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Tower over the info tent
A delay in posting due to spending three days in a field in north Belgium kicking bells out of fellow rockers, plus a day either side traveling to and from London.
Graspop 2009 was probably the strongest overall lineup I’ve seen at the festival, although the headliners were surprisingly weak. Motley Crue were just dreadful, playing guitar-wankery for ages after just the first song. This was followed by a rather tedious and very poorly-performed solo after the third song. Time to head back to the tent.
Slipknot were much better on Saturday, but somehow didn’t capture the magic they once did. This despite a pretty passable fourth album. Perhaps the problem was with the weather which was ridiculously hot all weekend.
Awesome mohawk
Marilyn Manson has gone from “God of Fuck” to “God of Fuck Off You’re Rubbish”. He certainly lived up to the bad press he received from his performance at Download a fortnight back. If memory serves, he was five songs through before he said anything at all to the audience and that was only four words: “So this is Belgium?”. Between songs, the stage just went black with the audience left just wondering what was going on. We gave him until “Sweet Dreams” then wandered off as we quite like that song and didn’t want to hear him murder it.
The remaining bands put together a great bill, though. Across various tents I watched All That Remains, Papa Roach, Anthrax (my top band of the weekend), Sacred Reich, W.A.S.P., Disturbed, Hatebreed, Trivium, Pestilence, Down, Dragonforce, Lamb of God… Plus a load more I wasn’t familiar with.
A shame Killswitch Engage didn’t play, but I gather the lead singer’s grandmother passed away. I’m sure nobody holds it against them for him choosing to go home.
Band of the Weekend
Hot sun, cold beer, great music. A shame the local council has clamped down completely on the locals selling food and beer to the festival-goers. A big thumbs down to the mayor of Dessel. I don’t fancy his chances much at the next election.
I’m off to rest my weary body and dress my wounds (I’ve got some impressive cuts this year – weird) before getting up in about 4 hours to catch my flight to Bangkok. What a life, eh?
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I was there too dude. I have to agree about Crue and Manson. I only made it through Crue by being staggeringly drunk. We only saw a couple of Manson tunes as he was truly awful. Mastodon were band of the weekend for me. Mesmerising.
I missed Mastadon, though I was tempted to see them. I caught them supporting Slayer in Australia a year or so ago and they sounded OK – but the venue sucked so the audio was rubbish. Would have been nice to give them another shot.
That is one of the things I like about Graspop, apart from Heaven and Hell (and that could have been to do with how far back I was), every band has great sound, as they way they organise it means each stage has a nice gap between each band so the next one can set up properly. Do you know why spirits were not allowed in or being sold over the weekend?
They weren’t? I do recall there being a Jagermeister tent last year where they were dishing out shots in *glass* test tubes which was ludicrous. However, I was happily walking around drinking Jager & Red Bull and apple sours & lemonade. Of course, they weren’t in spirits bottles… Nice to have no issues with people taking in plastic bottles this year. Ideal for filling with water for between bands.