We've been home for two days now and reality is starting to settle back in. Although my voice is still gone. This year I shared the whole thing on Instagram as well so I recommend going there for pictures :)
On Tuesday last week we got in the car at 5am and after having picked up the last person of our roadtrip gang, we finally got on the road around 5:30am. Amazingly we didn't stop for bathroom breaks or snack breaks as many times as earlier years and we arrived at the camp ground just after 11:30am. Made incredibly good time on that journey! Got the tents up and for the rest of that day it was all party.
The next morning most of us crawled out of our tents around 8am and went to find breakfast, which turned into way more of a quest than any of us wanted first thing in the morning. The regular ready-to-go breakfast bags from earlier years were nowhere to be seen and so we begrudgingly half-assed our own. At least I got morning coffee.
My first concert of this year was Soilwork. They were the band that got me into death metal as a teenager and I used to love them, but now I haven't really listened to them much in the last ten years or so. After this concert I'll definitely pick them up again! The entire front row became a mosh-pit during their concert. It was glorious!
Airbourne was playing around dinner time and so we decided to go in and half-watch them while eating. We then returned to the camp for a short while, until it was time to go back and see Def Leppard, Avatar and Mötley Crüe. Avatar easily wins best concert of the year for me ♥
The second day started out strong with Korpiklaani and then we returned to camp until evening when it was time for Kamelot. I don't really listen to Kamelot (I've heard like two songs), but I've liked what I heard so I decided to tag along to see them. It was a really cool show! After that concert we spent the rest of the day at the camp until it was time for Deep Purple and Europe. Neither of which I was super excited about, but they both seemed like bands I shoudl take the chance to see while I still can. Deep Purple was too psychedelic experimental instrumental solo jam session for me. After every song there was a solo jam session for each band member (probably to allow the singer to catch a break). But aside from that it struck all of us how damned polite and sweet they were. All of us were just standing there like awwwwwh. Europe, being Swedish, has a huge following and it was very clear whenever one of the mor well-known songs were played.
The third day is when my voice went to shit. This year the festival area was super dusty. I don't know what they did different earlier years, but it has never been this dusty. I saw several people walking around with scarves/bandanas/masks covering their mouths and noses, and for me that's a lesson learned for next year. More than one person in our camp got red and irritated eyes from all the dust. But anyway... I had only two concerts planned for Friday and they were in the evening so most of the day was spent partying in the camp. We then finished the day with Powerwolf (amazing as usual) and Iron Maiden. Iron Maiden mainly played lesser known songs for the first half-hour and with none of us being big fans, we decided to leave after that. Once we had returned to the camp and it had been maybe forty minutes since they started playing we heard Fear of the Dark. First well-known song of that gig.
Last day, Saturday, and I could barely speak. We had only two concerts planned for Saturday as well, which was just as well because traditionally everybody is completely beat and ready to leave and still trying their hardest to keep the party and energy levels up. To mixed results. The first concert was early, Joddla med Siv, they're a Swedish folk rock band from Skåne and they have a MASSIVELY HUGE following in Skåne, which the organizors seem to have missed or underappreciated. They were on one of the smaller stages, when they could easily have filled the second to largest stage or maybe even the largest one. People crowded in front of the stage, spilling out through the entrances and exits on either side trying to squeeze in to see them. And they delivered. It was amazing! I've seen the number 35k people in the audience thrown around...
After Joddla was done we returned to camp and started to slowly pack our things together while continuing the party. Before going in to see Ghost as the final act of the festival we made sure all our things were gathered up and then we went back inside. Ghost was really great, but Avatar still wins best concert of the year.
After the concert there was a small celebration of the ferstival's 30th anniversary with small clips from every festival playing on the big picture screens on the biggest stage and fireworks. We then went back to camp to grab our things and head for the car. We packed our stuff and ourselves in the car and after a clusterfuck traffic jam of everybody else having the same brilliant idea, we finally got out onto the road at 00:40am. Because it was so late we ended up taking several more stretch-your-legs breaks and we arrived home at around 8am on Sunday morning. We showered, unpacked, and then fell into bed until around 2pm.
It's now 1am on the Wednesday after and my voice is still terrible, but slowly getting better.
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