some food in the catering tent. It’s easy to forget you’re hungry when you’re busy, and I’d gone downstairs for the hotel breakfast at about 8AM (obviously before falling back to sleep until almost three this afternoon), so I wasn’t starving, but I figured a couple beers were in my future – and I figured right, as it turns out – so eating was the right idea. I made it quick, though, to get back to the main stage in time to catch the start of Weedeater, which I was glad to see. Guitarist Dave “Shep” Shepherd showed no signs of lingering effects from his recently broken hand in his playing, and they as usual were in top form. Drunken shenanigans abounded and good times were had. I’d already seen them this touring cycle, but they still ruled.

Thinking rightly that Evoken would be crowded in the Green Room, I headed over there early to get a decent spot and watch them get going. The drummer from Winter, who it should be noted was in his skivvies by the end of their set last night, stood fully-clothed by the side of the stage to watch them as they set up, perhaps in a showing of underappreciated-East-Coast-death-doom solidarity. Maybe he was just lost trying to find the can. I’d like to think it’s the former.

Soon it’s back over to the Green Room for Ramesses (very much looking forward to their set), then Stone Axe in the Bat Cave if I can get in there and Shrinebuilder in the main stage if there’s time, Ufomammut playing all of Eve in the Midi Theatre, and Swans back at the 013. Going to be a busy night, a lot of moving around, but I’m feeling good despite the allergies, and this being the last night of Roadburn proper, I know it’ll be worth it when I’m reliving this in my head for the rest of this year. Note: This morning, I reserved a hotel room here for 2012. No regrets.

More pics after the jump. You know the drill by now.

Candlemass

Weedeater

Evoken

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One Response to “Roadburn 2011 Adventure Pt. 7: Was it Illusion?”

  1. Stavros Nikos says:

    There’s a fan-shot Roadburn 2011 channel on Vimeo:
    End-joy!

    http://vimeo.com/channels/roadburn2011

    More clips to post in the days to follow.

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