Ex Eye’s Colin Stetson

@colin_stetson #rf16 @summerfieldt

Ex Eye was the surprise of the Roskilde Festival for me. While I probably wouldn’t have gotten into Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats without the Roskilde Festival (as I listened to Uncle Acid nearly nonstop in the weeks leading up to festival), Ex Eye wasn’t even on my radar. And why should they have been? They haven’t recorded anything. Roskilde was just their second performance ever I think. However, I had a couple hours to kill between Uncle Acid and Black Breath so I started looking at the details of the bands playing in that time frame. The Roskilde Festival website described Ex Eye as “hard and heavy” so I figured I would check them out.

Ex Eye’s Toby Summerfield

Wow! What an incredible show. First of all, the Gloria Stage is kind of amazing. I’ll post more photos of the venue later. It’s fairly intimate for Roskilde, but all kinds of trippy things are going on with the lighting. Then Ex Eye hits the stage and just blows everyone away. There are videos of their performance on Youtube now, but they don’t really do the set justice. You really had to be there to experience it to even come close to understanding how awesome it was at that moment.

Ex Eye at 2016 Roskilde Festival on the Gloria Stage

Posted on July 5th, 2016 under Denmark. Tags: AF-S NIKKOR 85mm f/1.8G lens, concert photography, ex eye, metal, Nikon D500, roskilde festival, Tokina AT-X 11-20mm F2.8 PRO DX. Comments Off on Ex Eye @ Roskilde

Neil Young and “Promise of the Real” on the Orange Stage at 2016 Roskilde

I’ve seen Neil Young many times over the years. And I will see him again at Desert Trip in Southern California later this year (October I think). But his performance at Roskilde really got me. I don’t know exactly what it was–the setlist, something in the air, the rain stopping just before he went on, his “conducting” of Promise of the Real, or just the fact that I haven’t seen him in over a decade? I don’t know, but it really worked for me.

The above photo was taken with an extremely wide-angle lens. I actually wasn’t that far from the stage. The video, below, of Powderfinger is from a guy standing just behind and to the right of me. Of course he has it zoomed up a bit for most of the video.

The setlist, BTW, was:
After the Gold Rush (on piano)
Heart of Gold
The Needle and the Damage Done
Mother Earth (on pump organ)
Out on the Weekend
Unknown Legend
Human Highway
Someday
Alabama
Words
Winterlong
Love to Burn
Powderfinger
Mansion on the Hill
Western Hero
Vampire Blues
Country Home
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Seed Justice
Rockin’ in the Free World
Love and Only Love

Posted on July 5th, 2016 under Denmark. Tags: concert photography, neil young, Nikon D500, roskilde festival, Tokina AT-X 11-20mm F2.8 PRO DX. Comments Off on Neil Young @ Roskilde

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.

Posted on July 4th, 2016 under Denmark. Tags: concert photography, metal, Nikon D500, roskilde festival, sumac, Tokina AT-X 11-20mm F2.8 PRO DX. Comments Off on Last but not least

Black Breath @ Roskilde 2016 (June 30, 2016)

#rf16 @orangefeeling @southernlordeu

My first day of Roskilde 2016 went better than expected. I was lukewarm on some of the bands I was going to be seeing (Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats, Ex Eye, Black Breath, Kvelertak, Tsjuder, and Ghost), but they all exceeded expectations. In fact every one of them were really enjoyable.

Black Breath was way better live than I was anticipating. Neil’s vocals in the studio are turned up too high and too Panteraish for my liking, but live he was a lot of fun and an excellent front man.

The lighting and some of the stages at Roskilde have improved significantly since I was here in 2011. The lighting is really amazing, even on the smaller stages.

Today’s photo is from the Pavilion Stage.

Posted on July 1st, 2016 under Denmark. Tags: black breath, concert photography, metal, Nikon D500, roskilde festival, Tokina AT-X 11-20mm F2.8 PRO DX. Comments Off on Roskilde 2016

Abbath @ Copenhell VII

Today Abbath turns 43. I saw him twice last week, and he didn’t look a day over 39.

Friday night he treated us to a blistering Abbath set, with some Immortal classics tossed in for good measure, and some fire breathing as well. Saturday night (Sunday morning actually as they didn’t go on until after Black Sabbath at 1:30 a.m.), he played the role of Lemmy Kilmister in Bombers Bergen. The most awesome part of Abbath’s role in Bombers was his shifting back and forth between his Abbath and Lemmy characters. One moment he’d have his neck craned back in full Lemmy mode under the downward pointed microphone and the next he’d be doing the Abbath shuffle across the stage. Awesome. I will never forget being treated to such an experience.

Posted on June 27th, 2016 under Denmark. Tags: abbath, AF-S NIKKOR 85mm f/1.8G lens, concert photography, copenhell, immortal, Nikon D500. Comments Off on ♫ Happy Birthday Dear Abbath… ♬