Day 17 - Lichtenfels (Hellflame festival)

I woke up to the sounds of a football match that was going on just next to our van. On the other side was a big hall that was today’s venue. This was the only festival gig on our tour, and the first bands had already played when I stepped in.

Ensiferum and Tracedawn were playing at the same festival, so there was plenty of familiar faces walking around (and a total of 5 Finnish bands). We shared the backstage room with the Tracedawn guys and everyone was in a good mood. There were some other friends as well, like Samu from Finntroll and Audrey, it was nice to see you again!



Festival gigs are always a bit of a hassle, because you don’t have much time to prepare your gear, do a proper soundcheck etc. So, given the circumstances, I think we pulled off a pretty good show. The audience seemed to be little too grim for us though, but we didn’t let that bother us.

Since everyone else were about to meet their girlfriends in Prague and wanted to leave as soon as possible, it was just me and Ari who were in no hurry to go anywhere. So, we had managed to talk to Gerrit the tourmanager to let us stay in the Amorphis nightliner for one night, so that we could hang around and see the rest of the bands playing in the festival.



In addition to the Finnish bands, there was some KVLT stuff going on such as Shining, 1349 and Belbhegor. The singer from Shining seemed to be a very.... ”interesting” person on stage (doing the whole black metal thing, cutting his arms etc). Tony Laureano was playing with 1349, and everyone who knew anything about drumming was pretty amazed by the hyperspeed tempos he pulled off. The last band of the evening was Belbhegor, and we got to see only the beginning of the show. It was pretty much ”in your face” stuff as well.

We continued the party at the nightliner with the Amorphis guys until late hours. Finally I crawled to one of the free bunks and slept like a baby.

-Juffi