Metalrage loves the Roadburn festival. This festival is time and time again a great 4 day trip of the best stoner, doom and psychedelic rock music amongst others.  We just simply can’t wait until the next edition in April 2014, but fortunately the 013 venue, the home of Roadburn, has a Roadburn approved summer program with the slogan “After the Afterburner”. This week we’ll be treated by Torche and Pelican and a couple of weeks ago we saw Black Pyramid and Toner Low doing a great job, but today it was time for a killer Tee Pee Records night with Earthless, The Atomic Bitchwax and opener Mirror Queen.

Just before the show started there already was this typical and relax Roadburn atmosphere in the city and especially on the different terraces around the corner of the venue and this made the start of the evening even better. Entering the 013 Mirror Queen just started with their modern take on the typical 70s hard rock sound. Mixing that sound with a little stoner they did a great job warming up the crowd for what was yet to come, but unfortunately for them due to the good weather the biggest part of the people were still enjoying a couple of beers on some random terrace. At this point this wasn’t really clear so I had some question about the attendance.

When The Atomic Bitchwax kicked off I wished I would have kept my mouth shut, because the room was almost fully packed and the temperature kept rising rapidly. Lately I’ve been listening a lot to especially their TAB 4 record and was really looking forward to seeing them doing their thing live. This band has a real “play what you want” attitude and combines 60s psychedelic rock with crazy riffs from the 70s to create a motherfucking catchy stoner sound. Especially with a song like ‘Hope You Die’ from their debut album they displayed their admirable effort to entertain the crowd. Job well done if you ask me.

And then, Earthless. Back in the venue where they had their big European breakthrough.  Back in 2008, at the Roadburn festival of course, they played the smallest room in front of 150 people just before headliner ISIS in the main room (approximately 2.000 people) left the stage after only played for about 3 quarters. With no bands playing in the other rooms at that time the organization rushed towards Earthless with the question if they could fill up the gap at the main stage. As quickly as possible they put up their gear and jammed their way through a second set and they audience loved it. This time we’re in the second room of the venue, capacity 350, and everybody present was just (again) blown away by jet another amazing performance of this threesome! The first 60 minutes or so they played three instrumental songs and all three just sounded like the perfect jam. Their psychedelic rock has been refined down to the smallest detail and with a lot of passion they delivered it in a flawless way. After a short break they performed an encore of two songs. One being new material and the other the cover song ‘Cherry Red’. Although not every fan is happy with vocals on these two tracks, they just don’t really need it, it resulted in a great ending of an insanely tight, groovy, astonishing, memorable (I can keep going on like this all day) and not to be missed performance!