A few days in Sweden

So from the 26th - 29th June I went to Gothenburg, primarily for the Metaltown festival that was being held. First night I met up with my mates at the hotel who went out there early, checked in, found another mate who was coming, and didnt leave until we'd each had about 5 whiskeys. After finding food (or did we? I forget....) we went to the Rockbaren bar. This place is fucking brilliant. It's on 2 floors, each with plenty of crevices to sit in, blackjack/poker tables, places to dance around should you so wish, alcohol, and of course, rock music. And women. Lots of hot women. Seriously, I think there were even more than in Spain. The ratio we figured out was about 9:10 women were hot, and 4:9 were incredibly hot. Anyway, we drank in there until some ridiculous hour, although I left early as I was just falling asleep all over the place due to travelling all day.

The next day was the day 1 of the festival. Our hotel, which was the Scandic Europa, laid on their breakfast buffet, and it was rather magnificent. So we all filled up on that, and er, went back to bed again. Woke up a couple of hours later and we all headed down to the festival, after a few whiskeys. The site wasn't huge for an outdoor festival, but the layout was good with 2 main stages, so there wasn't loads of time between switching the bands over. Anyway I only really wanted to watch Monster Magnet, so we waited around all day for them, and had to endure some pretty terrible acts (namely Bullet For My Valentine). We all headed down to be on the front for the show, and it was bloody awesome. They played Dopes To Infinity, Crop Circle, Powertrip, Twin Earth, Third Alternative, Zodiac Lung, Radiation Day, The Right Stuff, Negasonic Teenage Warhead and Space Lord.

After that, most of the band came down to say hey because they knew a few of us from past shows and also a couple of us saw them earlier in London earlier in the week. Anyway after that, we watched a bit of the main headline act, Cavalera Conspiracy, decided they weren't as good as his earlier bands, went to get more food, and headed again to Rockbaren, although there were so many people this time it took about an hour of queing to get in!

On day 2 of the festival, it was pretty much the same story in the morning. The bands of that day that I wanted to see were Witchcraft and Clutch, who were both playing in the close up stage. As well as that, there was also a freak show going on in a tent, which was pretty amazing, and also pretty gross. Speaking of freak shows, there were some fucking terrible bands on the main stages, including Satyricon, Finntroll and Dimmu Borgir, the latter of which I just cracked up laughing at as they came onto the stage.

So we spent pretty much the whole time around the close up tent, Witchcraft play great songs, but their show wasnt anything special. Converge were allright. But of course, I and a lot of others were there for Clutch. Having seen them about 11 times now, I can say that was definitely one of the best ones. Really intense small show from what they've been playing over here in the past few years. They played Who Wants To Rock, You Cant Stop Progress, Mob Goes Wild Profits Of Doom, Cypress Grove, Burning Beard, Child Of The City, Slow Hole To China, Animal Farm, La Curendera, King Of Arizona, Escape From The Prison Planet, Big News 1, Shogun Named Marcus, Electric Worry and One Eyed Dollar. After that, we stole a Monster Magnet tour poster that was on one of the walls (hey they were loads and were just asking to be taken) and made our way back to the hotel, as we didnt really have the energy to go to Rockbaren, and had to be up on the final day to get to the airport.

All in all, Gothenburg is a wonderful, beautiful town. Everyone there is friendly and welcoming. It's not as expensive as you may have heard about Sweden, although of course that depends on the type of things you like to do in a city. Also did I mention it's full of hot women?

Anyway, here's a video of Clutch that I took:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKaqAUUCpZw

And a couple of MONSTER FUCKING MAGNET:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL-j1JjBHg0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqpA-W_sGHM

Pictures to follow at some point, if I can be arsed.