Nuclear War Now Festival 7th/8th November 2014
I have never been a fan of the Nuclear War Now label programme, which is in my opinion for the most part an accumulation of untalented musicians ... however, live it is very enjoyable : )
Day 1:
Demonomancy being the opener of the festival started with an amazing intro which was the best thing of their set. It`s a good band with elements of Ondskapt and Portal, but after a while rather boring due to lack of talent ...
Katechon sounded much better and more powerful with their 2 guitars, however rather standard, uncreative BM. To my surprise the singer was wearing a Le Scrawl (german left wing grindcore) t-shirt.
I skipped Mefitic, since the samples I listened to on youtube didn`t sound really promising ... so I spent my time in the merch area, which is always total bliss ... Iron Bonehead, WTC, and others were present ...
Before Bestial Raids entered the stage, people were already going nuts and screaming, so I was curious, what to expect. And indeed they were a total blast. Dressed wth black hoodies and gas masks, they fulfilled all cliche`s of a high speed war metal band. Nice.
I was very curious to see Black Witchery again, who were my personal highlight at the same festival 2 years ago. In 2012 the drummer with his heavy boned body was standing up from his chair after each song (!), screaming at the guitar player while playing air guitar in order to advise him, how to play correctly. Everybody could see it, very unprofessional but very amusing. I am sure he was beating him up after the show. The guitar player was playing a bit out of tune, ok, but no one would have really noticed this actually ... This time they performed with a new guitar player. Their set was just great, high speed blasts with a satanic feel. Awesome!
Grave Upheaval played a solid show of ultra heavy slow-motion doom metal. Really good.
When Impurity set up their merch table, people were very busy buying their stuff, getting flags and t-shirts signed, etc. so I was wondering what`s all about this hype. I think, their stage set up and costums were hilarious. To me they all looked like total idiots. The singer dressed in a black drape had a black ski cap on his head (for warming up the ears in the cold) and the guitar player was dressed in an executioner costum ... the music was utterly primitive black metal. Odd. People loved it though.
Before my personal highlight of the festival showed up, I was impatiently standing in front of the stage permeated by total excitement. And yes, Nocturnus were simply great! Though Mike Browning is the only orginal member of the band (some might consider the line up as a Nocturnus cover band) the whole team did a great job. Nocturnus actually completely don´t fit to the label programme, but since Nuclear War Now re-released their Demo tapes on Vynil (festival edition 12" limited 100 copies) they were part of this festival. After performing almost the complete "The Key" album, they switched to Incubus (with Mike Browing being the original member) performing their complete EP, which is the only material the band every released. Though the EP itself is a badly sounding rehearsal recording, the live interpretations were rather clean ... awesome! After playing another 3 Nocturnus songs, with their ultimate masterpiece "Undead Journey", they switched to Morbid Angel with 3 more tunes as encore: "Demon Seed", "Chapel Of Ghouls" and "Angel Of Disease". Most of the people knew the songs by heart and were singing along. I have never been playing air drums and air guitar with so much passion. Without doubt Nocturnus were the absolute highlight of the festival ... total bliss!!!
Day 2:
Due to my late arrival I missed Death Curier and Witchcraft, but saw the last 15 minutes of Hellvetron with a horrible drummer really spoiling everything. Though the composition of the songs was quite ok this was just another band without any new ideas and talent.
I was very excited about the only Heavy Metal Band of the festival Root, which I knew from their great "Hell Symphony" album. They behaved a bit like rockstars, which however wasn`t that bad at all, but which positively added to the humorously nature of the set. Especially their singer (with an age of surely 60+), dressed with a black drape and with a wicked root-like face paint, was great entertainment.
The Swedish Irkallian Oracle, whom I already saw live together with Portal, 2 years ago, fulfilled all expectations with their unique ritual black doom. Overall good live presentation, all members dressed in black coats, candles, gongs and obscure banners with sexual organs of both sexes implemented into the design.
The Greek Varathron played some kind of black thrash heavy metal. With partly Slayer like melodies they were one of the more interesting bands of the festival, though I couldn`t stand to watch their rather long set, which was becoming a bit boring after a while ...
The headliner of day 2, Revenge, seem to be a big hype within the black metal scene, at least almost 50% of the audience was wearing Revenge patches and t-shirts. Their kind of pro NS black metal image seems to attract all the thugs in the audience, thus a safe distance away from the center of the crowd in front of the stage was surely no mistake. After an amazing intro (I love sirens!) 3 tough guys with heavy boned bodies entered the stage. As a friend told me the drummer was obviously having a Reichsadler and Hakenkreuz tatooed on his right arm, and I must admit it was a beast of a drummer, ultra brutal high speed blasts overall the 30 minutes set. The alternating deep growls and high pitched screams of both singers were a bit irritating, cos it sounded more like Hellnation, which means more like a power-violence than a black metal band, also their plain appearance with black t-shirts without any print on it, didn`t give any hint of something "anti-christian" or similar. Lights out. New flags in the background set up, new intro, kind of noise sounds (could be Bizarre Uproar), then a 4th guy with a second guitar entered the stage and the cult band (?) Conqueror attacked with another 25 minutes of high speed BM madness. Even more brutal than Revenge without the deep/high pitched vocals, but now in my opinion better in line with the sound. I liked it a lot though Black Witchery and Bestial Raids worked out better for me.
Overall a great festival. The only thing which really annoyed me (besides the large number of NSBM idiots) was the constant smell of farts, where ever I was standing or wherever I was walking ... black metal fans are simply the worst louts ever.
