Publication: www.reaktiv-zone.org
Reviewer: Shawn Sequeira
"STEPPING OUT, LOOKING IN
‘I SURVIVED INDIA’, my new t-shirt read. That was soon after my holiday to the world’s largest peninsula last December.
‘I SURVIVED DESERT ROCK 2005’ and trust me, I just about made it. What started off as a routine call to the Center Stage Management office in January 05’ blossomed into a full-blown metal fest on March 25th 05’. I asked em’ for a lineup. The lady at the other end said, “Sep…Sep…uh, uhhhh. Hang on a minute please. Ah, yeah. Sepultura”. Sepultura? And she expected me to believe that? A bunch of Brazilian noise monikers right here in Dubai? Okay. I had to believe it. And she had more. Rob Flynn’s Machine Head, Dutch Goth giants Within Temptation, Britain’s glam-rock revival outfit The Darkness and the legendary Brit Metal outfit, Saxon. Throw in Juliana Down and Nervecell; a couple of local bred bands and what you had was every man worth his medulla oblongata headbanging in approval to this striking lineup.
Well, they got the artistes. Now all we had to do was shell out the ticket price and the finances associated with wine, women and song. But we all were apprehensive about the date and there was this underlying current, which suggested that the whole concert idea was blasphemous owing to the Good Friday it fell on. Mixing religious sentiment with music was imminent but all those false notions were quickly dispelled, however slow, on the day of the concert.
Yeah, we could hear Derrick Green’s roar in our stomach and we could feel Flynn’s grunt long before they could even locate Dubai on the world map! So, needless to say, we headed straight for the Dubai Country Club. CSM (Center Stage Management), the show organizers par excellence, pulled a rabbit out of the hat when they organized free transport for all. Foresight counts. You can’t expect any sane individual to listen to Sepultura’s ‘Roots Bloody Roots’, down half a dozen beers and then drive home with half your brain on the red signals and the other half split between your aching neck and overflowing bladder. Thank you CSM. One smart move was all it took to keep the buzzed guys out of the local hospital’s emergency ward!
On arrival at the venue we were confronted with the standard 7-foot beefcakes with shrew-sized brains. But looks can be deceptive, and it was called for at a time like this. Right from the word go, the security made the whole event a whole lot safer and in turn more enjoyable for us. With Juliana Down’s last being audible in a distance we made haste to park ourselves in front of the stage with ice-packed buckets of the amber colored liquid. We owe our late entry to the Good Friday services and after we were done with the religion and respect part, we turned into near manic beasts almost instantly when Sepultura stepped on stage. This was unbelievable. A band so big, with a sound so distinct and probably Brazil’s best export since the Rio Carnival, deserved a whole lot of applause, cheer and pure testosterone. With no prior warning, these dark-rock behemoths plunged us into an aural abyss with a sound so thunderous, that would make The Darkness sound like a bunch of kids doing their carol-singing rounds in my lane in Bombay. Max Cavalera, Sepultura’s erstwhile ex-frontman was best known for his onstage persona, showmanship and his awesome but a tad scratchy voice box. But I doubt whether Max at his best would be able to upsurge a certain Mr. Derrick Green on that balmy afternoon. Showing mercy to the crowd in front has never been part of Sepultura’s concert strategy and this afternoon Derrick made sure they stuck to it. Belting out classics such as Choke, Refuse/Resist, Against, Biotech is Godzilla, Roots Bloody Roots et al, they had the crowd pushing their cranial structures to extreme limits in a relatively short time span. After 90 minutes of my cerebellum crying for mercy and my heart lapping every tune, Sepultura called it a night. After two encores. And with that, they showed that it ain’t just about strapping a guitar, cranking up the volume and spitting chaos. It was about passion. And they did it the Brazilian way. And boy, they did it in style!
While we all dreamt of cranking a guitar the way Andreas Kisser did, a fortunate few did just that when they were called onstage for the regional Air Guitar Championships. It was a mountainous task to listen and watch a bunch of ‘talented’ guitarists after Sep’s set. But we tried and we thought that the guy who nailed his place at the Championships in Finland deserved his airline seat on covering Eddie Van Halen’s fretwork for ‘Jump!’ Hope he strums his way to the winner’s book at the world championships in Helsinki, Finland. So here’s wishing him well.
By this time we all were repeatedly pulverized with video clips of Saxon’s issued statement. They were apologizing for their pullout and vowed to come back next year if they were invited again. Saxon’s absence was due to an unfortunate turn of events, whereby the band’s vocalist and founder, Biff Byford, lost his house and all his belongings to a raging fire. Fortunately he and his family escaped unhurt. Yeah, we classic rock heads definitely missed the most famous tea drinkers the world had ever known. Hope Dubai’s enviable collection of tea parlors manages to give them another reason to get here next year!
Now the next band onstage would obviously have a mountain to climb after the Sep’s blistering set. But Machine Head did not disappoint and how! Spewing expletives all round, these Bay Area rockers had the crowd eating out of their hands and latching onto their metal tunes faster than we could say ‘The Blood, The Sweat, The Tears!’ Machine Head’s enigmatic frontman, Rob Flynn, backed by his formidable bunch, thundered their way through their concert favorites such as Imperium, Death Church, Ten Ton Hammer, Bulldozer and Davidian to name a few. With each passing sonic assault on the ears, courtesy Phil Demmel, we had moshpits mushrooming like a family planning experiment gone horribly gone. But thanks to those beefcakes I mentioned in the beginning, these pits were fast becoming a great way of wasting sweat, alcohol, energy and adrenaline. While the security worked overtime to wipe out what MachineHead had so expertly started, standing silent in one corner, the ethereal Andreas Kisser had other plans. Those plans devilishly blossomed into a collaborative effort with Machine Head on Metallica’s ‘Creeping Death’. If you found the original to be the epitome of thrash metal, then this had to be the pinnacle. A first time collaboration of sorts, their cover aptly demonstrated their passion interplay, camaraderie and good spirit. And Dubai loved it.
By 9:00p.m, towards the wee end of Machine Head’s set, the physical torture we had so willingly inflicted on our anatomy for close to 4-hours, began to rear its ugly head. Our brains had shifted base, our bones were rattled, our ears suffered from an extreme case of tinnitus and our vocal chords were too stretched even to say ‘Within Temptation’. But a good act is always easy to pick out and this Dutch nouveau-Goth-rock outfit, fronted by the effable and sensuous Sharon den Adel, quickly proved to be truly original and entertaining. Forgive my ignorance, but I’ve never listened to what they had to offer in the past. But for a newly introduced bloke, I, like the others, found them to be captivating. Haunting passages, complex rhythm changes and innovative vocal delivery, all served with an image loosely based on Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’, made these guys (and that gal!) stand out in the crowd. Too bad I was not too much in the state to get a hold of their set-list. Within Temptation are Robert Westerholt (guitar), Sharon den Adel (vocals), Jeroen van Veen (bass guitar), Martijn Spierenburg (keyboards), Stephen van Haestregt (drums) and Ruud Jolie (guitar).
With Saxon being ruled out of the Desert Rock Festival, the curtains would be coming down in a few hours from now on what ‘Kerrang!’ magazine quoted as ‘The biggest rock n’ roll band on earth!’ So ‘The Darkness’ it was. At a time like that, most of us wondered how a band with an average age of existence less than that of a barnyard mouse could be the headliner at a festival hosting the mammoth Sepultura and the brain-numbing Machine Head. This move clearly defied logic but reality (and returns) also showed that The Darkness were better cash-cows than a bunch of rampaging metallers. The Darkness has been credited to reviving rock’s dying art form – ‘stage presence’. Long hair, feel good hooks, mouthing expletives and a collection of cat-suits that would make Warrant go green in envy in their heyday that were all expertly packaged to revive that super glam-rock feeling of the yesteryears. But unfortunately their music leaves a lot to be desired and this night was no difference. A half-hearted approach to the welcoming audience was beginning to tick off a majority of the crowds. Halfway through their set, the biggest rock n’ roll band on earth, sounded more like an extra loud Oprah Winfrey episode than anything else. With such apathy at the international stage, one wondered how long this Brit bunch would last. A pitiful way to end what was otherwise an absolute digger of a day.
While not everything about the Desert Rock Festival could be termed as smooth, the organizers, CSM, did put up terrific act and one which could comfortably measure up to the highest international quality standards. The crowds that thronged the venue were unanimous in their verdict. The Desert Rock 05’ rocked! On the flipside, however CSM ought to pay more attention to the dates they pick. Hosting a concert of this magnitude on Good Friday meant that many could not attend owing to religious commitments or just plain abstinence. The concert should also be stretched a bit so that crowds get refreshed and get a chance or two to sample the wares at the merchandise counters. But these small hitches would definitely be ironed out by the guys who got us this big, brilliant experience in only their second outing.
For those 12 hours on March 25th our world rocked to the core. An unbelievable outing that just whets our appetite for the third one in the ranks. Desert Rock 06’? We are ready when you are.
Rock hard. Ride free.
For the music is your special friend
Dance on fire as it intends
Music is your only friend
Until the end.
‘When The Music’s Over’
The Doors
Shawn Sequeira."