Mark Osegueda

I know, I said a band a day a couple days ago, but I haven’t had a chance to process many images yet. I’ve only looked at my Death Angel photos (and a few others). I’ll probably have another dozen or so from Death Angel at some point, but tomorrow I will move on to another band.

Rob Cavestany of Death Angel at Getaway Rock Festival 2011

The only two problems with the Death Angel set were the aforementioned time/day placement of them in the lineup and the amount of time they were given to play (just 45 minutes). I could have used a good 90 minutes (or more) of Death Angel.

Rob and Mark - Gävle, Sweden

After their set I wandered over to the t-shirt booth. I noticed this Asian guy wearing a shirt from the Club Citta gig in Kawasaki, Japan that I had wanted to go to but couldn’t because it happened after I left Japan. I figured he was Japanese so I started talking to him in Japanese only to find out he was Korean. Whoops!

Korean fan of Death Angel travels to Sweden to the Getaway Rock Festival 2011

We chatted for a while. I asked him who he most wanted to see at the Getaway Rock Festival and, of course, tops on his list was Death Angel. Why wasn’t Death Angel given more than an hour during a prime time slot in the evening? Why?

Death Angel at Getaway Rock Festival 2011, Gävle Sweden

Mark Osegueda on lead vocals

Rob Cavestany on lead guitar

I’m off to Norway for four days beginning tomorrow so maybe I will pre-blog bands from Norway that were at Getaway while I’m gone.

Posted on July 13th, 2011 under Other. Tags: death angel, getaway rock festival, metal. Comments: 1

Mark Oseguenda and Damien Sisson of Death Angel have a hair competition. Mark wins!

Death Angel was one of my main reasons for traveling 7 hours to go to the Getaway Rock Festival. I hadn’t seen Death Angel perform live since 1987. Plus, they scored me a photo pass so that sealed the deal. I was going to Sweden.

Death Angel at Getaway Rock Festival 2011

When the lineup times were finally announced I was horrified to see that Death Angel had landed an early slot on the first day. Who created this schedule? There were a bunch of crappy bands at Getaway, with virtually no following, that had better time slots. Oh well. Lucky for me there was an early train from Copenhagen that was scheduled to get me to the festival in plenty of time. Or so I thought.

Ted Aguilar of Death Angel

I woke up at 3 a.m., got ready, and made it to the train station by 4 for my 4:13 a.m. departure. The train station was closed with a sign saying to enter from the other side. No problem. Luckily I had 13 minutes to spare. I got to the other side by about 4:07. There were no signs saying which platform my train was to leave from. None of the monitors at the station were turned on yet leaving me, and the 50 or so other people looking to take the same train, very confused.

Rob Cavestany (Death Angel's founding member)

4:13 comes and goes. No train, no announcements, nobody from the train company to explain things. Great. Some people panicked (I felt sick inside myself) as they had to catch a plane. They hopped into taxi cabs to get to the airport. I couldn’t take a taxi to Sweden–way too expensive. Finally, at 4:30 I found an employee who told me, and some others, that we needed to find a bus to the airport and maybe I could catch a train from there.

Will Carroll (Death Angel's newest member) can really bring it on the drums.

I found a bus and got on. It didn’t go anywhere for 25 minutes. Now I knew I had missed my connecting train from Malmo to Stockholm, which also meant I would miss my train from Stockholm to Galve. I was beginning to think I would miss Death Angel too. Anguish set in. The bus stopped five times on the way to the airport, each time waiting for 5 minutes or more for passengers that didn’t get on. By the time we finally got to the airport it was past 6 a.m., passengers sprinted from the bus to try to catch their planes, and I headed to the trains to see if any were going to Sweden.

The crowd was a decent size for a 2:15 start time on day one of a festival. Many bands with later times and/or better days (day two and day three) had smaller and less enthusiastic supporters.

I finally got on a train to Malmo from the Copenhagen Airport. In Malmo, Sweden I discover that I could catch a train to Stockholm and then Gavle, but I wouldn’t arrive until 1:57 p.m. Death Angel were set to go on at 2:15 p.m., but I didn’t know how to get there from the train station, how far it was, or how to get my pass. For all I knew, I could have to wait in line for an hour to get in. So the whole morning I was extremely worried and stressed.

Damien Sisson on bass for Death Angel

I found out that it was a half hour walk from the station to the festival so the second my train opened its door I ran, with a full backpack and a loaded camera bag, in the direction I thought was correct. It turns out I was going in the right direction! It was my first lucky break of the day. I arrived, covered in sweat, at 2:13, received my photo pass in quick order and ran for the stage. I hit the stage at the exact same instant that Death Angel did, and pretty much everything thereafter was smooth sailing.

Mark Osegueda of Death Angel

Posted on July 12th, 2011 under Other. Tags: death angel, getaway rock festival, metal. Comments: 3

Gasklockorna in Gävle, Sweden - home of the Getaway Rock Festival

I just returned to Copenhagen after four days in Sweden. I spent most of the time in a place north of Stockholm called Gävle where the Getaway Rock Festival 2011 took place. Today is just a preview, as I have loads of photos (about 3,000) and video (half a dozen or so) from the event (most of which I haven’t even looked at yet).

Rob Cavestany and Mark Osegueda of Death Angel at Getaway Rock Festival 2011

I was supposed to have a photo pass for just Death Angel and Opeth, but they gave me a press pass with access to the front of the stage for all of the bands. I didn’t protest. Nor did I abuse the priviledge. I used it only for the ten or so bands (of 70 performing) I wanted to see.

Enslaved at Getaway Rock Festival 2011

I think I’ll break things down by band and feature a band a day, starting tomorrow, for a week or two.

Wolf Hoffmann of Accept

Gävle is a nice place. I’ll have some photos of it as well at some point.

Abbath Doom Occulta of Immortal

Posted on July 11th, 2011 under Other. Tags: accept, death angel, enslaved, getaway rock festival, immortal, metal, sweden. Comments: 1

After Mt. Hood the view was rather unspectacular until the sun began to set. We went over a piece of Idaho, Calgary, much of Canada, Hudson Bay, and then things got interesting.

Before Greenland, the sun set, sort of. It was the slowest sunset I’ve ever seen, and it never completely set (keep in mind this was two days after summer solstice). The horizon was always orange and sometimes touched with brilliant red streaks. Unfortunately, these pictures don’t do it justice. Taking photos through thick, dirty airplane windows in relatively low light does not yield the true picture. I wanted to roll down my plane window and stick my head out the window. 😉

This was my first time seeing Greenland from the air. We were so high that we had a good angle on the lower part of Greenland. The water, rocky coast, ice sheets, and sunset combined for a breathtaking view. Note that most of that is ice, not clouds, in the above photo. Again, it’s difficult to see and not reflective of the true beauty at the time when the photo had to go through that many layers of unclean glass. On the east coast of Greenland I could even see a few lights.

I think I was the only person on the entire plane looking out the window. Everyone else had their windows closed so they could sleep or watch a movie. I was riveted to the view out the window which looked otherworldly. If you are like me, and enjoy aerial views, be sure to get a window seat on the left of your plane if you may ever be flying over Greenland from the west in summer.

Soon after Greenland the sun began to rise again. The sunset/sunrise combo clocked in at about three hours. It never did get dark.

The sun rose perfectly behind the plane wing so that the sea glowed the sun’s orange reflection while I could still view the scene without hurting my eyes by looking at the sun.

At long last we reached the coast of Holland.

Posted on June 25th, 2011 under Other. Tags: aerial photography, sunrise, sunset. Comments Off on Leg 2 (Portland to Amsterdam)

At B&H you can get a camera and lens similar to mine for much less than I paid (until June 25). They are currently offering the Nikon D5100 with 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR AF-S DX II Zoom Lens for under $1,400 after rebate. If that is still a stretch for your budget then you can also go for the same camera with an 18-55mm VR lens for under $850.

Posted on June 6th, 2011 under Other. Tags: photography. Comments Off on Nikon offering rebates on DSLR cameras