Rock the City/Tuborg Greenefest, Romexpo, 30.06.12

As the first day was mostly a filler full of Romanian bands I can always listen to and I couldn’t make it through three hours of the Axl Rose show and one hour of whiny Amy Lee for the life of me, let alone pay for it, I decided the second day of Greenfest is the only one that’s worth it. I was wrong, nothing of this shitty festival was worth it. The good thing is that they had the inspiration OST fest lacked to put the stage against the sun so that you’ll actually have some shade. The bad thing… everything else. In good old Tuborg tradition, it was more of a dust festival rather then a metal festival, with clouds of dust rising up in the sky and with horribly expensive food and drinks (just to give you an idea, we spent about as much on food and drinks as we did on the tickets, it’s ridiculous!). I could’ve ignored these problems, but the worst of all was an issue that truly has the power to ruin a concert and that was the sound. The sound was crap crap crap, I could barely make out most of the music.

Let’s start with the beginning. Sweet Savage were a band I hadn’t heard before, but they were a really catchy old school heavy metal band, with a crazy lead singer that kept banging his head with his fist and was being completely lovable in the process. We left the show singing Regenerator, of all songs, which is the kind of song that gets stuck in your head and never leaves.

Saxon were my personal favourite, not only because they were the only band that benefited from a decent sound, but because they were the band I was most expecting for. They kicked ass and rocked hard and had fun and made us have fun as well. Simple, without pretense and effective. Just like all heavy metal should be. Also, I think the lead singer won a special place in our hearts when he realised how bad we were all suffering from the heat and started throwing us most of the bottles of water prepared for the band.

Lacuna Coil was better then I expected, which is not really much, considering I was expecting to have an aneurysm during their show. They’re the kind of band that have boring music, terrible voices and would be absolutely nothing without a hot singer and they knowingly play this up. But for all my hate against Christina Scabbia and her musical mediocrity, I discovered she’s a pretty cool frontwoman, full of energy and a whole less pretentious then the rest of the ladies fronting similar bands. If only that dude would stop singing and making faces…

Soufly was… you know, Soulfly. Loud, fast, brutal and they generated a huge mosh pit, as expected. I felt like throwing up from all the dust, but I headbanged like crazy and watched out for my back and headbanged some more and then died of exhaustion. Soulfly.

If Soulfly sound like someone barfed into the microphone anyhow and Lacuna Coil don’t have any qualities other then looking pretty so that sound was not an issue with them, during Black Label Society the sound issue became painful. I’m sorry I can’t say anything about a band that gave it their best and that I was actually anxious to see, but for the first time in my life I was at a concert of a non-opening act where I couldn’t understand ANYTHING. The instruments were all a mess, the voice was indecipherable, it was terrible! We were near the front row and figured the sound is usually crappier there, so we went further in the back. Then further. Then we left the Golden circle altogether and started moving around in hope of finding one place where we could make out… something. We didn’t, so after wandering around some more, fed up with frustration, we went home. Which is something we haven’t done except for when I was feeling horribly sick and sometimes not even then. *That’s* how bad it was. And it’s sad, because we had waited for this show for a very long time. The heat, the prices and the dust were all issues, but seriously, invest in the sound! As much as they like to mosh and headbang and drink bear, people are ultimately at a show for the music, please make it possible for them to actually hear the music.

Needless to say we didn’t see Machine Head either, which was a damn shame because we were also interested in that.