Thursday 28th March 2024,
The Black Planet

Report: Vagos Open Air 2012 (Part 2/2)

Report: Vagos Open Air 2012 (Part 2/2)

 

  If you missed the report of Day 1, you can read it here.

Day 2

So the first day was gone, and there wasn’t much time to rest, either. Since the festival only opens it’s gates at 15:00, there was time to have a walk around the village, eat something, or for some of those with their own transportation, go to the beach in the ocean shore.

The first band of the day was Portuguese MINDLOCK who traveled from Faro in the sunny Algarve. Unknown to many people, these modern sounding Thrasher captivated the crowd which reacted with an occasional circle pit. With a good stage presence the vocalist, Carlinhos encouraged the audience to not let the moshpit stop! The sound could be better but it was quite acceptable. The band presented a few songs from their latest studio release “Enemy Of Silence”, with the single “Firekiss” or “Sing Like You Were Dead”. A good opening band for the second day!

Mindlock Mindlock Mindlock

 Another band that created a big interest on the audience were the Taiwanese CHTHONIC. This band, which travelled a long distance, were highly expected, specially by the male audience mostly because of the band’s bassist, the lovely Doris Yeh. When the band entered the stage to test their microphones, everyone was silent, but when Doris tested hers, the audience started to scream, showing how much they liked her. There were some minor technical issues in the beginning of the show involving the vocals, but were quickly fixed. “The Island” and “Oceanquake” opened the performance, obtaining a good feedback immediately. With an unusual band imagery, the members stood out from your ordinary metal looking band. Freddy Lim, the vocalist communicated a lot with the Portuguese audience and even took a moment to teach everyone how to cheer in Taiwanese 呼乾啦! (Hō ta lah!) and carried on to the next song “Broken Jade”. It was a short concert, right before they ended the concert, Freddy announced that the band would meet and greet the fans afterwards and invited everyone to show up at the Meet & Greet tent on the side of the stage. And they did take the time to meet everyone in the huge queue of fans waiting.

Chthonic Chthonic Chthonic

The following band was TEXTURES, a Dutch band that play a melodic progressive Metalcore, pretty technical stuff . Opening with “Surreal State Of Enlightenment”, followed by “Regenesis”, the band seemed a little bit shy, but that feeling faded away a few minutes later, when they started to have more stage presence as their concert continued with “Storm Warning” and “Consonant Hemispheres”. Clearly a band with great musicians, songs filled with counter-tempos and excellent drumming work! “Stream of Consciousness” was next and to continue the presentation of their latest album “Dualism” from 2011 they performed“Sanguine Draws the Oath”. At this point, the sound was perfect for a band like this, the members were comfortable and the audience was responding quite well. The first album was also brought to the setlist with the song “Swandive”. The highlight of the show was when they played “Singularity”. The last song was “Laments of an Icarus” from the 2008 album “Silhouettes”.

Textures 11 Textures 9 Textures 5
Textures Textures Textures

Oldschool technical Thrasher CORONER came all the way from Switzerland to deliver their trademark Thrash sound that made them famous in the first half of the 90’s. After so many years in hiatus, the band decided to reunite in 2011 for a couple of shows, and judging by their performance at Vagos Open Air, they can still put up a show and should release a new album in the future. Starting off with “Internal Conflicts”, “Serpent Moves” and  “Masked Jackal”, Royce and his bandmates were enjoying being on stage again, and they visibly put all the effort into playing a memorable concert. The crowd seemed to be enjoying as well, with the occasional crowd-surfers. It was the first time they were playing in Portugal and the oldschool Thrash Metal fans will not forget this performance. The band ended the show with “Grin (Nails Hurt)” and encoring  “The Invincible”. The fans were not disappointed and called the band’s name until the end.

Coroner 3 Coroner 2 Coroner 1
Coroner Coroner Coroner

If the previous concert was a good Thrash show, OVERKILL arrived to make things even better for the oldschool fans. Another band from the 80’s/90’s, this time coming from the USA, with a typical American Thrash sound. The band entered the stage at full speed, and full energy, starting the show exactly like their latest album begins… 2012 “The Electric Age” starts with a song called “Come And Get It” followed by “Bring Me The Night”. Bobby Blitz, the vocalist contaminated everyone with his intense attitude on stage, and before anyone had any time to rest he took the fans back to 1989 with the song “Elimination”. What a great start for the band. Good sound, a big moshpit had already appeared right in the beginning. For more than one hour, we could watch a great Thrash Metal concert, in which the band tried to diverse between the albums, with songs such as “Electric Rattlesnake”, “Hello From the Gutter”, “Save Yourself”“Old School”, the classic “In Union We Stand”. Bobby and his friends said goodbye to the Portuguese audience with “Rotten To The Core” from the very first album “Feel The Fire”, 1985! The last song was a cover self-explanatory song from The Subhumans… simply entitled “Fuck You”. And it was over, a very intense performance by this band who has completed it’s 30th anniversary.

Last but not least, the most awaited band of the second night climbed the stage at midnight. Swedish ARCH ENEMY were back in Portugal! With the leadership of the lovely and respectful Angela there was no time to waste. After a brief “Hello” they quickly engaged the destruction machine and kicked off with the songs “Yesterday is Dead and Gone” and “Ravenous”. The fans were wild during the whole show, specially after the moment when Angela announced that it was a very hard and complicated day for the band, due to the fact the their drummer, Mr. Daniel Erlandsson, had broke his hand previously on that day! Everyone was touch by the thought that he was playing with broken bones, feeling pain but still he didn’t want to cancel the concert. The fans reacted to that and all hell broke loose. The hit “Dead Eyes See No Future” was good proof of the commitment assumed by the fans towards the band and it’s effort. After this, the fans were presented with an instrumental interlude, a guitar solo by both Michael Amott and Nick Cordle (who has recently joined the band). Angela was very communicative, creating a bond with the audience, chatting and telling jokes, before waving her band flag during the song “Under Black Flags We March”. Of course that they couldn’t skip the classic “We Will Rise”,  so quickly reaching the end of their performance, the band ended up with “Snow Bound”, “Nemesis” and “Fields of Desolation”. A killer concert to close the festival.

In conclusion, this years edition of the Vagos Open Air looks like it has been successful once again, even though there could be noticed that there wasn’t so many people like the year before. The conditions for the fans are improving, and all seems to point to the expectation that next year it will be ever better! See you next year, Vagos!

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