Saw The Fever 333 at Brightside in Brissy last night, was fucking epic!
Hopefully you Downloaders check them out.
I have never heard of this band but for some reason I saw some of their set. It is totally not my thing but the singer is quite energetic. Why do they not have a bass player?
This made me laugh during Thy Art is Muder
I was on the other side of the sound tent for this, and I have a video as well. Made me laugh my ass off. When the singer "demanded a circle pit around the sound stage" I was thinking no one would do it...
Yep. It was great. The only real downside was the mid-strength alcohol.
The setup was great. Especially the two mid sized stages. They were at the bottom of a hill. Still plenty of room for a crowd at the bottom but you could also sit on the hill and watch.
We went to Good Things at the same place and the setup was rubbish. DL really pulled out all the stops and set it up really well.
The beer tasted like absolute ass. But that is NSW for you.
Setup was brilliant, dust was still a big problem (Taking a frigging SARS mask if I ever go again), waiting for food was long, toilets all got clogged but apart from that it was a really well run event. I thought the A4 sized bag limit was ridiculous (I did not take a bag though).
I have a mate in the festival industry and he reckons it is unlikely Download will come back due to how they were selling heavily discounted tickets a week prior to the event (I did not know about this but apparently they were going for like $130). He reckons that is suicide because then people won't pay full price next year... but we will see I guess. I hope they come back and just have a bigger line up. As much as I think the Aussie bands they picked were good, the lineup needs more big internationals.
I saw:
Voyager - These guys were the second best festival opener I have ever seen (Amon Amarth being #1). Sounded great and lots of energy
Alien Weaponry - Absolutely brutal. Loved The Haka and it is great hearing such good thrash metal from really young guys.
Polaris - Were totally not my thing
Fever 333 - Not my thing but singer is very entertaining. They were also impacted by Frenzal Rhomb sound check
Frenzal Rhomb - Total assholes and laughed about how their soundcheck interfered with Fever 333. I got bored after 3 songs and left. I still love their old stuff though.
Airbourne - Wish I saw their whole set. They were added last min and absolutely killed it with super high energy and great sound. At one point the singer was tossing beers into the crowd and he got people to get up on peoples shoulders to throw beers at them. This one chick caught one, and skulled it. It was awesome.
Behemoth - I saw them the other day in Brisbane and the set was the same. To be honest a few songs I love, but a lot of their set was really boring.
Anthrax - Like Behemoth I saw them in Brisbane, they sounded really good but I just don't really like their music that much.
12 Foot Ninja - I have tried for a long time to like this band but I have now put that to bed forever. They are a very confusing band to me, they sound kinda like Faith No More on acid or something. There are bits of songs I get into then it just goes all weird and loses me.
Thy Art is Murder - I liked these guys, heavy set and sounded good. Getting people to run around the sound desk was a definite highlight
Alice in Chains - I thought the sound was pretty bad at the start, but it got fixed and then things got really magical. Belted out new songs and old and everyone seemed to love it. Jerry had some titties on his guitar which was cool.
Pennywise - I only walked past for one song and they sounded amazing. I made a big mistake leaving to go see Judas Priest (I have seen Pennywise many times before)
Judas Priest - Music is pretty on point but Halford seems like he CBF half the time. In the old songs he wouldn't even sing the choruses and just held the mic to the crowd. Painkiller was really the only song worth seeing, I regretted watching as much as I did.
Slayer - I saw their whole set in Brissie so I got my closure there. I watched about 3 songs at Download before leaving for Ghost. It took me a very long time to get out of the crowd as I was kinda up close, their crowd was MASSIVE. They sounded good but it is good they are stopping because Tom is done.
Ghost - I also saw their gig in Brisbane and tbh it was one of my favourite gigs ever. The Download set was way too short (1 hour) so they had to cut out like 3 songs and also a lot of the fun banter they normally do. Tobias looked absolutely bummed when security told him he could not play an encore. The set ended really abruptly like as if he thought he could go a bit past 10pm. Having said all that though they absolutely nailed the set within the constraints.
A fan on Instagram got a photo with Tobias at the airport and he said they will never play festivals here again, so hopefully that is true and we get a proper tour next time. That is why I went to Brisbane, it was totally worth it.
