Last but not least
SUMAC @ Roskilde Festival 2016
@SUMACband @SigeRecords @bbcbubblegutz #rf16
Note to any bands getting booked for Roskilde 2017: if you get scheduled for after midnight on the final day of the festival, nearly everyone is gone.
I’ve spent the last three days (afternoons, evenings, and mornings actually) at the Roskilde Festival. Each morning I came back to Copenhagen after dawn, but those mornings were very different. On the first two mornings I rode nearly empty trains back to Copenhagen after watching packed 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. shows. Why were the performances still crowded at those ungodly hours? Because many people at Roskilde are camping and don’t go to bed until the music stops. However, on the last night of the festival people began to disappear, especially later in the evening. Turns out festival goers are tired and/or head home after multiple nights in tents (and sometimes in the rain) for a real bath, real meal, and real bed. My final morning train ride was packed with people carrying a week’s worth of goods back home, and I’m guessing that was the case all final day and night long as I saw such people when I arrived in Roskilde on Saturday even though it was only afternoon.
I felt bad for SUMAC (and several other early morning groups), going on at 2:15 a.m. when, had they played a few hours earlier or on any other day, they would have had more than 10X as many people in the audience.
Also, Roskilde needs to do a better job of stringing together similar types of music, even if they aren’t on the same stage. The schedule for Thursday was pretty good as someone could see Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats, Ex Eye, Black Breath, Kvelertak, Tsjuder, and Ghost pretty much consecutively. Indeed, I saw much of the same crowd at each of those performances. However, on Saturday there was a 6+ hour gap between Gojira and SUMAC. Many of the 17,000+ people who came out to see Gojira would have stuck around for SUMAC had SUMAC gone on soon after Gojira. Even putting SUMAC on after Cattle Decapitation wouldn’t have been so bad. Putting Protomartyr and Imghrane on in between made no sense.
Still, SUMAC blew me away again. I had SUMAC dreams as I slept from 5 a.m. until noon.