The band to get things going on the smallest of the three stages, the Rage Stage, was The Spyderz, with of course the legendary Biohazard frontman Evan Seinfeld on vocals. No bass in his hand this time though. If you check out their MySpace page, you will discover that dear Evan has put his marriage with a porn star to good use. This was a reason that I went to see the show, but I only watched two or three songs, because their mixture of punk, hardcore and rock ‘n roll wasn’t exactly what I was looking for to get this festival started for me. And when those chicks still hadn’t thrown out some titties for me to enjoy, I decided to check out the titties on the other stage, right, Lauren Harris’ titties! [review by DemonDust]

 

Again 22 year old Lauren Harris, daughter of Iron Maiden’s Steve Harris was playing in Holland. Earlier this year she opened up for Iron Maiden and Trivium in the Brabanthallen en now she was the very first band to play at the Mean Stage of this years Fields of Rock festival. I have to admit that I didn’t see much of the show but what I heard was quite alright. I mean, it’s not the most groundbreaking band but as a festival-opener I think the band did a fine job playing its (pop/hard)rock oriented music. The girl sure knows how to hit the right notes and I must say she has quite an appearance for such a young artist. Of course the great looks of Lauren didn’t go unnoticed either! All in all a nice show of a band with probably the hottest singer of the entire weekend! [review by BoEk]

 

Unfortunately nobody in our crew managed to check this band out. We apologise to the fans, band and organisation.

 

I have to admit that I hardly saw anything of this band. What I did see was from a far distance. The set sounded quite solid though and the melodic female vocals of Floor Jansen combined with the deep grunts of guitarist Sander Gommans made sure the band got heard loud and clear playing the Mean Stage. The bombastic orchestral parts combined with heavy metal came through quite clear and their fans had a great time. [review by BoEk]

 

 

I didn’t know jack of the band In This Moment, but the photo in the program-leaflet tickled my interest. Seeing a good looking lady on a metal festival is like finding a German with a sense of humor, indeed it’s very rare…. So I really had to grab this opportunity (although afterwards people told me that she wasn’t that good looking at close). I wasn’t disappointed, she (Maria, the vocalist of In This Moment) was wearing a nice looking light blue dress with a pretty nice décolleté if I may say so. But enough of the way Maria looked, over to the performance….The performance wasn’t groundbreaking, but not bad either. The band showed a lot of energy and the public ate right out of the hand of Maria. She has a good way of manipulating the public and getting them in the right mood. The songs were nice, although the sound wasn’t optimal. Sometimes it sounded more like one big blur, rather than that you could hear the different instruments. But besides that, their performance got me interested in their debut album and I definitely will check it out in the nearby future. [review by Damy]

 

Fastway is probably another band that will raise some questions to the younger visitors of Fields of Rock. Nonetheless Eddy Clark is the guitar player that's responsible for one of the most famous metal songs in history known to us as ‘Ace Of Spades’. Eddy Clarke, who was also known as Fast Eddy, formed Fastway after he was fired by Motörhead and the rest is history. Well, until this day because Fields of Rock managed to pull Fastway together for a show at the festival. The average age was of course over thirty but that didn't seem to bother the band to give a great rock show for the fans of back then. The rest of the audience that didn't know Fastway before had the urge to leave very quickly, including myself. A show that was probably great for the fans of the early days but for the average metal head it wasn't anything special. [review by Niamen]

 

Papa Roach is one of those bands that will probably always do good on a festival. Over the years they have gained a more than respectable fanbase and that includes me too. I had only recently obtained a copy of their latest album but I can’t recall the band playing much of the songs from that album anyway so that wasn’t anything to worry about after all. For a to me unknown reason the band had changed stages with After Forever but I actually don’t give a damn about that anymore. The show turned out to be great anyway. It was actually the first time I got see this band really good (better than those 10 minutes two years ago on FoR 2005). I believe they played pretty much all the songs I wanted to hear; from Infest’s ‘Last Resort’, ‘Broken Home’ and ‘Between Angels And Insects’ to Getting Away With Murder’s ‘Scars’ and Lovehatetragedy’s ‘She Loves Me Not’, they simply were all there! Add the great and active frontman appearance of Jacoby Shaddix to that and you got yourself a great show! If there’s going to be a FoR 2008 this band can easily be booked again. For me, this band certainly belonged to the better ones this weekend. Keep on rocking! [review by BoEk]

 

 

 

Chuck Billy, Steve Souza. Sounds great. Sure, it doesn't sound like Machine Head, but Dublin Death Patrol will definitely do. Armed with a bunch of cover songs (some Motörhead here, some Testament there) and an equal amount of cheerful kick-ass thrash material, DDP is a nice little gem. Probably one of the better merchandise-sellers too, the amount of DDP t-shirt's couldn't possibly be counted throughout the rest of the weekend. [review by Napalm Lex]

 

Iron Maiden, Ozzy Osbourne, Heaven & Hell, Hatebreed, DevilDriver, Slayer, Type O Negative……….Aiden. Need I say more? Pink t-shirts selling emo crap band for twelve year olds. I’m still trying to figure out why this band was playing at FoR but I guess I’ll never understand. Neither did anybody else I talked to. Weird choice! [review by BoEk]

 

Ronnie James Dio used to be in a band named Elf. Now you go and let that sink in. Furthermore, he's probably the greatest rock singer ever in my opinion. Besides the fantastic solo work (‘Ride The Tigah!’) and his classic Rainbow stuff, he also recorded three legendary Black Sabbath albums. As one might remember, Ozzy (cuddly-duddly-grampy-daddy-woobly-woo) is married to a right-out bitch, who manages and bitches (as a bitch tends to do) her husband as well as the immortal doom band he used to front. Somehow the stuck-up bitch thought it a nice idea to advice Tony Iommi and colleagues to not call Black Sabbath Black Sabbath when Ozzy wasn't part of the deal. Oh well. Why rant. Heaven And Hell served classics such as 'Sign Of The Southern Cross', 'Mob Rules', and 'Heaven & Hell' all stand the test of time, but I can't help but thinking I like Sabbath with Ozzy, and Ronnie Dio solo better. Somehow it just feels right that way. Still they gave away a great show that was highly appreciated by the fans as I can tell from their facial expressions and their oh-so-evil horns. [review by Napalm Lex]

 

It is disappointing that Mastodon still hasn’t done a headlining club tour in Europe after the release of Blood Mountain, so they were one of the main reasons I was at this festival in the first place. Their 45 minutes of heavy rock and metal were my most intense activity of the entire festival, dance for life right? Tracks from all three full length albums were played, like ‘Sleeping Giant’, ‘March Of The Fire Ants’ and ‘Blood And Thunder’, but the sound remained pretty crappy for their entire set. Still this couldn’t spoil the fun for a big share of the fans in front of the stage, because it was one hell of a party over there. Rock out with your cock out! [review by DemonDust]

 

 

 

Pain Of Salvation is probably a band that you either love or hate. With their progressive rock they march over the borders and put influences in their music of every style they have ever heard of. During the set even some disco music manage to terrorize my ears. So for Pain Of Salvation it’s too bad I’m the “hate-type”. Listening to their music for a few songs was more like a torture to me than a pleasure. Of course there are probably lots of people who like them but I’m not one of them. [review by Niamen]

 

I’m not even that old and I already can’t remember how many times I’ve seen Slayer! After a pretty nice show at the Unholy Alliance tour with a quite disappointing Tom Araya I held my breath to find out how they would sound here at Fields of Rock. It proved to be surprisingly good actually! A tight, heavy and brutal show was given by one of the most experienced brutal metal bands in the world, and even Tom was completely back in action. Although he still skipped some lyrics in certain songs, he still sang them out loud in front of the stage, giving a convincing show. After the track ‘Die By The Sword’ a Dave Lombardo drum solo followed (the best a man can get, in metal that is!), proceeding into ‘Show No Mercy’ and ‘Captor Of Sin’, two very nice surprises indeed. Personally I think this was one of the better Slayer shows since quite a while, let’s hope they can keep this up now! [review by DemonDust]

 

 

 

If there is one band that never slows down it must be DragonForce. Melodic speed metal and fast paced power metal are thrown at the crowd with great expertise and in such a high tempo that it could be considered music for the trained ear only. I guess that leaves me with an untrained ear ‘cause this music doesn’t really do that much to me. I mean, I sure admit that it’s good and that this is a band with a lot of potential but to me it all sounds kind of the same. Add up that the songs are all quite lengthy (6 to 8 minutes each) and you might understand why this band gets me bored quite quickly. Nevertheless they gave away a very tight show and judging from the crowd’s reaction their fans seemed to love it! Together with the energetic stage performance I think DragonForce did just fine. [review by BoEk]

 

 

 

Unfortunately nobody in our crew managed to check this band out. We apologise to the fans, band and organisation.

 

Iron Maiden (Mean Stage)

At an Iron Maiden show it's easy to feel like a fourteen year old. Like Danko Jones says: when you're fourteen everything blows you away. In that respect, Iron Maiden is perfect. Janick Gers throws his guitar around, Steve Harris mimics his bass guitar as if it's a machinegun, Bruce Dickinson runs around and manages to turn that alone into a performance. On top of all those basic ingredients, one amazing backdrop slides away to reveal an even more impressive one, a huge tank appears at the back of the stage (with Eddie behind the buttons). Rammstein, Kiss, Rob Zombie... Alas, Iron Maiden bring the greatest show alive. It just strikes a chord. And I haven't even mentioned the music yet. The goosebumps during the collectively sung ‘Fear Of The Dark’, the excitement during the ‘Number Of The Beast’-intro. The disbelief when we all hear Bruce say they're about to play the rarity ‘Children Of The Damned’. The sheer chills down my spine during ‘The Evil That Men Do’, ‘Two Minutes To Midnight’ and ‘Hallowed Be Thy Name’. Amazingly powerful. Twenty-five years active, and enchanting as ever. Near the end we saw Chuck Billy dwelling through the crowd, big smile on his face. Go figure, Billy's band Dublin Death Patrol played about six hours earlier. Metalheads stick around. Iron Maiden can't be fought! [review by Napalm Lex]