As promised, here is my review on Soundwave!
The weather was great - not too hot, but still quite warm when standing in the sun. Excellent shorts / shirt weather.
The Sydney location was moved rather last minute from Eastern Creek to Homebush. I have been to every single Soundwave (except the very first one), and have been to each venue that has held this great event. Therefore, I can say with much conviction that the swap was a good idea. Not much walking time between stages, lots and lots of toilet facilities (that appeared to have people looking after them throughout the day - excellent!), great free water stations, lots of food vendors, plenty of shade and areas to chill and no mud!
Generally the crowd at Soundwave is pretty good. Most people seemed to be there for the music rather than for the image, and were pretty chilled. Of course, metalheads are my favourite kind of crowd, so I am slightly biased, but generally the atmosphere was quite nice. This is the largest crowd I've ever seen at Soundwave - it just keeps getting so big!
Now onto the bands!
We spent the first few hours just cruising around, checking out the layout, getting our 18+ wristbands and chilling at a few stages. Trash Talk were the first band we saw.
Don't really remember much musically about them, but I do during their last song, the guitarist climbed up the side of the stage ... and then very anti-climatically, climbed down again. So, no cool tricks from them.
The first real band worth mentioning is of course, SUM 41. I loved them so much when I was like, 11, so the nostalgia element was definitely nice.
They were playing at stage 3, which was under this huge blue tent. It got pretty warm in there, but the crowd went absolutely crazy. They started off with the Hell Song, which was so much fun, and then moved on to We're All to Blame. They did play some of their new stuff (which was kinda boring tbh) but they played mostly old over new and ended with Fat Lip. Definitely a good show.
It was disappointing that Derryck got pneumonia and so they couldn't play at their side-show (not that I had tickets), but they did mention they'd be back in Sydney soon. So I will probably go see them if they do!
We then headed over to stage 4, to check out DevilDriver. I've seen this band a few times before, which was a good thing because they were pretty awful.
Generally though, the sound at this stage sounded pretty awful, so I'm not too sure who to blame.
The band lacked energy and I don't think that Dez Fafara was really into it - some of the songs were hardly recognisable from where I was standing. Meet the Wretched - one of my favourite songs - was just fucking awful.
But don't let this performance (if you saw it) discourage you - generally they are an EXCELLENT band live.
Murderdolls were another band, excellent for the nostalgia. Last time I listened to them pretty sure I was an angsty 15 year old. It's funny how easily I remembered all the lyrics (even though admittedly they're not THAT hard to remember)
Twist my Sister and Slit My Wrist were fun songs to dance to, after not having heard them from so long. I stayed out of the mosh for this one, as they were playing at a stage where the sun was, but from where I was standing it looked pretty hectic.
We caught some of Primus' set. Very entertaining, although I wasn't really feeling it. I think they're the kind of band you go see if you're really into them, at their own concert. Not too sure if they're festival material.
We headed back over to stage 4 to catch Dimmu Borgir, a Norwegian Black metal band who are fucking brilliant. They're one of my favourites and it's so great to see them finally come out to Australia! They were fantastic. Corpse paint and goth clothes and satanic mumblings is so funny to watch. And his accent was really cute too - reminded me of Skwisgaar from Metalocalypse!
So glad they finished with Puritania, Progencies of the Great Apocalypse and Mourning Palace!
We watched a bit of Il Nino and when to get lunch, only to get told that Slayer weren't coming on stage.
Cue crowd riot.
As disappointing as it was to not have them play, the crowd reactions were pretty hilarious.
Grown men began acting like children, setting their shirts on fire, catapulting bottles and other projectiles onstage, and even chucking entire garbage bins through the front barrier.
It was awesome.
So we left that stage, and ended up catching some of Foxy Shazam.
EXCELLENT! This band was absolutely amazing. I have never heard of them before, let alone listened to any music, and they must have had the tiniest crowd ever, but they were SO energetic and entertaining and upbeat. I would pay to see them again. Highly recommend you check them out.
The singer even swallowed lit cigarettes? How's that for entertainment value!
We caught some of Mad Caddies, and headed over to watch Queens of the Stone Age.
Nicotine, Valium, Vicodin, Marijuana, Ecstasy and Alcohol ... c-c-c-c-c-cocaiiiiiine!
Lots of fun.
We more or less watched most of their show while waiting for Iron Maiden to come on.
Poor guys, they're so old now. They had an awesome multi-level stage though, and various changing backgrounds, with an animation introducing them onto the stage, straight into the Final Frontier.
Very cheesy, and kinda lame.
Bruce Dickinson looked kinda cute in a beanie and a "Psych ward" t-shirt (pretty sure I owned the exact same one when I was like, 13 from Supre'?). He kinda looked like a little boy?
They were cool to watch, but J wasn't digging it as much as me, and since I'd seen my fair share of metal that day, we headed on over to Less than Jake.
But we got sidetracked, by this cool ride, and ended up riding that.
Our night finished with Pennywise, who are one of J's favourite bands. I've never listened much to them (despite having their entire discography on my ipod), but they were awesome. They too were in the blue tent stage and had pulled a massive crowd. There was so much energy and it was pretty infectious.
They finished with Bro Hymn, which I've heard they do for every show. The atmosphere and the feeling that resonated within the crowd at the end of the set was pretty amazing. The chants were still going as we were walking out the gates.
Despite having the entire festival finishing at 10.00pm, and thus having tens of thousands of metalheads all leaving at the one time, to head to the one train station, we escaped pretty quickly.
The organisation this year was done much better than it has before in previous years, and I personally had minimal clashes. It will be interesting to see if it can be topped next year!!
