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Fields Of Rock 2005 - A heavy and extremely hot day in the park
Once again Fields of Rock was taking place in Goffert Park, Nijmegen. This year organiser Mojo Concerts managed to get one of the better Metal line ups in the Dutch Festival history. With bands like Black Sabbath, Rammstein, Chimaira and Machine Head almost 40.000 tickets were sold in the pre-sale process. A couple days before the festival the weather improved and the forecasts were amazing. At the festival there was no cloud visible the entire day and with temperatures between 25 and 30 degrees Celsius, great music it just was meant to be. The entire line up for the festival can be found on our Time Table.



No less than five metalragers report! Enjoy this review by Buzzin Hornet, Arcane, Boek, Demondust and Napalm Lex.


Main Stage A

Motorhead
Lemmy. Roaring Amps. Mikkey Dee. Bikers. Bomber. Ace Of Spades. Fat women sun drying their enormous tits in the sun. Fat dudes getting Drunk at three o clock in the afternoon. Fourteen year olds singing along word for word. Fourteen year olds scratching their nuts in disgust. The most legendary wart in rock.
Motörhead, I love it.
[Napalm Lex]




Velvet Revolver
The band Velvet Revolver is about one thing to the people and that is Guns’n’Roses guitar player Slash. And that is what the crowd was constantly shouting when we were taking pictures. The album that got released last year wasn’t received too well and when I was looking the same thing happened on stage.


Because the band has got huge artists in their line up they were playing the main stage but actually the music wasn’t worth this position. Slash was stealing the show and every single guy up front was watching his solos and moves. After a couple of songs I saw everything I wanted to see and moved on. To me this band just isn’t worth watching the entire show.
[Buzzin Hornet]

Black Sabbath
The last time I saw Ozzy was at Ozzfest in 2002 in Nijmegen. Then he was jumping around. But when I see his show on tv, The Osbournes, he's like my grandpa who had a stroke. So I Was very curious how he would be like now. The show started with a compilation of their most wellknown songs, on tape that is, with Ozzy yelling with it. Black Sabbath played great songs like Warpigs, Black Sabbath, The Wizard, Children of the Grave (which is my favorite Sabbath song) and of course Paranoid and Iron Man. It was really great to see the complete audience singing the ironman tune.

About Ozzy: Well he is becoming an old man, but he gives all that he's got. It surely looks funny when he is trying to jump around on the stage, but he does, he is doing his show. And I never heard someone screaming, 'I can't hear you' as often as Ozzy during a show. The front row was treated to some cooling downs as Ozzy threw water. Ozzy isn't the only one who is getting old, Bill Ward doesn't look younger than Ozzy, but he surely hasn't lost his abillity to rock and roll behind his drums. Great Performance.
[Arcane]


Main Stage B

Papa Roach
Papa Roach was also playing one of the main stages and once again a band played this stage that does not belong there. Yes, they are a good live band (occasionally) and they surely were playing a great show but a band like Gorefest, Soulfly or Machine Head deserves this spot more than Papa Roach. From our point of view the sound was pretty good and the band went completely bezerk. I do not know what the audience did because we just could not see. But songs I can remember are Getting Away With Murder and Take Me. Like I said before, a great show for opening, but the tent stage would be a better location for these guys.
[Buzzin Hornet]

Slayer
Face it, when you put on a metal festival, and Slayer's in the neighbourhood, you gotta book em. And even though the sound quality was somewhat awfull where I was standing, it's always a good thing to hear yeh ol' metal classics like Reign In Blood, Chemical Warfare and of course Angel Of Death. And come on, what do you want me to say? We've seen Slayer play europe so many times the last five years. The same stuff as always, no surprises, and maybe in Slayer's case that's a good thing. Don't know what to think of Araya's Goathee though.
[Napalm Lex]

Audioslave
Somehow along the way, somewhere between Zeppelin and present time, Rock n Roll has lost it's edge. Everyone must agree, rock is not that dangerous anymore. It's the music your dad listens to. And even worse, he was here in Nijmegen today, rocking out to Audioslave. The band that consists of 75% Stopped-Raging-Against-The-Machine After
Becoming The-Machine-Itself and Corny Chris. The band that has it's second album out, that your mom owns and has filed next to Julio Iglesias, Kane and Bon Jovi Unplugged. That band that gets 10.000 idiots jumping and shouting "fuck you I won't do what you tell me" (didn't you guys just do exactly what he told you to do?). That band that is as nice and polite as the football cantines where their music is played along with Bro Hymn and Break Stuff. Boy, I hope I never turn fourty. Somebody shoot me.
[Napalm Lex]


Rammstein
Rammstein is well known for it's performances all around the world, and at FOR they showed us why. They surely wanted us to remember Rammstein even when you are getting demented. Damn what a show. The curtain felt, and there was Rammstein, playing the first song of this gig, Reise Reise. The stage was awesome, it had two levels, equipped with elevators. Great songs were on the playlist like Links 2,3,4 , Ich Will, Du riechst so gut, Sonne, Mein Teil, Keine Lust, Amerika and of course Rammstein. The show they performed was really great, lots of light effects and lots, lots, lots of fireworks.


Unholy smoke at the Rammstein gig

Usually when I try to teach my students to count in the German language, they have some problems. But during Sonne, everyone was able to sing along, perhaps I should use this song in my lessons. As someone who teaches the German language it is great to see and hear about 50,000 people singing German Lyrics. Rammstein ended their gig with a choir version of Engel, very nice.
[Arcane]


Tent Stage

Metal Church
Ok, I don’t know any music of this band. Therefore I can’t even tell you if they played a nice set, but judging by the size of the audience during their set, Metal Church surely was attractive to quite a lot of people. For the rest, I can’t tell anything about this show, I’m sorry guys! (shame on you, Erik! -ed Napalm Lex)
[Boek]

Team Sleep
The side project of Chino Moreno also played at the Fields of Rock festival and he watched almost every band at the festival. But his performance with Team Sleep was a premiere in the Netherlands. The band started with a long instrumental part and the setting up stage was almost magic. But the music just isn’t my thing. The drummer is just amazing and he just kept smashing on his drums, and with that we mean he just was going crazy with fills, crashes and strange combinations. Chino looked quite sober on stage and that is something the Dutch audience isn’t used to after the legendary Waldrock performance a couple of years back.


That guy sure looooves a good pork-chop

The album of the band just got released so the only material I have heard was of this album. After this band Mastodon was playing and a lot of their fans were upfront watching this band, most of them were, just like me, not very impressed by the show and were anxiously waiting for the next band of the day.
[Buzzin Hornet]

The Dillinger Escape Plan
Of course, this was one of those bands I had to see this day. Because of their energetic live shows I was really looking forward to see these guys again. And man, was I happy to witness this legendary show! Vocalist Greg felt really ill and puked all over the stage during the set. Not really tasty, but funny as hell! From the very beginning DEP threw out all their aggression and energy. And the people in the middle of the tent? I can imagine they weren’t that happy with vocalist Greg throwing his mic standard(!!!) into the crowd, awesome! Some boxes followed and everything that could possibly move (or not) moved on AND off stage. The band played most of the songs from their Miss Machine album and all in all this show was so funny, energetic and aggressive that it was a truly legendary show to me and Buzzin Hornet.
[Boek]

Chimaira
On of the bands I was looking forward to was Chimaira, with a new album coming in August they were going to play two new songs and it was the first show with their new drummer Kevin Talley in the Netherlands. The band loves playing live and normally they play short powerfull sets. Because they got 50 minutes of fame this time I was expecting a slower set. But the set was amazing to see, lead singer Mark Hunter lost his dreads but his voice was awesome this time. The set started with Pure Hatred and the new songs Nothing Remains and Comatose were really surprising. With these new songs Chimaira is entering a new stage in their career.


Metal Moses sure wasn't "Sick Of It All" that afternoon!

They dropped their Metal Mozes part (finally) and just did what was expected of the band. Playing as loud as possible and pump up the audience. In the last two years I have seen this band moving forward constantly. In the beginning the live show wasn’t that good but they sure know what to do on stage these days. The band will release the album in two months and they told the audience they would be back in September. We are looking forward to that show already because Chimaira is going to be legendary!
[Buzzin Hornet]

Machine Head
And once again Rob Flynn hit the Netherlands with his band. At half past 7 it was time for Machine Head to hit the tent stage after a great show from label mates Chimaira. Although an hour of playing time is way too short for a band like Machine Head, they sure gave away an awesome show, one I won’t forget soon. The show contained a couple of highlights. First of all there was ‘Descend The Shades Of Night’, dedicated to Dimebag. Hundreds of people were clapping during the acoustic parts of the song and Rob Flynn and his men were obviously enjoying every single second on stage.


Let Freedom Ring... God damn, Chino's fat!

Another great, great highlight of the show was the guest appearance of Chimaira vocalist Mark Hunter. Together with Flynn he sang a song and just when everybody expected him to go off the stage again, he took over the bass-guitar from Adam. Which made Machine Head bassist Adam, the Machine Head vocalist for a few minutes. Extra addition to this all, they played ‘Seek ‘n Destroy’ from Metallica. Once again Machine Head proved to be the biggest party band for me.
[Boek]



MTV Stage

Skip The Rush
Skip The Rush is a promising band for the future of the Dutch rock history. With their ‘neurorock’ they had won the MTV contest and opened the MTV stage. And this may be awkward because the music is a bit strange for this festival, but after they started, the crowd actually became curious and slowly the field before the stage filled quite nicely. The sound of the band was good, the songs were great and singer Jaap did some nice ad-lips during the songs that I did not expect.



The band sure enjoyed their performance on their first big festival and the die hard fans upfront gave the band the response they deserve. Songs like Elephant Song, A Man Is His Job and Eye White were played. And these are just amazing songs and they are great live on stage. If you ever get the chance to see this band live in a smaller venue I can advise you to go and watch these guys. With their own sound and a very good live show they sure will convince you.
[Buzzin Hornet]

Gorefest
When I heard Gorefest would replace Arch Enemy at FOR I was very, very pleased. When I started to listen to metal, Erase was one of the first death metal records I owned. Damn, I still love that album. So you can imagine how I enjoyed Gorefest at Dynamo Open Air 2005. And then they would play at FOR, hell yeah!!
Gorest’s gig was during the gig of Slayer at the Main stage, but there were many metalheads at the MTV stage to see/hear Gorefest. And they enjoyed it, that was very obvious.
At the time their performance started I was standing right in front of the Stage, but the moshpit some metalheads started was growing, and growing. Damn, those guys were freaking out! There were even people in the pit who were about 40 years old (Well I think they looked that old). At the end of the gig I was standing 5 meters to the right.
Back to Gorefest. An awesome show, I must say! Great songs like: Low, Fear, From Ignorance To Oblivion and Confessions Of A Serial Killer were brought to the audience.
Tip for the roady who played the guitars: learn to play!
[Arcane]

Dreadlock Pussy
One of the five Dutch bands that were present at Fields of Rock was a band that exists for quite some years now, Dreadlock Pussy. A band that doesn’t really attract me, but still enough for me to check them out once. I’ve got to admit that I only saw two songs, and they sounded quite well. The problem with this band for me, are the vocals. They just don’t seem to fit that well in the music. But looking at the amount of people in front of the MTV Stage that moment, this band did quite a good job.
[Boek]

Helmet
Listening to the ancient rock sounds of Helmet seemed to be an excuse for many to catch a bit of shade on this immensly hot day. Some kids didn't even bother to get up when the band started playing, and just remained sitting there. After kicking one or two Linkin Park dorks with pointy hair in the back "oh, sorry was that me?", I focused on the show that kicked some ass and managed to get more and more people's interest. Hearing their (dirty word coming up) grungy rock music was a cool refreshment from all the metal action going on today, and soon more and more of the older attending audience found their way to the MTV stage. After hearing a couple of good one-liners, like "we want to thank MTV for letting us enter the contest" I had to leave to enjoy a good spot at the mainstage for Black Sabbath. Helmet's cool though.
[Napalm Lex]

Soulfly
Max Cavalera is about to record the next album with the same line up as the previous one. This is pretty strange. Is Soulfly finally in the right setup? Well, on stage they sure are. Once again Soulfly was Soulfly but the members that are playing the same songs like before are doing a great job.


The band was playing on the smallest stage of the festival but they sure knew what to do to get the audience moving. With songs like Phrophecy, Downstroy, Seek’n’Strike and Roots Bloody Roots they played a reckonable set list but the atmosphere is much better and it seems to be a solid formation this time. Did it finally happen? Only the future can reveal this mystery!
[Buzzin Hornet]

So there you have it, Holland's biggest rock festival of the year. After almost 12 hours of metal and hardrock, we all left the festival grounds with alcohol in our blood, ringing in our ears and skin peeling off our backs. Allready looking forward to the next Fields Of Rock, whenever it will be... Maybe next time Iron Maiden? Whatever and whenever it will be, we will be there as you expect us to be. See y'all around at the other summer festivals in Europe! Ahoy!
Details Written on Saturday Jan 1st, 2005
Writer @Lex

Tags: #Fields Of Rock 2005