Last night I went to Stone Free festival at the O2 Arena in London. The arena itself is good but it's not my favourite venue as it's a very difficult place to get in and out of. The venue was built in the late 90s without post-Manchester bombing security checks in mind and as a result it takes way too long to get into the arena. Leaving the venue is a pain in the arse too as it's served by only one Underground station. Hopefully I won't have to go there again anytime soon.
I arrived at 4pm so didn't see many bands. The first band I saw was some English Rock band called
Stone Broken who seemed OK but I only saw the last part of their set. After them was
Orange Goblin whom I'd seen before at Download 11 years ago and enjoyed them. They were pretty good today but their songs all seemed very similar so after 45 minutes of their hour-long set I got fed up and left for the main arena. After spending ages in a queue I finally got in to see the last part of
Buckcherry's set - I can safely say that I'm not a fan. The singer's voice is quite unpleasant and I only recognized a cover and their final song 'Crazy Bitch' which gets played in most Rock clubs. I saw them early on the main stage at Download 2007 and wasn't impressed then either.
The special guest for the first day of the festival was
Megadave, who were potentially an odd booking as Stone Free is a Classic Rock festival, not a Metal festival. They played a good set though with Dave Mustaine preferring to play as much music as possible instead of speak to the audience, which is fine if you play a
setlist like this. Two definite rarities in 'Rattlehead' and 'The Conjouring' along with a couple of token songs from 'Dystopia', plus all the major classics. I've definitely noticed an upturn in Megadave's live performances since Kiko Loureiro joined the band three years ago. He looks comfortable on stage with the two Daves and has more stage presence than his predecessor. Mustaine's vocals are still a bit low in the mix but nowhere near as bad as at Wembley Arena in 2015.
Scorpions were the headliner for the day. Their performance is visually spectacular with the big screens and the elevated drumkit for the solo, and it seems to me that it's also very well drilled. Something that frustrated me about their show is that they had far too many instrumental parts - and not necessarily even solos, just riffs most of the time. It all had the whiff of cabaret to it and gave me the impression that it was all about working through 90 minutes to get to 'Rock You Like A Hurricane' at the end. Their
setlist had a handful of classics though which the crowd responded to but I feel that the set had no structure to it with too much riffing between proper songs. Scorpions have a lot of very good songs and I'd rather they played some of those than add in pointless instrumentals. I'm glad I got to see them again (first time was at another festival 3 years ago) and 'Tease Me, Please Me' was a particular highlight in what was definitely an enjoyable show.
Upcoming events:
28-30/06 Tremonti
04/08 Iron Maiden/Killswitch Engage, Aberdeen
07/08 Iron Maiden/Killswitch Engage, Birmingham
09-12/08 Nightwish/Judas Priest/Gojira etc., Bloodstock Festival
22-29/09 Halestorm
12/10 Kamelot/Cellar Darling, London
21/10 Threshold, London
27/10 Annihilator, London
10/11 Within Temptation, Manchester
08-11/12 Nightwish
16/12 Kreator/Dimmu Borgir/Hatebreed, London
16/04 Avantasia, London
I'll have to prioritize some of these if I ever get the money to buy concert tickets again. Halestorm is the ultimate priority after Bloodstock, then I'll sort the others out. I'm certain I won't have the time to see Tremonti now, particularly since the venue he was due to play in Glasgow has been severely damaged by a fire this weekend.
This time though some annoying drunk bitch was trying to rip it out of my hand. She said she'd get me a beer in exchange for the setlist but I had no intention of parting with it.
