Author: Aleš Podbrežnik, Sandi Sadar Šoba
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Concert date: August 27, 2007
Attendance: 1708
Ticket price: 150.000
The organizers at least took care of the bare health minimum and handed out free ponchos, and thanks to the white color of the polyvinyl rain shields, the grounds of the final musical showdown looked almost like a Ku Klux Klan rally. Thank God there weren’t many Black performers on the bill, because the sight of thousands of white apparitions would have made them a bit uneasy and we might have started reminiscing about the days of racial segregation …
DRIVE BY ARGUMENT: 14.20 – 15.00
And for the first time in three days, it looked like the Grand Finale’s concert meadow would be plowed right at the main stage, the Race Stage. The first act up to present their vision of alternative indie rock were the youngsters from the Scottish town of Ayr, Drive By Argument. A fairly anonymous but no less colorful gang of five friends who, at first glance, looked like students at Hogwarts from Harry Potter, and whose interpersonal chemistry conjures up an atmosphere of tendentious screamo mood from the very first touch of the miniature keyboard keys. Floating somewhere between the worlds of Radiohead, At The Drive In and Muse, the long-haired bassist Ryan, guitarist and keyboardist Colin, the guy with the long red tuft of hair falling over his face like a splinter, his guitar partner Stu, the miniature drummer Lewis and the Scottish version of Slovenian entertainer Slon, the bespectacled frontman, singer and second keyboardist Stoke, drew in more and more people with every bar. In June they put out their full-length debut, the album Sex Lines Are Expensive Comedy, and after listening to this electro-experimental strings of fragments of inspired catharsis, it’s clear it would be a great shame if they stopped at just one record, because Drive By Argument are gifted when it comes to musical freshness and originality, which we’d heard precious little of on stage over the past few days. Songs like ‘Sex Lines Are Expensive Comedy’ and ‘Eyefish Star Fish Eye’ can’t exactly be defined as hits yet, but they go down easy, effortless and unforced, and the crowd’s reaction was proof of a satisfying level of catalyzed stage eroticism and chemistry. The applause was a roaring compliment and a reward for the effort and musicality of these strangers from the north. After roughly three quarters of an hour, the Scots said their goodbyes and, pleased with their own performance, handed the stage boards over to the locals.
HELLOGOODBYE: 15.15 – 15.55
There should be a law saying that anyone who wants to pick lines or song titles from the likes of the Beatles as their band name has to submit at least a quality certificate. In that case, these Californian power-poppers, synth-poppers, bubble-poppers or whatever you’d like to label them would have had to choose some other name. Although they’ve been on the scene for a good six years, they only released their album last year, the one that boasts the title Zombies! Aliens! Vampires! Dinosaurs! The scariest of all the apparitions and horrors in that lineup is the fact that they consider themselves prolific musicians. The first greeting to the crowd was a limp wave, which gave any random passerby the feeling that the slicked-up “sex symbol” in the middle of the stage, the shy singer and guitarist Forrest Kline, keyboardist Jesse Kurvink, bassist Marcus Cole and Chris Profeta were more the product of cosmic mischief than a serious band. Whining and wretched melodies. Hollow lyrics, vacuum-cleaned of anything but, once again, clichés and commas, bombarded us for a merciless fifty minutes, in which the only dynamics on stage came from stage fright, which made Forrest’s knees shake. And when he sings about love facts in songs like ‘Baby It’s A Fact’, ‘Here (In Your Arms)’, ‘Shimmy Shimmy Quarter Turn’ or ‘All Of Your Love’, you honestly feel sorry for this quartet of virgins and start clapping just because it’s kind of the polite thing to do, right? If it’s true that nomen est omen, then in the name Hellogoodbye I’m more taken with the second part, since that one was consistently and truly delivered.
SORGENTE: 16.10 – 16.55
Far more eroticism and interest came from the Viennese boys, funk rappers who can actually defend the colors of music with confidence, the band Sorgente. The quintet took over the stage and served up a goulash of easy-listening music that makes you want to make love. We’re short on funk. A complete unknown, about whom I couldn’t find out anything tangible even afterward, the sextet’s repertoire was an appealing string of all the tracks from their latest and so far only album, First…And Then?! Fafuu, the singer who occasionally picks up a twelve-string guitar, is a master of communicating with the crowd, and where his voice runs out, he’s backed up by Ojam, the saxophonist Peti and Mr. Jacobsen, the lead guitarist. Harmony vocals that tight are a rarity these days, when audiences are sold instant products, at least as far as rock goes. Sorgente are brimming with melody and rhythm. They dress it up in classic funk tricks like ‘Funky Donkey’, ‘Pumpin”, ‘Tight Shit’, and weave fragments of soul and R’n’B into the funk. I’d count them among the biggest surprises of the festival, though you also have to factor in the lucky turn of events that moved them from the remote Open(minded) Stage to the central stage. Despite a pretty stressful situation, the guys threw themselves into the role brilliantly and, at least on the surface, hid the stress and stage fright.
GODS OF BLITZ: 17.10 – 18.00
The tacky neon sign of the supposed “Gods of Lightning” was a surprise that was to be expected, since the organizers were left without yet another headliner on the last day. The string of cancellations was continued and capped off by a musical derivative called Klaxons. These aging uncles, who also cut their teeth on a German tour with Nick Oliveri, a former member of Queens Of The Stone Age, set up their base right next to the Reichstag, and in their three-year history of making music together, the guitarists Jens Freudenberg and Olli Wong, drummer Jakob Kiersch and the bass-and-vocal center of guttural singing, Sebastian Barusta Gaebel, have managed two albums. After the year-before-last’s Stolen Horse, this year came the second “masterpiece”, the record Reporting The Mirage. And it would be a miracle if these Berlin rockers broke through the plateau and became a Europe-wide phenomenon, because what we heard was closer to a too-loud version of clichéd garage rock, where you have to face head-on the sonic excess and wretched riffs, and the cherry on top of the audio brutal rape is the fact that the Marshalls are cranked all the way up, so against the stretched-out, gutty serpent of tracks like ‘The Rising’, ‘Greetings From the Flasbackville’ and, say, ‘Gods Of Blitz’, you really have nowhere to hide. The local music fans, though, were riding another wave of orgasmic mood. Maybe because under the thick layers of crap you can detect echoes of punk ethics and metal-stuffed guitars. The rest is better forgotten than remembered forever. Sadly, the “star” show ran a bit long, and after 50 minutes there was a heartfelt thank-you to the crowd, in which they didn’t just thank their wives for letting them perform, their moms for giving them such phenomenal “talent”, and everyone else, but also noticed a poster on the nearby hill inviting you to the neighboring nest of erotic delights, a night bar. How “original”. How “grown-up”. How “impressive”. The Gods of Thunder are more like the Gods of Farting, and what was left in the mouth was an aftertaste you’d probably get if you rinsed down a portion of shit with lukewarm urine. A short break followed, during which the watered-down taste of what we’d just heard had to be rinsed out and softened with beer …
THE LOCOS: 18.30 – 19.20
A rather redemptive and soothing calm after the earlier flare-up of negative criticism and the discontent of most of the crowd was brought by a gang of Spanish-speaking entertainers, ska punks and above all uncompromising eccentrics, the band The Locos (Blazneži or Norci in our language), who lured hordes of punks and emos to the emptied patches of the Race Stage, who had come to claim the best spots ahead of the performances by the most eminent musical guests. The catharsis of sound, despite many assuming that the days of skate punk and ska were buried long ago, set off a wild reaction, and the party was crowned by an exchange of bodily fluids between the audience and the performers. The red-haired singer Pipi, a master of costume changes, changed outfits three times during the songs. From his usual getup he switched to a police version of Elvis, waving a baton and setting off salvos of delight, while during a song dedicated to George Bush, whom all the current punks are settling scores with, a Locos version of the Statue of Liberty inflates above the stage, defying the current political situation with a scythe and a raised middle finger. The tiger-eyed guitarist Santi, backed by bassist Andrés “Coco”, the wild drummer Hatuey, the brass section of Luis, Fran and Javi, and the other strummer, guitarist Ken, are companions in sharp satire and humor. Pipi changes into a cardinal and, papal-style, takes apart the depraved duplicity of the Vatican, all of it dressed in a circus atmosphere of sarcasm, irony and sonic simplicity. Less Is More. The Locos sweep the competition aside and steal the scepter of the main stage’s reign up to that point. And they know they’ve won, and they know that the state of punk usurpation of completely demented, pop-soaked crowds is a perfectly natural state of being. Full praise and congratulations. Worth another taste on stage!
FALL OUT BOY: 19.50 – 20.50
The first real headliners of the last day were the guys from Chicago, who took their name from a minor character in the cult cartoon The Simpsons, and, fittingly, the ranks of poncho-wearers under the stage began to thicken, warming up gymnastically and planning a landing of crowd surfers on the security guards, who suspected nothing bad but were always ready, and who looked like the Austrian version of the Hell’s Angels. The fairly long preparations and the audience’s growing nervousness are cut short by the sound of fanfares, after which the stout singer and guitarist who hides behind sunglasses even when there’s no sun, Patrick Stump, takes the stage, and the rest of the lineup is made up of bassist Pete Wentz, who also sings and takes care of the clever lyrics, lead guitarist Joe Trohman and drummer Andy Hurley, and the display of stage power and readiness can begin! After two albums released on small labels, Fall Out Boy’s Evening Out with Your Girlfriend (2002, Uprising Records) and Take This to Your Grave (2003, Fueled By Ramen), the Chicago emo-core guys, punks or just rockers, depending on how you slot them into the taxonomy of modern rock, walked through the doors of a major label and shone with two acclaimed albums that, economically speaking, were a pretty substantial commercial hit in the US and on this side of the pond too – From Under the Cork Tree (2005, Island Records) and the latest, Infinity on High (2007, Island Records) – and FOB paved their road to fame. The first chords hit and the madness begins. The crowd jumps as if they were being paid for it, and the chaotic invasion of crowd surfers could be compared to the invasion of Normandy. Still, you could hear that Pete and company are sloppy, and they make up for the shortage of quality vocals with wild acrobatics all over the place, high jumps and the merciless rhythm of emo hits like “Sugar, We’re Going Down”, “Dance, Dance”, “A Little Less Sixteen Candles, a Little More ‘Touch Me’˝, “Dead on Arrival”, “Grand Theft Autumn / Where Is Your Boy”, “Saturday” and the newest ones – “This Ain’t a Scene, It’s an Arms Race”, “The Carpal Tunnel of Love”, “Thnks fr th Mmrs”, “The Take Over, The Break’s Over” and I could go on. Truth is, the music is pretty two-dimensional and made for moistening teenage girls’ crotches, acrobatic attempts at concert suicide and rather obscure entertainment. Musically speaking, I dare say FOB at FreQuency were more in an energy-saving phase, and the Jägermeister and a beer or two too many surely took their toll as well …
FALL OUT BOY setlist:
1. Thriller
2. Grand theft Authumn
3. Where Is Your Boy
4. Take Over, The Break’s Over
5. Sugar We’re Going Down
6. Dance Dance
7. Thnks Fr Th Mmrs
8. Hum Hallelujah
9. The Carpal Tunnel Of Love
10. This Ain’t A Scene It’s An Arms Race
11. The Power Of Love
12. Beat It
13. One And Only
14. Saturday
KAISER CHIEFS: 21.20 – 22.50
At first they were Runston Parva, but since a name after a Yorkshire village doesn’t exactly ring out, they soon renamed themselves and became the Emperor’s chiefs, Kaiser Chiefs. After a perfect show at this year’s Radar Festival, where we got to see them in Zagreb, the lads from Leeds came to reap the fruits of their current fame at the Salzburgring too, and their set drew most of this year’s rainy August pop-revelers right in front of the main stage’s floodlights. A sign soon bloomed on stage promising their vehement triumph of will, good music and stage magic. Singer Ricky Wilson is the central stage magnet, able to pin down even the most demanding pair of eyes. Kaiser Chiefs are a new generation of Britpop rockers who, in a few years of active work, have condensed the pearls of their creativity into two full-length albums – the silver-certified Employment and this year’s Yours Truly, Angry Mob, which breaks all records and piles up bloody well-earned money and awards. There were too many concert highlights to list them all. Say, the brilliant and inspired version of ‘Oh My God’, and, of course, the hit ‘I Predict a Riot’, ‘Ruby’, ‘Angry Mob’ and on and on. A dominant position and firmly planted instruments, constant mic swinging and fluid banter between songs are a must if you want to keep your “mob” on a leash the way you want. And Kaiser Chiefs have it down. A performance that, in the worst case, deserves a solid nine, and in the best case a pure ten, at least slightly softened the avalanche of criticism that could be leveled at the organizers, but more on that later. Sadly, Kaiser Chiefs haven’t been on the musical throne long enough to be considered the perfect festival closer. They played their set. They played it without any nasty slip-ups. And they played just about everything that has piled up in their stack of original material in these few years. They’re a phenomenon, but not so big that you could be completely satisfied with it all. Sadly, in an age of floods of popular bands and MTV logic, we’ve gotten pretty spoiled, and even when we get something close to perfection, we crave more and better, so this nearly hour-and-a-half Britpop rock set was just a teaser for the grand finale that was still to come.
KAISER CHIEFS setlist:
1. Modern Way
2. I Predict A Riot
3. The Angry Mob
4. Highroyds
5. Thank You Very Much
6. I Can DoIit Without You
7. Ruby
8. Everyday I Love You Less And Less
9. Everthing Is Average Nowadays
10. Learnt My Lesson Well
11. Retirement
12. Na Na Na Na Naaa
13. I Was Born To Be A Dance
14. Caroline, Yes
15. Take Me Temperture
16. Oh My God
17. When The Heat Dies Down
SEEED: 23.20 – 01.00
I can hardly say I felt ecstasy at the announcement of the last act on the big stage, or at least that musical erection which, after the undoubtedly more successful and higher-quality Nova Rock festival, I can only wish for in the future. I’m not a fan of dance music, pushy Rastafarianism and rapping at all costs, so I could only barely tame the urge to head off to the dry shelter of my tent. The Berliners, who were slotted in as the grand finale, seemed to me, after excessively long preparations and secrecy (all the stage setup took place behind a big red curtain, so I assumed we were in for at least some controversial Madonna or similar artists), well. Finally the curtain drops. Stage fog you could cut with a knife brought back memories of childhood and the little gnome Smuk, only the pond was missing, the reeds and the short-legged green frog… Instead, in oversized pants and decked out in “much-needed” gold jewelry, Seeed skipped onto the stage, a twelve-member rap collective that looks like an expanded lineup of Kocka. First come the boom-boom beats and the boys start getting the head-honchos going Shaggy-style. Their latest album (the record Next!) is undoubtedly on the shelf of every head-honcho, since they were all eating out of their hands, but because in the cloning of the same rhythms and “buga-wuga” silliness I experienced a complete collapse of my will to live, I saw a far wiser solution to the wet day in nursing my approaching cold in the warm shelter of my tent.
FROM DOWN TO FALL: 14.25 – 15.10
While Drive By Argument opened the third day of the festival at the Race Stage, an official five minutes behind them on the Green Stage the brand-new emo core screamers From Down To Fall began to “thunder”, locals from Vienna. The guys hit with two-faced vocals, melodic and screamy, underpinned by hard aggressive riffs. An extraordinary chance to find themselves in front of a home crowd with a good 45 minutes in their pocket to present their name and their music. Even with the newest brainchildren, the tracks Hate Is The New Loud and Days Of Neon Grey, very predictable, softened and stripped to the bone, screamy pretty boys for a good morning… from what I heard, plenty of recycled riff clichés, communication errors in chasing the rhythm between guitar riffs and drums, though the band’s courage to write lyrics in English deserves a nod… Young lads, we’ll see what happens with them in the future.
GROSSSTADTGEFLUSTER: 15.30 – 16.15
The Germanic tradition goes on. If I cried at the previous band, this time I started bawling out loud. Doll-like female vocals with a Bambi effect, synthetic instrumental cosmetics, hidden under the pretext of German verses. Melancholic pathos. Liebe schmeckt gut, and Fur dich… a killjoy for the time of the afternoon lunch.
THE ELECTRIC SOFT PARADE: 16.35 – 17.25
In real fear of drummer’s inflammation, I walked over to the Green Stage again. Finally. Proper indie rock, guys from Brighton, from the south of Great Britain, who can definitely stir up some interest. The lineup is Thomas White (vocals, guitar), then his brother in a less surprised version Alex White (vocals, guitar, keyboards), Matthew Twaites (bass, keyboards) and Matthew Priest (drums).. Nicely rounded poppy beats, naturally sounding guitar approaches, with the band’s whole sound strongly propped up by keyboards. Of course, nothing new that hasn’t been heard before, these guys simply have a recycling factory at home. The band proudly and “wholesale” presented their studio debut “No Need to be Downhearted”, which came out in the second half of July 2007. So the tracks Cold World, If That’s The Case, Then I Don’t Know, Life In the Backseat, Have You Ever Felt Like It’s Too Late? came one after another. The finish didn’t lack Everybody Wants, Biting The Soles Of My Feet, A Beating Heart, Secrets and Loose Yr Frown either. Of course, the music is heavily influenced by The Beatles and the Britpop movement (the performance of the track Missunderstanding), but as the band’s very name dictates, highly sophisticated, with an unobtrusive underpinning of synthesizer sound. The band seemed honored by the invitation to play at FreQuency festival, and Thomas told the crowd so point-blank. The crowd served up the poorest turnout of all three days, which was down to exhaustion from the general partying, the renewed rain that kept pouring on into the third day of the festival, and, however I look at it, a very sad lineup of performers.
MONEYBROTHER: 17.45 – 18.35
It’s the project of the Swede Anders Wendin. The man is yet another master of restoring what’s already been invented and has an excellent, chameleon-like changeable voice! That makes it easy to “commercialize”, in fact it’s very practical and welcome, so he’s regularly shod in perfectly standard footwear of natural-sounding pop rock, aired out by alto sax bursts, use of organs, classic piano, pinpoint gravitation toward soul cosmetics. Interestingly, Anders and company showed a slight reserve at the start, and most of the attention was drawn by his sidekick on Anders’ far right, the saxophonist with a rockabilly slicked-back hairdo and little glasses in “horn-rimmed” frames that probably were left to him by his great-grandfather. As things went on the guys loosened up and served up a superbly crafted and tight performance with the necessary touch of immersion and spontaneity, and Anders’ tongue came loose too, and he used it to entertain the crowd under the stage even more. Of course, it goes without saying that the girls in the crowd were once again the ones going wildest.
MONEYBROTHER setlist:
1. Just Another Summer
2. My Little Girl
3. The Pressure
4. Will Not Happen
5. They Are Building Walls Around Us
6. Down At The R
7. Blow Him Back Into My Arm
8. Joanna
9. Guess Who’s Gonna Get Some Tonight
10. Reconsider
3 FEET SMALLER: 19.05 – 19.55
An Austrian product, the trio of Marcus Smaller (vocals, guitar), Roberto Franko (drums) and El Howdy (bass) isn’t that old. Founded in 2000. This trio caught the standards of classic eighties punk bands in its charisma and combined them with melodic catchiness into a trendy emo core jumble, which sparked in a direct, uncompromising stance of upright horns and unstoppable rock ‘n’ roll riff power. The people under the stage lost it, and in the second half of the schedule the Green Stage, with the appearance of 3 Feet Smaller, crossed over a clearly disjunct dividing line in the general mood and atmosphere. Suddenly heads were spinning hard in the crowd, bodies were tumbling over, and the intensity of the rock pressure was backed up by the crowd’s impressive command of the lyrics, even if in English, of the songs the band played. Marcus Smaller has an excellent sense of humor, his English is practically perfect, and you could easily make the mistake of thinking this trio doesn’t come “just” from Austria. Dance With Me, I’ve Done Wrong, Strike Back, Headlights of avalanche-like choruses rolled out into the audience, who showed with their response how popular the guys are on home turf. A compact, immersive show charged with high voltage!
MADSEN: 20.25 – 21.25
During the break while waiting for the Germans Madsen and photographing Fall Out Boy at the Race Stage, the rain stopped. What’s more, in the west the sky was bathing in the colors of a glowing sun slowly dimming off to sleep. With the night came a chill and teeth started chattering from the biting cold. At least the rain had stopped and, you won’t believe it, we didn’t see rain again until the end of the festival. The band Madsen got its name in a very natural way, since the lineup has three members with the same last name, namely the brothers Sebastian (vocals, guitar), Johannes (guitar), Sascha (you’ve probably already guessed their surname is Madsen). They’re joined by Nik Maurer (bass) and Folli Jahncke (organ). With a contract from Universal Music in their pocket, the band made an extraordinary commercial breakthrough in just two years. It’s a stylistic musical equivalent of the equally beloved Germans Tocotronic, who played the Green Stage on the first day. Even the general vibe was remarkably similar. I’m repeating myself, but the crowd is literally crazy about these guys. There was Goodbye Logik – one of the better achievements of their career on the songwriting side, Die perfektion, where in the chorus Sebastian tested the outer limits of his vocal cords’ elasticity stretching out the screamy chorus, and there was another “little song” – one with a particularly infectious melodic chorus, Ein sturm, meant for opening the band’s concert,… in short, the guys met with an incredibly feverish response from an audience that didn’t stay indifferent to the release of energy of the general ruckus, going wild to the dictates of the biggest hits of their teenage idols. There’s really nothing to add. Madsen are a smoothly oiled machine that relentlessly ground through the ether on the wings of a loyal crowd, and the contact between band and audience was perfect, magical.
MADSEN setlist:
1. Ein Sturm
2. Goodbye Logik
3. Unzerbrechlich
4. Happy End
5. Panik
6. Diese Kinder
7. Vielleicht
8. Die Perfektion
9. Du schreibst Geschichte
10. Blitzkrieg Bop
11. Immer mehr
12. Mein Therapeut und ich
MILLENCOLIN: 21.55 – 23.00
They were real veterans compared to the juvenile competition on the Green Stage on the last day. Their set overlapped with Kaiser Chiefs’ hour on the Race Stage. Millencolin lived through their best years of commercial notoriety, and the resulting MTV attractiveness, long ago. Not that there weren’t people under the stage because of that, when the Swedish skate punkers took their positions on it, since they got a view and the support of thousands of hands swarming below, and yet, after Madsen, a pretty hefty mass marched 15 minutes on foot over to the Race Stage, to the more fashionable Kaiser Chiefs. The “Milenkoti” growlingly “chopped” wood that fell apart into fine sawdust of an especially noble pedigree. Cash or Clash? Both, of course, but as mentioned in a film from the nineties. And Clash is what remained! Debauched rock’n’roll under the baton of positively inclined vocals, and the “Milenkoti” came across on stage like a proper four-headed street gang, a proper band of pirate pharaoh ants thoroughly laying waste to everything before them. Routine, experience, the fruit of the lineup’s long mileage. What I listened to was in fact rock’n’roll with really lovely little choruses, predictably rounded, simple adrenaline rush, meant for vigorously whirling the heads of the listeners under the stage. The guys are fully potent, and in a mix of old and new they made it known that their punk roots are irreplaceable – Olympic from the album “Life On A Plate” (1995) confirmed that Millencolin can still be devastating in hellish speed, power and precision, burying the audience in a proper fire dance, which the crowd, in the language of spontaneity, understood as a charge into a total mosh pit.
MILLENCOLIN setlist:
1. No Cigar
2. Farewell My Hell
3. Ray
4. The Ballad
5. Fox
6. Mr Clean
7. Botanic Mistress
8. Penguins & Polarbears
9. Bullion
10. Story of my life
11. Black eye
12. Olympic
13. Cash or Clash
14. Man or mouse
15. E20 norr
16. Duckpond
BILLY TALENT: 23.30 – 00.50
Billy the who? The Canadian former Pezz, who only recently found stardom as Billy Talent, in a lineup of Benjamin Kowalewicz (vocals), whom some wrongly assume is Billy Talent (the guys took the name from a character in Michael Turner’s novel “Hard Core Logo”), then Ian D’Sa (guitar), Jonathan Gallant (bass) and Aaron Solowoniuk (drums), a genuine classic rock quartet from Toronto, Canada, saved all those who came to FreQuency for rock and not for the jiggling to the cosmetic electro tapping of Seeed, who were seed-ing it all over the Race Stage at the same time (poor Sandi, heh, heh…). The post-punkers offered musical vistas of their “talent”, Billy Talent! Both records they’ve released were represented with highlights in the setlist. What Billy Talent are in Canada, Kaiser Chiefs are in Europe in 2007, say, with the most obvious difference being in the vocals, since Kowalewicz sings far more bluntly, with obvious traces of frenetic seizures, with a slightly obscure color to the voice, while the vocal in Kaiser Chiefs gives that band a decisive touch of Britpop, which you won’t find in the Canadians even in your dreams. The guys devoured the people with the opener This Is How It Goes, stayed mercilessly ruffled in Devil In A Midnight Mass and in fact kept adding gas from song to song, so the atmosphere reached boiling point at the end of the concert, when Billy Talent stunned the crowd with a triplet included in the encore, Fallen Leaves, Red Flag and ). It was the last day of the festival and both stages of the Race and Green stage were packed to the absolute limit. Anyone who found themselves somewhere between the two stages before the Seeed and Billy Talent concerts could be happy if they even reached the paved area between the tower with the mixing desk and the stage. The capacity was thus maxed out in terms of attendance. This resulted in the creation of a magical atmosphere during the performance of the festival’s last riders. A hurricane under the stage, as if the audience, through intense concentration, had been mentally focusing for a long time on the moment they’d share their energy with Billy Talent. Teenagers literally rained over the front row into the space right under the stage, though some dropped into it like a cork, since exhaustion did its part too. A grand-style finish to the festival.
1. This Is How It Goes
2. Devil In A Midnight Mass
3. Line & Sinker
4. Worker Bees
5. The Ex
6. River Below
7. Nothing To Loose
8. This Suffering
9. Pins And Needles
10. Sympathy
11. Surrender
12. Try Honesty
—-encore—–
13. Fallen Leaves
14. Red Flag
15. (
conclusion: Sandi Sadar
And the festival itself? My overall verdict on the three-day marathon, at least from my side, is somewhere halfway between awesome and a fucking shitshow (the closest is a combination of the two words without the “and” in between). What could make up for the fact that numerous headliners canceled, and in exchange you got mostly a crowd of average and below-average knockoffs from a German music scene that’s very foreign and unpleasant to me? It’s almost like being promised a cake, but since there’s sadly none to put on the table, you’ll have to make do with zwieback and mineral water. Musical gourmandise is surely guaranteed, right? If this year’s festival story repeats itself next year, the organizers can expect to count far fewer heads in the herd of the crowd – and that too will be mostly, if not entirely, from Austria, Germany and other German-speaking countries. Germanization über alles just doesn’t “fire up”, sadly. Otherwise, as far as organization goes, the organizers showed a sense for logistics and Spartan discipline. Still, I dare say that with this year’s FreQuency, at least on our bus, which ground out kilometers and sat in kilometers-long traffic jams, only a few people were completely satisfied.
Setlist
RACE STAGE: 14.20 – 15.00: Drive By Argument 15.15 – 15.55: Hellogoodbye 16.10 – 16.55: Sorgente 17.10 – 18.00: Gods Of Bliz 18.30 – 19.20: The Locos 19.50 – 20.50: Fall Out Boy 21.20 – 22.50: Kaiser Chiefs 23.20 – 01.00: Seed GREEN STAGE: 14.25 – 15.10: From Down To Fall 15.30 – 16.15: Grossstadt-Gefluester 16.35 – 17.25: The Electric Soft Parade 17.45 – 18.35: Moneybrother 19.05 – 19.55: 3 Feet Smaller 20.25 – 21.25: Madsen 21.55 – 23.00: Millencolin 23.30 – 00.50: Billy Talent
Photo gallery
