Because Full of Hell decided for some reason not to have a single german concert on their European Tour, I decided to go all in and catch their performance of their Grand Opus "Trumpeting Ecstasy" at Tilburgs Roadburn Festival. It was my first time at Roadburn and obviously, if you go to a festival for a day, it would be a crime to not check out more bands. I decided on Thursday, as Thursday had a couple bands from my personal bucket list beyond Full of Hell.
I arrived around noon and after I had parked my car in an inner city parking garage, I started scouting the surroundings. All of the venue´s are within a five minute walking radius from the city center and the festival band booth was straight in the middle from it. I entered the space surrounding the stage called The Terminal and enjoyed my first beer, a craft Tripel only available at the festival.
I was scheduled to meet with a friend, but since he had to work during the morning, we decided to meet up next to the sound booth at the opening concert, BIG | BRAVE. BIG | BRAVE play a unique mixture of shoegaze, doom metal and what I personally perceive as a Drone Americana influence. The band knew how to use the space to their advantage and seemed to be in control of the feedback. Also, they were very aware of audience expectations, often dragging out moments of silence as if to make the audience believe songs were over. Before the last song, the singer adressed the audience in an extremely honest and emotional way which I still remember - bands are as happy to be able to play again as we are to see them.
We now had some time to kill on our hands, and after grabbing a very nice burger with bacon, we checked in with Oslo Tapes, although we decided to leave pretty soon to catch a bit of Vile Creature and Bismuth who were performing a commissioned piece. The harsh, downtempo sludge they play was texturally very different from big brave, but similarly relaxing. Both of them did vocals but sounded exactly the same, and I found it amusing that they brought a female guest vocalist on stage who sounded exactly the same, yet again. The next partial set we caught was Year of No Light. I was curious how their cinematic post-metal would translate to a live setting. Sound wise, it is only natural that some of the nuances get lost live, and they certainly did. I could not really make out the keyboard at all and why the third guitarist was necessesary, I don´t quite know. Also, they had quite a spastic light show which made it hard to see the band perform.
Another reason for me to go to Roadburn was Messa, whose recent album Close is shaping up to be one of the favorites of the year for me - and Messa were going to play the whole thing. Messa had a great stage presence, great atmosphere, a very functional live show and overall were just incredibly locked in with each other. This is especially impressive as they brought additional musicians to the stage to perform the songs exactly as they were on the album. The additional Oud, Synthesizers, Mandolin and Saxophone just added a lot more texture to it. I can forgive that they left the oddball grind track Leffotrak out of the set, even if I was especially curious how they would handle it.
Since the next band we were going to see was an hour away but at the same venue, we decided to take a break and just sit down. I remember being able to stand for most of even a three day festival in the past, but age is rapidly catching up to me. Luckily, we didn´t need to sacrifice our position for 40 Watt Sun at all, as the room was only half full when the concert started. Only the most dedicated Patrick Walker fans were there, apparently, and as Warning made one of my very few 10/10 albums, I simply couldn´t skip this concert. 40 Watt Sun had a very nice sound and a surprising setlist, opting to play the 16 minute monster of a track Stages instead of more material from the newest album. Still, its all worth it for having heard Walker's magical voice. I had tried to find Messa´s merchandising earlier, as I wantged to grab a vinyl of their newest abum here since it was sold out online, but the merchandising wasn´t to be found.. As I approached the merch stand to look again, I met the band there who were similarly confused. It turns out the band had forgot to give the merch organisers their pricing, so the merch couldn´t have been brought out. As I had waited at the table, I was able to grab one of the vinyl records - a small victory which made me really happy, admittedly.
After grabbing some more food, we went to see part of Sólstafir at the Main stage, who were going to play their 2012 album Svartir Sandar. While we couldn´t catch the whole thing to be able to see Full of Hell later, I really didn´t wanna pass up the chance to see at least part of the show, as Svartir Sandar is probably their second best album. Sólstafir always bring a certain amount of rockstar attitude to their post-black metal, which is always welcome. My friend remarked how odd it was that they dressed basically as icelandic cowboys.
We made our way back to the terminal to finally catch the reason I came here, Full of Hell. Full of Hell were going to play their best album, Trumpeting Ecstasy, in full. I had assumed they were going to play a couple extra songs, as they had a 40 minute timeslot, but it ended up beign literally just the album - albeit with a little noise improvisation and another guest vocalist whom I yet again didn´t know. The spike in intensity of aggression compared to the last few concerts made Full of Hell, with the spastic motions of their singer and the start-stop nature of their songs, seem even heavier but I must say that they certainly delivered -and for the first time, there was a moshpit. We had both been on our legs for around 10 hours at this point and we decided to not force ourselves to see Russian Circles. Instead, we grabbed a coffe and prepared to go on our seperate ways. Overall, Roadburn was an immensely satisfying experience and I think I will do it again next year - maybe even the full festival.