Rock Hard Festival 2004 Review

Rock Hard Festival 2004
This festival was planned as a unique one to the 20th anniversary of the german metal-print-magazine Rock Hard. After celebrating its big success which had never been expected on this level their editors decided to organize the festival again. Returning to the beautiful location of the “Amphitheater” in Gelsenkirchen the organizers offered the same comfort and nice atmosphere as they had done last year. This year they were able to add the opportunity to camp close to the festival area. At the Open Air played 22 bands (each band 45 minutes mimum) on one stage (on Friday on a different one) in three days for about 4500 visitors.

Friday
Side Stage
Metal Inquisitor Supposed to be the festival opener the boys from Koblenz showed their main influence which is clearly NWOBHM. Nothing special, but good enough to motivate a piece of the hungry crowd to party.
Delirious The following appearance turned out a little bit better. The group from the near city of Dortmund played a style from the other side of the ocean. We talk about bay-area-thrash. I still prefer the originals, but this gig which ended by the Iron Butterfly-cover “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” made fun anyway.
Electric Eel Shock The showcase of the evening was definitely brought by the crazy threepiece from Japan. Their set consisted of 100 % Rock ‘n’ Roll. I bet most spectators didn’t know even one song, but who cares? Right, nobody! So while the set about 50 (new?) fans entered the stage and partied with the combo.
Honigdieb The second artists coming from Dortmund around the well-known as sympathic fronter Sir Hannes known from Idiots and Phantoms Of Future had a difficult job after this Japanese Rock ‘n’ Roll-invasion. And their folk rock just reached half of the audience by “Madame” (the best known song), “Luder”, “Telefonsex” or “Pornostar”. Not enough for the headliner of the evening.

Saturday
Main Stage
Thunderstorm Instead of Doomsword who had cancelled because of an injury of their guitarist the German trio offered a similar style like the Italians do. But while playing “Time”, “Sad Symphony”, etc. the actors didn’t act too much. So with no action on stage the “show” became boring.
Dead Soul Tribe The Austrian fourpiece around the ex-fronter of the Prog Metal-icon Psychotic Waltz Buddy Lackey (or now cold Devon Graves) presented their second album “A Murder Of Crows”. The band’s sound is a mixture between the old progressive Psychotic Waltz-style and some psychedelic elements rememberring of Tool. With the new “Some Things You Can’t Return”, the debut-album songs “Coming Down” and “Into The Spiral Cathedral” and especially the Psychotic Waltz-hymns “I Remember” and the final “Skeleton” they became the highlight of the day.
Naglfar By their song titles (“I Am Vengeance”, “Horncrowned Majesty”) it’s easy for everybody to guess which style Erik Rydén and his Swedish comrades prefer: Of course Black Metal. But most of the visitors took much more notice of a beer than of a middling Black Metal-show while the sun was shining hot in the early afternoon.
Gluecifer Does Rock ‘n’ Roll fit to a metal-billing? Yes, it does. With “I Got War”, “Easy Living”, “Automatic Thrill”, etc. they started a punkrock party in which many metalheads took part in who now combined drinking beer and attending the show. I need to mention I had enjoyed Biff Malibu, Captain Poon and Co. more five on a show years ago. But anyway: Cool party!
Destruction After the jubilated appearances of Kreator and Sodom last year, now it was time for the third well-known German thrash-act. The threepiece replacing the blackies from Marduk opened with “Total Desaster”, of course brought “Thrash Till Death” as “The Butcher Strikes Back” and found acceptance by most of the Marduk-fans. But Schmier should think about his announcements between the songs, especially about that one he took about “discriminated long-haired metal-fans” (Huhu!) before playing “Metal Discharge“, for which I can find just one word: Ridiculous!
Krokus The Swiss Hardrock-legend around Fernando Van Arb and singer Marc Storace introduced their new release “Rock The Block” which found as much crowd’s consent as the classics (“Long Stick Goes Boom”, “Eat The Rich”) did. Normally not my cup of tea, but this turned out to a nice rock party.
Exodus By the first reactions of the spectatorship I realized the Bay Area-Thrash-institution was expected by many headbangers. The riff-walls of the guitarists Gary Holt and Rick Hunolt caused a lot of flying hair on the spectatorside and the reactivated fronter Steve “Zetro” Souza knew how to play with the fans. Their set was dominated by their new praised output “Tempo Of The Damned” (“Blacklist”, “The War Is My Shepherd”, the title track), but of course their thrash-classics (“Piranha”, “Toxic Waltz”, “Bonded By Blood”) found enough consideration.
Gamma Ray Teutonic Singalong Metal was supposed to entertain the visitors for the next 75 minutes. Everyone knows the fourpiece around the German Metal-personality Kai Hansen calls a big song-background their own. They started with the newer “Gardens Of The Sinner” and “New World Order”, streaked the middle ages of Gamma Ray (“Rebellion In Dreamland”, “Land Of The Free”, “Somewhere Out In Space”) and reached Gamma Ray- (“One With The World”) and Helloween-classics (“I Want Out”). The tracklist should have fullfilled most wishes, but not the bad sound and the moveless acting on stage.
In Extremo The rise of the Folk Metal-kings hasn’t ended yet.The seven musicians from Berlin opened with “Küss Mich”, “Hiemali Tempore” and “Wind” and offered a well-balanced combination between classics (“Merseburger Zaubersprüche II”, “Herr Mannelig”, “Spielmannsfluch”) and material from the new album “7″ (“Erdbeermund”, the opener). For “Ai Vis Lo Lop” the band invited a few fans on stage to sing the classic with them. After 120 minutes vocalist “Einhorn” finished their set with “Villeman Og Magnhild” and left the fans satisfied. But never expected they returned on stage pointing out they still had 15 minutes till the two o’ clock curfew set by the city of Gelsenkirchen and added “Madre Deus” and “Mein Kind” to their set. Respect to this measure which shows how close to the fans the band feels itself. Great gig!

Sunday
Main Stage
Desaster It was up to the underground-icon from Koblenz to wake up the sleeping metal-village with their infernal Black Metal. And they fullfilled their mission, with classics like “Metalized Blood” no matter to them.
Into Eternity Full of expectations a little community awaited the new Prog/Death Metal-hope from Canada. The five music geniuses started with the debut-album track “Elysium Dream” before turning their focus on their new praised album “Buried In Oblivion” and from now on the little community grew bigger and bigger song by song. The permanent changes between clean and grunt voices in the lead (by great singer Chris Krall) and all (!) backing vocals as the many musical variations in new (“Embraced By Desolation”, “Splintered Visions”) like old (“Absolution Of The Soul”, the final “Selling God” from the “Dead Or Dreaming”-album) songs didn’t only fascinate the progheads, but the hole auditorium. The band around Tim Roth seems to have a great future. To me the band of the festival.
Illdisposed It was up to the Danish Death Metal / Thrashcore-fivepeace to replace Malevolent Creation who hadn’t been able to finance the trip. Most Metalheads knew the band’s name because of many releases, but not the music. In Gelsenkirchen the time had come to change this aspect. One big reason: Fronter Bo started the performance with the comment: “We have no intro, we have no money and we have small balls.” With his ironic as sympathic comments which were all held in German between the songs he caught the attention of the audience easily always pointing out they are dull Danes. By this unusual way they won a lot of listeners to listen to their smashing music and to get convinced by it like I got.
Pink Cream 69 Strengthened by a second guitarist the multi-national band from Karlsruhe presented a great best-of-program of their first-class-hardrock. With singalong-hits like “Thunderdome” from the so titled brandnew album over “Seas Of Madness”, “Shame”, “Keep Your Eye On The Twisted”, “Do You Like It”, “Talk To The Moon” and the finishing “Welcome The Night” they proofed of their reputation as an ideal party-rock-group in the sunny afternoon. With “One Step Into Paradise” we would have wished another hit, but to a band with so many outstanding albums, it’s difficult enough to choose the “right” songs and to kick lots of other ones to fill one hour. Cool show recited by the fabulous singer David Readman and a tight band.
Metal Church The next fivepack had been a long anounced as the big reunion. It was a disappoining one because of less original characters (guitarist Kirk Vanderhoof and drummer Kirk Arrington) and the same incomplete represantation of the Metal Church-background. Where were the hits from the US Power Metal cult-albums “Blessing In Disguise”, “The Human Factor” and “Hanging In The Balance”? Sure this appearance was a much better one than those spiritless shows of the first reunion in 1999, classics like “Start The Fire” (‘Bring Down The Hammer’, yes) became celebrated by the crowd, “Watch The Children Pray”, “Beyond The Black” or the undying “Gods Of Wrath”, the band was tight and the new vocalist Ronny Munroe (known from Rottweiler) did his job much better than David Wayne five years ago. Technically he seemed to be the right man, but he didn’t reach the charisma of ex-singer Mike Howe. It could have been a fantastic show, but why didn’t classics like “Anthem To The Estranged”, “Badlands” “Fake Healer”, “Agent Green”, “Losers In The Game” or “A Subtle War” find their consideration?
Dark Tranquillity The six Gothenburg-guys had never offered a middling or worse show. Especially marathon man Mikael Stanne impressed by his agility without missing one tone. Supported by his tight playing comrades they celebrated new stuff rom the current album “Damage Done” (“White Noise / Black Silence”, “Monochromatic Stains”, the title track, “Final Resistance”) as older material (“Punish My Heaven”, “Hedon”, “ThereIn”, “The Wonders At Your Feet”, “Zodijackyl Light”) with their numerous fans. A great gig which showed the Swedes still play in the Death Metal-Champions League.
Rage The multinational band around mastermind “Peavy” Wagner, guitar-genius Victor Smolski and drum-animal Mike Terrana from the neighbour city Herne has always been a constant companion to the Rock Hard over the last two decades. Besides presenting a few songs from the new more complex album “Soundchaser” (“War Of Worlds”, the title track) the band concentrated on their classics (Medley, “Solitary Man”, “Black In Mind”, the singalong “Don’t You Fear The Winter”, “From The Cradle To The Grave”, “Higher Than The Sky”). Right decision by which the threepeace won most spectators! But please: While an one hour lasting festival gig nobody needs any guitar or drum solos like Smolski and Terrana did!
Stratovarius This was probably the most discussed and awaited appearance in Gelsenkirchen over the weekend because of the massive internal tension between individual band members, especially between bandleader Timo Tolkki wearing a T-shirt with the front-print “We” (Did that meaning anything or was that just a wish? Who knows!) and Timo Kotipelto who was going to quit the band after a few booked gigs like this one. But the quintett didn’t fulfill any suspicion of a scandalous show. No, they completed an absolute professional gig. No more, no less. With a best of-program (“I Walk To My Own Song”, “Speed Of Light”, “Father Time”, “Forever Free”, “Kiss Of Judas”, “Hunting High And Low”) they probably satisfied the spectatorship even if there was no special or surprising effect while the appearance. So it was a pleasant goodbye between the musicians Tolkki, Kotipelto, Kainulainen, Johansson and Michael on the one and the fans on the other hand after the finishing “Black Diamond”.
Machine Head With the (neo-)Thrash band from the east bay area the Rock Hard engaged a big number of the metal-scene with radio- and TV-airplay as their headliner. Robb Flynn and his “Oakland-gang” introduced a new sixstringer (Phil Demmel) as the new output “Through The Ashes Of Empire”. With the album opener and new single release “Imperium” they started in a massive, furious and celebrated gig which mobilized the last spared reserves of the crowd. By the best of their five high quality albums bandfounder Robb Flynn and his three comrades excited the auditorium by the debut classics “Davidian” or “Old” as well as by “Ten Ton Hammer”, “Take My Scars” (from “The More Things Change…”) “The Blood, The Sweat, The Tears”, (from “The Burning Red”), “Trephination” (from “Supercharger”) or the current “Left Unfinished” and “Descent The Shades Of Night” which closed the show together with the classic “Block”. The moshpit raged to all songs through the little rain. As every Machine Head-show fronter Robb praised the audience as one of the best of their career. Nevertheless the enthusiastic crowd were fantastic as the excellent show deserved it. It would have been even cooler if Machine Head had played 15 minutes longer until the curfew like In Extremo had done the night before, but who of the outpowered fans thought about that. Great gig which closed a great fetival!

Conclusion:
Yes, they did it again!!!!! An important decision because of its special festival atmosphere guaranteed by the nice “Amphitheater”-area, the relaxed visitors and the well-organized conditions. The toilets were still clean as for free and the prices for drinks were also okay (e.g. 2 Euro for a 0,33l beer or softdrinks). Rock Hard chief editor announced on Sunday the organizers decided to make the festival to a steady open air institution. There’s nothing to comment about than just another big: YES!!!!!

A special thanks to Götz Kühnemund, Manni Glamowski and the Rock Hard-team!!!!!

At the Rock Hard Festival rocked, drank and partied Tobi Wan Kenobi, Lotte, Melli and Yvonne!!!!!