Portishead confirmed for new festival Harvest

The promoters who brought you Soundwave and Soundwave Revolution are at it again with new alternative festival Harvest.

Taking place in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne in mid November 2011, Harvest will see the phenomenal Portishead return to Australia after a 14 year absence. Sharing the stage with them will be The National, The Flaming Lips, Bright Eyes and a plethora of other amazing talent.

Promoters said the following about Harvest:

Harvest follows a simple design:

Take the line-up of your typical European multi day event, cut out the filler and the acts that everyone has seen once too many times and pack all the greatness into one incredible day for discerning music lovers.

Next you limit the capacity and exclude rugrats to ensure comfort while substantially increasing the quality and quantity of amenities, services, food outlets and the variety of food & beverage options provided.

Last but definitely not least, create a mesmerising atmosphere by setting the events in magnificent, natural, green environments; show off all that natural beauty with ambient lighting and visual effects; and place within it art installations, holistic markets, cocktail bars and a plethora of performers — from visual and live arts mavericks to neo-cabaret stars.

First line up announcement:

Portishead
The National
The Flaming Lips
Bright Eyes
Hypnotic Brass Ensemble
Holy Fuck
The Family Stone
Mercury Rev
Death In Vegas
The Walkmen
Dappled Cities
PVT
This Town Needs Guns
The Holidays
Phosphorescent
Foxy Shazam
Kormac’s Big Band

Harvest Dates and Tickets
Saturday November 12 – Harvest Presents “The Gathering”, Melbourne, Werribee Park
Sunday November 13 – Harvest, Sydney, Parramatta Park
Saturday November 19 – Harvest, Brisbane, Botanical Gardens

General Public tickets go on sale via http://www.harvestfestival.com.au,
Oztix www.oztix.com.au & Ticketek www.ticketek.com.au
Thursday August 4 at 9:00am $150 incl GST + Booking Fees

Soundwave Revolution lineup finally revealed

The rumours have been spinning, bands have been leaked and the internet has been in overdrive trying to find out who will be coming out for Soundwave Revolution in late September, early October 2011.

Finally, the official lineup has been released, and it seems to be catering to your dad and your 16 year old sister.

Luckily my dad has sweet taste in music, Van Halen, Alice Cooper and Bad Religion are going to kill it, but seriously, The Pretty Reckless? What were you thinking AJ Maddah!

Prognosis : Sideshows for president!

Lineup:
Van Halen
Alice Cooper
Bad Religion
Panic! At The Disco
Machine Head
Hole
Sisters Of Mercy
Danzig
Kevin Devine
Alter Bridge
The Pretty Reckless
All Time Low
Dashboard Confessional
Gojira
Hatebreed
Hollywood Undead
Street Dogs
Attack! Attack!
Watain
The Used
Relient K
Face To Face
Framing Hanley
Cro-Mags
Sum 41
Kvelertak
Yellowcard
Holy Grail
Unearth
Times of Grace
Funeral For a Friend
D.R.U.G.S.
Steel Panther
Thursday
Devin Townsend
Black Veil Brides
Zebrahead
The Dangerous Summer
Set Your Goals
Hellogoodbye
We Are The In Crowd
The Word Alive
In This Moment
HELLYEAH
Skindred
The Damned Things
Every Time I Die
The Acacia Strain
Whitechapel
Madina Lake
Make Do and Mend
Story of The Year
We Are The Ocean
Young Guns
Four Year Strong
This Providence
The Swellers
Terrible Things

Soundwave Revolution Dates:
Brisbane – 24th September 2011
Sydney – 25th September 2011
Melbourne – 30th September 2011
Adelaide – 1st October 2011
Perth – 3rd October 2011

Tickets are due to go on sale Thursday 2nd June at 9am with pre-sale available for Soundwave members. BUY TICKETS HERE

Gig Review: The Gaslight Anthem @ The Metro (28/02/11)

How do you put what happened that night into words? I’ve been staring at this page just shaking my head for the better part of 15 minutes now, just trying to explain the magic that is The Gaslight Anthem. Maybe if I just start from the start…

Diehard fans believe no one can hold a candle (or a gas light) to Gaslight Anthem. The hardest thing in the world would be to open up for a band revered by so many; Delaying the crowd from being in the presence of their musical icons. You expect docile applause, heckling and chants of the headline act – but once in a while a band comes along that does the support slot justice. Foxy Shazam was that band.

A late addition to the bill – Polar Bear Club had been scheduled to support the mighty Gaslight, but pulled out within the last month – Foxy Shazam basically had a blank slate with the crowd at Sydney’s Metro theatre. I mean, who had ever heard of them? Truth: No one who was in the crowd will ever forget them.

Brian Fallon (Gaslight Anthem front man), put it best when he described Foxy Shazam’s front man Eric Sean Nally as “the love child of Steve Tyler and James Brown”.  Writhing around on stage like a epileptic and jumping around like a wound up toy, Nally fronted a rag-tag group of misfits and apparent deviants who  not only put on a fucking brilliantly entertaining show, but who also were all incredibly accomplished musicians.

Stage antics highlights: Frog jumps, body mechanics, push ups, commando rolls, headstands, back climbing, story-telling, playing your keyboard through your legs, playing your keyboard while on your head, playing on your keyboard while standing on it & a doo-wop acappella finale. Amazing.

As the very foxy, Foxy Shazam left the stage, the sold out metro started to sweat with excitement. By the time red curtain opened and the New Jersey four-piece swaggered on, the anticipation was palpable.

“We’re the Gaslight Anthem  and we’re from New Jersey. We don’t have any jokes, so we’re just going to play some songs,” Brian quietly said to the screaming crowd before bursting into their first track.

Combining the best parts of Bruce Springsteen and The Misfits, Gaslight Anthem are the epitome of the Jersey Sound – Working class heroes on a journey through love and heartbreak from the crowded streets of Manhattan to the boardwalks of the Jersey Shore.

Kicking out tracks from all three of their LPs as well as the amazing ‘Blue Jeans & White T-Shirts’ from their EP Senor and The Queen, the hour and a half set at the metro not only cemented Gaslight as one of the best live bands getting around today, but also proved that their entire catalogue is – to quote Sum 41 – all killer, no filler.

Front man Brian Fallon offered a complete contrast to Nally of Foxy Shazam. While both are incredible storytellers and had the Metro eating out of the palm of their hands, Fallon did so with as much humble modesty as Nally did extraverted flair.

While Nally’s nervous energy made him seem slightly pretentious and Hives-esque, the huge smile on Fallon’s face when the crowd took over vocal duties on Here’s Looking At You, Kid made you believe he was genuinely surprised by how embraced his band were with audiences so far from home.

Faux – closing their set on Backseats from The 59 Sound before returning for a six song encore (Really? That’s practically a whole other set), The Gaslight anthem galloped into their final song – a hard hitting cover of The Who’s Baba O’Reily. And then, alas, Gaslights love affair with Sydney came to an end as they took their bows and left the stage – promising to return to our shores sooner rather than later.

What a fucking great band. What a fucking great show.

Gig Review: Soundwave @ Sydney Showground (27/02/11)

Soundwave 2011 was all in all a fairly damn exhausting festival, featuring many ups and downs. The excellent venue change was combated by overpriced mid-strength drinks and even more over-priced food. And the bands? Ahhh, the bands…

I arrived right at the start to check out Feeder. Was good fun, there was next to no one in the crowd when they started but by the time they were done there were a couple of hundred people there who goaded them into playing ‘Buck Rogers’. Lead singer “You’d better sing along to this one because we’re playing a pop song at a heavy metal festival”. Quality stuff.

Post Feeder it was time for The Gaslight Anthem. Packing out the tent at stage three, Gaslight put on a decent set, pretty tight but not totally engaging. The crowd loved it though. The setlist was weighted heavily by songs from their third album, which I think is their weakest by a good margin. Played a new song which I thought was even weaker still. Spent a fair part of the set laughing at the three people in front of me who were dressed/dancing like they should have been at Parklife. Awesome Fluoro.

Went for a wander and came back in for the last five odd songs of Sum 41. Tent was absolutely packed, which I’d put down to no one else of note playing at the same time. Set could be summed up as crowd loved the old stuff, completely indifferent to anything new. Fat Lip singalong was excellent fun though, especially as I was hanging out with mates from high school.

Millencolin then came on and played what for mine was the set of the day. ‘Pennybridge Pioneers’ played (nearly) in full from start to finish. Their 40 minute set time meant they had to cut ‘Highway Donkey’ from the set as the album clocks in pretty much bang on forty minutes. Playing ‘Pennybridge’ meant that come time for set closer ‘The Ballad’ I had to quickly run as far away from the stage as I could because that song is so goddamn sad. That poor poor kid, being last selection for some non-descript ball game. Heartwrenching stuff. (Side note: Me and my mate went to the artist signing later in the day and had a chat to them and asked them why they cut ‘Pepper’ from the set, and they were like “We didn’t, we cut ‘Highway Donkey’!”. We felt like noobs. Totally nice guys though.)

Post Millencolin, I purchased a $10 Kransky (which was 100% a hot dog) and sat down to watch Primus. That shit was way too weird so I quickly bailed. Then went for a wander around the grounds before ending up at Dimmu Borgir. Dimmu were awesome, half for their skills & brutality and half for bringing the Norwegian black metal lulz.

After perhaps six songs of Dimmu, my mate was very keen to go check out Slash so we popped along to the mainstage for some aural pain. Slash is an excellent guitarist and an amazing person purely for the fact that he’s still standing. Unfortunately he’s not good enough to carry a band, especially when that band is filled with absolute plonkers. The lead singer reminded me of Steven Tyler’s retarded younger brother trying to do an Axl Rose impression and the rest of the band were complete tools. When they started playing ‘Sweet Child Of Mine’ I remembered how much I hate Guns ‘N Roses and begged my mate to leave.

Leaving there early meant we were able to catch the first three songs of Social Distortion (fine, but indifferent) and Ill Nino (hilarious) before the mighty Slayer were set to perform. As people turned post Ill Nino to the adjacent stage containing absolutely no equipment it was obvious something was amiss. After 15 minutes of waiting Andrew Haug bravely apologised to the crowd for Tom Araya’s inability to perform that afternoon due to being sick. This started a minor barrage of cups and plastic bottles being thrown towards the stage, though the onslaught surely would have been greater had it not been Haugy up there delivering the bad news.

The Slayer setback meant I was free to check out Zack De La Rocha’s new group One Day As A Lion. Though slightly tentative going into it (mainly due to the fact that the band has only released one twenty minute EP and they were playing a forty five minute set), the band managed to bring a fresh new sound championed by De La Rocha’s charismatic, energetic rhyming.

One Day As A Lion let way for Queens Of The Stone Age to serve out a quality set of high calibre rock and roll. Josh Homme certainly knows how to bring the swagger and Joey Castillo may be one of the most rocking drummers in the world. The set won nearly the whole crowd over, the exception being the bogan Maiden fan in front of me who would yell at the screen any time Homme would appear and yell openly at Dave Grohl that he was terrible. Mistaken identity fail, human being fail.

QOTSA’s exit meant only one thing: MAIDEN! MAIDEN! MAIDEN! MAIDEN! The crowd were eagerly packed in awaiting the metal legends and after a short introduction video the band hit the stage, bursting straight into ‘The Final Frontier’. And oh sweet Jesus, how lame it was. If I wanted to see a bunch of old men embarrass themselves I would go and visit my grandfather at his nursing home. But I don’t (because it smells terrible), and as a result couldn’t get away from Iron Maiden fast enough, and subsequently left Soundwave  even though there were many excellent bands still to see.

On the way home I found out I share my birthday not only with Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson, but also footballing disgrace Kevin Muscat, the lead singer of the band Hatebreed and alleged terrorist David Hicks. August 7^th: The day of the scumbag.

– Thomas Grealy

Soundwave Festival 2011 time tables released

With Australia’s biggest Punk & Hardcore festival, Soundwave 2011, only two months off, festival organisers have released time tables for the tour.

Before you start crying because This Town Needs Guns and Gaslight Anthem clash, remember that these timetables are only drafts, and they might change at any time.

Sydney Timetable

Brisbane Timetable

Melbourne Timetable

Adelaide Timetable

Perth Timetable

So how is your day looking?

Soundwave 2011 line up leaked

Has the Soundwave 2011 line-up been leaked via a poster?

This camera phone image of a press clipping was leaked to the internet at midnight last night, and according to it, Soundwave 2011 will be giving a lot of props to hardcore and punks past.

Headlined by Iron Maiden, also on the bill are Slash, Queens of the Stone Age, Slayer, Primus, Gang Of Four, Gaslight Anthem, Melvins and a trolley load more.

Full announcement when this image rumour is 3000% confirmed. So far we are sitting on 2800% confirmation.

Soundwave 2011 confirm festival dates

Soundwave festival has announced the dates for its 2011 shows, and, despite speculation, Adelaide is included in the list.

With The Blackout and Protest The Hero already confirmed for Soundwave 2011, eager soon-to-be- punters are now waiting for the full line up announcement, which should be released in the coming months.

Soundwave festival 2011:
Saturday 26th February – Brisbane
Sunday 27th February – Sydney
Friday 4th March – Melbourne
Saturday 5th March – Adelaide
Monday 7th March – Perth

R.I.P. Adelaide Soundwave

A.J. Maddah, organiser of Australia’s premiere punk festival Soundwave, has made a shock announcement over twitter this morning that it looks like the end for the Adelaide leg of the tour.

Maddah tweeted:

“As od [sic] this morning, it looks highly likely that we can no longer proceed with Soundwave in Adelaide.

“Adelaide City Council have decided to apply the same rent charges to each of the load-in, set-up and tear down days as charged for show day

“Adelaide City Council also want to take a % of each ticket you buy to Soundwave.

“So with rent icreasing [sic] x 1100%, charges per ticket & the fact rest of country is already subsidising Adelaide, this is the end of SW Adel”

In response to one upset follower, Maddah said they were planning on coming up with cheap travel packages from Adelaide so South Australians could still attend other legs of the tour.

R.I.P. Soundwave Adelaide.

Closure In Moscow respond to sacking

Closure In Moscow have responded to their public ejection from the Soundwave festival lineup.

We’d like to take a moment and address briefly the outrageous claims by Mr. Maddah. With only days before the beginning of the festival, we still didn’t have any information. They were booking our flights as part of our deal and we still hadn’t received any flight details or tour details. We were also under the impression that they’d be paying for our hotels the same that they do for all of the other Soundwave artists. Finding out that we were responsible for that ourselves was perfectly fine. Nobody even challenged it. We simply said okay and moved on. They were also providing ground transportation. Seeing as how we live in Australia and are already in Brisbane rehearsing for the tour, it seems a logical question to want to know if we should meet them somewhere central or if they’d be picking us up where we currently were. We were told they could pick us up and that was the end of that conversation. If they had a problem with any of those things they should have spoken up. We didn’t demand or even request anything. We simply asked them questions for things that were still unanswered. Nobody raised their voice or even got upset. Minutes after hanging up what we felt was a normal routine conversation, we get a call from AJ. Keep in mind this is the first time that we are speaking to AJ about ANYTHING. After listening to a mouthful of profanity and being belittled, he ended his sentence with “you’re off the festival” and then hung up on us without the slightest opportunity for discussion. You can imagine our shock. It’s impossible to entertain the thought that we offended someone so deeply by asking logistical touring questions.

They go on to say how “grateful” they were to be playing the festival at all and to their fans and supporters.

They also have stated they will be putting on a handfull of free shows around the country inreplace of the soundwave shows.

So what do you think? Unfairly treated? Or snivelling little punks?

Closure In Moscow kicked off Soundwave

In an act of “Screw you buddy, we hold the power here..” Soundwave festival have not-so-subtly kicked aussie band Closure In Moscow off its roster.

The QLD band were set to open a stage on each of the festival date.

Following is a statement from the Soundwave organisers left on their forum:

It is amazing how the one band you book on the festival only as a favour to their manager; whom you are paying 10 times what they are worth as a gesture of goodwill; and you bill way above their station, turn out to be the only demanding and rude people amongst a star-studded line up.

Here are some tips for other local bands hoping to keep a spot on a national festival:

1.Having a band member call the festival admin manager 2 days out from the festival with a new list of demands and being aggressive, rude and yelling at her only works if you are holding hostages.

2. Don’t demand that festival vehicles and drivers pick band members up from their homes and then drop them off after the festival. Specially if you live on an island off the Gold Coast!

3. Don’t demand that the festival should book and pay for your accommodation on top of the $25,000 you’re being paid to pay for your own lodgings.

I could go on and on. Maybe publish a book some day…

Revised timetables will be posted shortly.
With their sacking, the only Aussie bands left on the bill are Triple J’s unearthed State winners. What does this say about the festivals faith in our country’s punk and hardcore scene? Man up soundwave, Hospital The Music may have broken up, but the aussie punk & hardcore world didnt end with them!