WOW, WOW, WOW, WOW, WOW, WOW !!!
This is how you open a review ???
Yes, this is how this review is opened, which cannot be in any other way!!!!
Absolute madness, a powerful experience, unprecedented excitement, and above all love, love for music!!
Before we tell you how it was, what we think about the production and what we experienced at the performances, we must point out that since the festival there is one strong feeling that does not let us go. It is very difficult for us to define it in one word, but if we try anyway, then we feel that this festival was characterized by "commitment". The commitment of the bands, the production, and even the audience to make this a successful festival. A strong desire and great hope of all involved that this special and amazing thing will succeed. That everyone will be satisfied. That the bands will express themselves and enjoy themselves on stage, that the production will manage to cover the costs of the event and even make a nice profit and of course, we, the audience, who voted with our feet and came in clans, will enjoy all this goodness called metal music. S we can feel that we have a future, that this is not a one-time event that barely survived, and that we, as an audience of a genre that does not receive budgets and resources and is on the fringes of the music industry, manage to make a festival of this magnitude succeed, because if it succeeds then we can do more wonderful and even bigger things here in the future.
From our side, as an audience, this festival was a huge success!!!
We say this with a whole heart and without a "BUT"!!
This festival was a huge success!!
The production was masterful...
Huge thank you to Vladislav Mazourenko and the Hotbox crew for the amazing initiative and production!!!
Already at the entrance, you felt that you were entering a festival and not another performance at the Gagarin club where there were different and varied booths and you could purchase a new tattoo along with a shirt and stickers of the participating bands.
The children's complex was an amazing idea and proves how much the production pays attention to details and tries to give space to the diverse audience.
With the exception of a single case, the bands took the stage according to the pre-published schedule and managed to keep up. The drummer of "Saffek" got stuck at the border crossing in Taba, which forced the transfer of the band's performance to the end of the lineup after the performance of "Walkways", in order to allow his arrival.
We must mention the amazing work of the bands and especially of the stage crew both in the sound and in the transitions between the various performances. As soon as one band finished the performance, the disassembly of the stage workers immediately began with the band members themselves assisting the stage crew in disassembling their equipment, in order to meet the schedules.
The sound was excellent throughout most of the show, with minor technical glitches here and there that did not impact the overall experience. Nevertheless, it is no less than 11 different bands, with different musical instruments, different amplifiers, and different equipment that came up one after the other.
The bands were amazing...
What amazing music we have in Israel!!
Before the festival, we sat down and listened, once again, to all the materials of the bands in the line-up (we know most of them). You are invited to listen to the playlist created for the event on Spotify.
We have to be honest, it was very difficult for us to decide at which stage of the festival to place the foray for food, for fear of losing even a few minutes of the performance of one or other band. During the almost 10 hours of the festival, there was not even one weak moment. 11 great bands came to make this festival a pure pleasure. The amount of talent that was on one stage, in a relatively short period of time, was unimaginable. It is evident that each of the bands, without exception, gave their all and simply burned the stage, even in cases where the performance was shortened due to constraints such as in the case of "Saffek" and "Her Last Sight".
The crowd was unbelievable...
Since the festival started at 15:20 and was supposed to end at midnight, there was, of course, an expectation that in the first hours the number of people would be sparse, after all, it was Saturday noon. Add to that the fact that nothing in Israel starts on time, so the quite reasonable expectation was that the first shows would have very small attendance. But the reality defeated the expectation and the number of people that filled the club already with the rise of the first band "Violet Inner Amends" was amazing. The Gagarin club was almost full and everyone who came to the festival made sure to pay respect to the bands that played, right until the end.
It was very moving!!
True, the audience is the customer, he paid for a ticket and he expects to receive a SHOW. But it seems that this time the audience didn't just come to enjoy and get value for the money they paid. It was evident that this time the audience also came to support! To support the bands and musicians he likes, to support the festival organizers and the various service providers, and in general to support the metal scene.
We must point out that for us this event was exciting on a very powerful level!!
We had the pleasure of seeing such a large amount of people addicted to this "bacterium" that we love so much, meeting friends, followers of our page and website, and musicians of bands that we love so much and sharing with them the pleasure and the impression of the unique event.
It will sound funny or material but we really hope that the production managed to bring in enough money to cover the costs and make a profit, just to have the appetite and ability to create more such successful events in the future.
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