It’s 22-nd Brutal Assault festival this year. This is a huge number: 22 years of supporting metal and make fans happy is a great achievement!
I do not want to waste your time with many words, so I’ll try to be short but informative as possible.
We have gathered our trip kit on August 7th and rushed to Czech Republic. On August 8th in the afternoon we came to the Josefov, placed our tent in VIP camp under the tree and rushed to get our bracelets.
Now is the time to tell you about festival in a way I seen it.
Placement – all of you know this little and friendly city called Josefov so I can only say this small city is pretty cool, quiet (except of Brutal Assault festival days, haha!) and clean.
Organization – this is very important thing for every festival. And Brutal Assault makes all their best to keep organization questions in proper way. Huge lines entering festival area with no delays is very nice, because you do not spending many time standing in lines. Enough of toilets, huge amount of foods for any tastes from vegan up to meat menus. Many tasty beers (!btw, the beer has been partially mixed with water, but this is not a question for organizers I think; but anyway organizers should talk to the festival sponsors!), some cool wines, Jagermeister and many other drinks which you could need to enjoy yourself and one cigarettes tent (a good thing too!). VIP camp is a good solution: you have toilets, lights at the night, security, etc. About the showers: there were just 28 cabins (near VIP camping), what forced people to stay many time in huge line. I think organizers could bring two times more cabins to cut off queues, I do not think it’s something difficult because the showers are not for free use, so it’s not like ‘put money into nothing’; this is not so critical, just a note. Next thing I could not miss is about hot sun and how did the organizers help to the people! So, you know, it’s extremely hard to be under merciless sun for more than 1-2 hours, but when people become sick of sun, there we had fire engine two times per day! That was incredible!
Prices – nothing unusual, typical European prices for both foods and beers (approx – 1,5-2 Eur for beer and 3-5 Eur for good food). Next great thing is you do not need to have money in your wallet or pocket while enjoying at the festival area! You can just put needed sum into your personal bracelet and pay for everything by pay-pass way! Thus you can leave all your ID’s and rest of money in safe-box and just relax! There is one big supermaket (15 minutes on foot) with lots of tasty beer and many more, so you can buy everything you need for your camping site.
Bands – unfortunately even if you are really strong man or girl, you’d never be able to see ALL the bands participated in festival Because you will need some rest and sometimes you must to choose the bands between the scenes (main or additional), but of course you can check 99% of important for you bands (like I did for example). This year’s roster was truly killer! I couldn’t miss the bands like POSSESSED (that was beyond of any feelings to see DEATH METAL godfathers on the stage! The show was unbelievable powerful!), the only thing I cannot understand is why POSSESSED played on Metalgate stage instead of main stage. NILE with typical killer performance, GORGUTS with scull-crushing set, ‘mad’ OVERKILL, massive CRYPTOPSY, catching as hell SACRED REICH, immortal DEMOLITION HAMMER, obscure TIAMAT’s performance was great but Johan Edlund seems to be overwhelmed by drugs, haha, anyway that was cool! AMORPHIS played new era songs mostly, and just couple of classic songs, but it was nice anyway. EMPEROR – I have two different opinions, 1) it was extremely great to hear “Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk” alive, but there is number 2) musicians could ‘pay tribute’ to this album by wearing some relevant clothes and use corpse-paint… Because their set looked like “clerks came to play live just from office”, and that’s sad. But they played more than great, so ok, let’s forgive them aforementioned negative. And if you’ll ask if they played “I Am the Black Wizards” – YES, they did! INCANTATION, again, I was surprised why did they played on Oriental stage except of main one, but ok, their set on Oriental stage looked much obscure and by Underground way, and of course it was killer: unbelievable walls of sounds and real death metal massacre! Btw, later I heard that INCANTATION played second time but on main stage. Hm, seems like I have missed some program changes because I didn’t knew about. Next, unfortunately MORBID ANGEL were unable to come there, but organizers did really killer change, so MORBID ANGEL has been changed by CARCASS! Yeah! CARCASS came onto the stage and teared apart all the fans, completely and mercilessly! Aaaaand, MAYHEM! MAYHEM‘s show was shocking! First of all – to see “De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas” played alive is hugest event for every fan of Black metal, so we can skip this moment. But second – main thing – how was it looked like! That was real hellish ritual, yes-yes, ri-tu-al! Musicians had killer obscure make-up and the whole performance was deeply obscured with the proper sound. Also musicians put true satanic emotions into the show, so it has been really unbelievable, sometimes you even was unable to headbang but you could just stay with opened mouth, hehe! Of course we have missed some cool bands, some of them were METAL CHURCH (because of MACABRE’ set on the Metalgate stage), NERVOSA (very sad!!!) because of delaying at the huge queue to the shower=(, and some more bands, but, as I told above – that’s impossible to see EVERY band unfortunately. I also was very glad to see Norwegian HELHEIM alive, their show was typical Scandinavian powerful and emotional performance, which was great. I also can’t miss about such grands like SUFFOCATION, SAMAEL, ELECTRIC WIZARD, MALIGNANT TUMOUR, ROOT, MASTER’S HAMMER and etc… The lineup was incredible!
Power of nature – Friday, August 11th… Everybody (except of those who slept after alcohol overdose) should remember this obscure day! SACRED REICH entered the stage, starting to play, and some truly obscure, armageddon’ like dark (DARK!) hurricane clouds approaching festival area, neither me nor other people seen such kind of clouds before, those dark clouds chaotically turned not so high. 2 minutes and everybody (except of SACRED REICH’s die-hard fans) hide under the tents because of powerful rain with destructive winds! One more minute and festival lost electricity, scenes were full of water, big banners almost carried out by a hurricane, huh, that was real hell! But luckily rain was finished, hurricane gone, and headbangers were able return to the party! Click on picture, this is around 5 PM 😉
To conclude, Brutal Assault festival #22 was amazing, and it was very sad to leave from there on Sunday. Thus, we can’t wait for 2018 to continue with Brutal Assault and huge, immortal Metal family! \m/
See you all next year, ‘Abbath! Kurwa! Hui!’ =)
Special thanks goes to Brutal Assault crew for press accreditation and all those additions for press like special room for journalists and photographers to have a rest, to charge batteries etc, top professional approach!
Bands 2017: AMORPHIS, ARCHITECTS, ARKONA, ARTILLERY, AUGUST BURNS RED, AVENGER, AVERSIONS CROWN, BATUSHKA, BIGBOSS, BIRDS IN ROW, BORIS, CARCASS, CHELSEA GRIN, CLAWFINGER, COLLISION, COUGH, CROWBAR, CRYPTOPSY, DECAPITATED, DEMOLITION HAMMER, DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT, DESERTED FEAR, DEVIN TOWNSEND PROJECT, DISPERSE, DOOMAS, DYSANGELIUM, EINHERJER, ELECTRIC WIZARD, ELUVEITIE, EMPEROR, EXORCIZPHOBIA, FALLUJAH, FIRST BLOOD, FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE, FRONT LINE ASSEMBLY, FURIA, GADGET, GOD IS AN ASTRONAUT, GOD MOTHER, GORGUTS, GRAVEWORM, GUTALAX, HATEBREED, HAVOK, HELHEIM, HIGHER POWER, HOUR OF PENANCE, IGORRR, INCANTATION, INFECTED RAIN, INSANIA, KMFDM, MACABRE, MADBALL, MADDER MORTEM, MALIGNANT TUMOUR, MANTAR, MASTER’S HAMMER, MAYHEM, MERCY TIES, METAL CHURCH, MISS MAY I, MONOLITHE, MORKHIMMEL, MOURNING BELOVETH, NERVOSA, NILE, NUCLEAR VOMIT, OATHBREAKER, OCEANS ATE ALASKA, OPETH, OVERKILL, PHURPA, POSSESSED, POSTCARDS FROM ARKHAM, PRIMARY RESISTANCE, PRONG, REVOCATION, ROOT, ROTTEN SOUND, ROTTING CHRIST, SACRED REICH, SAMAEL, SHEER TERROR, SIKTH, SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION, SKYWALKER, SUFFOCATION, SVART CROWN, SWALLOW THE SUN, SWANS, TEETHGRINDER, TERROR, THE AMITY AFFLICTION, THE CROWN, THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN, THE GREAT OLD ONES, THE LURKING FEAR, THE NUMBER TWELVE LOOKS LIKE YOU, TIAMAT, TRIVIUM, TSJUDER, UADA, ULCERATE, ULTHA, VALLENFYRE, VISION OF DISORDER, WAR FOR WAR, WHILE SHE SLEEPS, WINTERSUN, WOLFHEART, WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM, WREKMEISTER HARMONIES, ZHRINE…
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