While Australia certainly isn’t LACKING in festivals, it does seem that we’ll never get to experience the ginormous multi-day festivals Europeans take for granted every summer. The Reading and Leeds festivals in the UK are beyond ridiculous, as you probably know from reading English language music magazines, but another festival with a similar set up (two cities at the same time; shared line-up over several days) is Germany’s Rock am Ring and Rock im Park, taking place in Nurnberg and Nuremberg this June.
Metallica, Kings of Leon, Nine Inch Nails, Linkin Park, Opeth, Fall Out Boy, Slayer, Queens of the Stone Age, The Offspring, Suicide Silence, Babyshambles, Against Me!, Quicksand, Maximo Park, Boysetsfire, Iron Maiden and Anthrax are amongst the confirmed acts taking part, with the interesting inclusion of Aussie metal/alternative act Karnivool. Like Soundwave here in Australia, the bill is dominated by metal and nostalgia acts, but that seems to be what audiences want these days.
Could there ever be a punk rock dominated equivalent? Probably not. And if you think that there COULD, I would question your definition of the term “punk”. The Vans Warped Tour failed BIG TIME here late last year with an emo/screamo/metalcore/indie-slash-hipster pop-punk dominated line-up that many people thought was punk. Fail.
But an ACTUAL punk bill, with AMAZING punk bands, would still struggle to pull more than a few thousand punters in each city. Hits & Pits is a perfect example: amazing line-ups, yet barely selling out venues as small as The Palace Theatre last year and the Hi-Fi Bar this year. With bands as epic as Unwritten Law, The Casualties, Black Flag and Boysetsfire taking part in recent years, you gotta wonder what’s going on. Is punk rock REALLY that uninteresting to the general population? Hmmm… It saddens me to think that such a vibrant, passionate, inspirational genre is failing to reach new ears, hearts and minds. That said, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. If kids actually WANT to listen to Justin Beaver and One Abortion, well, we’ve failed them, haven’t we?
Dischord Records have just released the first demo by the Henry Garfield (Rollins) fronted DC hardcore punk pioneers State of Alert, recorded all the way back in 1980. Nice! Get on over to the Dischord website and snap yours up NOW!
Dear AFI, please have several seats. Davey and Jade in particular. Yet ANOTHER side project of theirs has emerged, and this one is a straight edge hardcore band called XTRMST. I’m not sure I buy Davey’s tough guy posturing, but one positive thing I CAN say about this project is that it has the sort of energy and spirit that has been missing from AFI albums for more than a decade. If the guys were able to take elements from all their projects and combine them, AFI would be unstoppable as opposed to unfocused. But hey, that’s just my opinion. You’re more than welcome to have one of your own.
Meet you back here next time, kids – same Bat time, same Bat channel!
Written by Chris Cruz
