Saturday:
In a haze of yesterday’s booze, I managed to dig myself out of my sleeping bag and drag myself out to the arena. I’m glad I did as I managed to catch half a set from Earache favorites Gama Bomb. The lads must have been stoked because they pulled a huge crowd who were all going absolutely mental for the Dublin thrashers. In the blistering hot sunshine and after some nice French people dosed us up with co-codamol and Ricard we migrated along with everybody else to Outlaw Order. Another side project made up from member of Soilent Green and Eyehategod. It’s all the thrash fury of the former mixed with all the nihilistic venom of the latter culminating in a vicious wall of sound. Outlaw Order, again, lead by Mike IX, tear through visceral tracks ‘Double Barrel Solves Everything’ and ‘Mercy Shot’.
After a few hours spent at the bar with Outlaw Order after their set, it was then time for everybody and their bloody mother to huddle around Main Stage 2 to witness Clutch. Man, how fucking good are Clutch live? On CD they are awesome but the energy they have on a festival stage is immense. Jim Fallon’s voice was absolute quality. The dude has got a steel pair of lungs on him. Thanks to the kind people at Jack Daniels who plied us full of cocktails before hand, which only heightened the experience of seeing ‘The Mob goes Wild’ live. Wino from Saint Vitus also came on, guitar in hand, to help lay down some serious riffs to close the set. Clutch well and truly owned the Saturday at Hellfest.
The Misfits were always going to be fun. I know it’s not the same and never will be as good as they were with Danzig but it’s not going to happen….ever, so we just made do with what there was….and what we got was damn good. Not even being given time to breath by Jerry Only’s “ONE-TWO!!” before each song, The Misfits blitz their way from classic to classic. ‘Teenagers From Mars’, ‘Hatebreeders’, ‘We Are 138’ to name a few. Dez Candina and Rob, on guitar and drums respectively, also have history in Black Flag so it’s a nice surprise to see them pull that one out of the bag. ‘Rise Above’ being played makes everybody who has a plus go fucking metal and we all did. As a little bonus, Dave Chandler from Saint Vitus took care of backing vocals much to his delight.
Sacred Reich were fucking awesome to finally see live. After fueling up all kinds of booze on the biggest party day of the whole festival, (now fat) Phil Rind and co were really enjoyable to see and completely ruled the RockHard stage. ‘Independent’ had me running around, spilling beer and falling on my face but it was far too much fun not to thrash about like a fucking lunatic! Before dragging some people from Terrorizer magazine back to my tent and telling them the worst joke ever then trying to translate it for the French in attendance.
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