by JJ Koczan

We continue with JJ's report from Roadburn in Tilburg, Holland. If you missed it, you might want to start with Day One. Here is Day Two (Friday April 23, 2009)...

Cathedral LIVE at Roadburn (Erik Luyten)

It's really easy to tell as you walk around Tilburg who is here for Roadburn and who isn't. Even when I first got here from Amsterdam on the train, the front of the station looked like an Eyehategod show could have broken out at any minute, all the bearded longhairs and black t-shirts, including my own, standing around looking for a bus or a cab. Like some kind of convention for the International Society Of Social Awkwardness. But oh, we do have a good time.

The thing about the "doom scene," as much as there is one, is that it's really more of a community. Maybe it's because the majority of its patrons are a little older, a little more stoned, a little more concerned with paying their rent, but there are way fewer scene rules than, say, in black metal, where the contest to be more kvlt than thou goes on ceaselessly. Certainly there's a uniform -- see "beards and t-shirts," above -- but there are some normal looking dudes running around here and no one really gives a crap one way or the other what they look like. I'd say it's refreshing, but it's been this way for as long as I've been into doom, so it's nothing new.

This is easily the best festival I've ever seen. The fact that I'm here still astonishes me. Yesterday, as I watched Angel Witch demolish bands half their age (though Saviours would answer back heartily later on), I couldn't help but look around me and be amazed at the gathering of riff worshippers. The Atomic Bitchwax, for example, played to a Green Room so packed that people were lined up into the hallway watching them through the open doors. I've seen the Bitchwax plenty of times in our shared home state of New Jersey, and most of those shows have been relatively empty. Here you can barely go from one part of the venue to the next without doing a bump 'n grind on some poor schlub. It's something to get used to, but I made a conscious decision to take a different approach to day two than I had to day one.

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Continue reading "Surviving Roadburn, Day Two: Riding To The Sabbath"

by JJ Koczan

You may know JJ Koczan from his writing at The Aquarian, the now dormant Metal Maniacs, Theobelisk.net, or as frontman of his band Maegashira. This weekend, JJ will serve as our man-on-the-scene at Roadburn in Tilburg, Holland! Look for daily reports through the weekend as he prepares for the return of Saint Vitus, as well as performances from a veritable who's who of the underground heavy metal glitterati. We kick things off with his report from Day One, Thursday April 23, 2009...

The bleach blond party boy at the surreal tropical Scottish bar -- who may or may not have been wearing white pants at the time -- warned me against Tilburg. "Why would you want to go there?" Indeed, why would I or anyone else allegedly in their right mind want to expose themselves to four days of nonstop beer, doom, shitty hamburgers and sweltering Eurosweat?

This is my first Roadburn. I booked my hotel room once Saint Vitus was announced, and the Hotel Ibis, the uncomfortable bed of which I'm sitting on now, is a chain like a Comfort Inn with a really nice bar. A big part of me wishes I could have slept down there, and not just because they had candy.

If there could have been a more appropriate beginning for Roadburn 2009 than Italian psyche-droners Ufomammut, I'm at a loss for what it might have been. Their Green-amped, thick-riffed, mostly instrumental jams pushed so much air you could feel it from in front of the stage, and as they sloshed their way through most of last year's Idolum, the main space crowd had no choice but to approve heartily. This is why we're here, dudes. Hold those cups up high.

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Continue reading "Surviving Roadburn, Day One: To The Center Of The Universe"