The Hultsfred Festival is held in the dark forests of Sweden and is not known to be the first choice of anyone who wants metal, but nevertheless this year there was certain bands booked who made a visit to the festival worth a look. We must not forget that usually this festival can offer a really nice weather for some good old beer drinking as well.

Besides form drinking beer, what can a metal fan do here? Well this year we had the chance do to some head banging and moshing to bands like Meshuggah, I’ll Niño, Hatebreed and Soulfly.

So here we go:

SoulFly

According to me, Soulfly was the biggest reason for visiting Hultsfred, not Morrisey! As I stood there waiting for Soulfly to arrive on stage I couldn’t help thinking back on last years (2003) Arvikafestival, where I was slighty hurt during the Soulfly-show, I couldn’t wait to get hurt again…

Max Cavalera and his new Soulflycrew got on stage on time and opened up the set with the title song from the newest album “Prophecy”. Needless to say the whole place exploded. Cavalera did just what you could expect of him, playing and singing his songs without a single mistake, and with songs like “Prophecy”, “Execution style”, “living Sacrifice”, “Eye for an Eye” and of course “back to the primitive” it’s hard to fail.

Actually the only things missing was the part of the old show where the whole band played different kinds of drums and I also couldn’t help missing Roy, the previous drummer, a true god among drummers. But overall this was a we say over here: a real kickass concert.

HIM

The heartbreaker from Finland played late at night at the biggest stage and as most of you understand he got a lot of loud female noises (No Arch enemy style here ;-) ).

This was the fifth time I saw HIM on a festival and usually they can deliver a nice and slow show to relax to but not today. The whole band seemed very “off” and there’s no chance of saving a concert then no matter what material you have in stock. I expected HIM to be a little more professional than this.

I’ll Niño

I’ll Niño and Hatebreed changed playing time with each other for some reason and that was not the very best thing for us visitors since I’ll Niños new playing time was about 5 minutes after Soulfly and since the band have many similar elements in their music it just became a little much. One thing that I’ll Niño was not suffering from was the problem that HIM had, they were loaded to teeth with angry latino metal and in a good mood. The best part of the whole set was clearly the opening song “If you still hate me”. I’ll Niño is a great live act which a hope to have the pleasure to enjoy once again without having seen Soulfy just minutes before. I got my chance on the Roskilde festival two weeks later but missed them due to Slipknot being booked at the same playing time.

If you get the chance to see I’ll Niño, then take it!

Meshuggah

Meshuggah plays a kind of metal that I sometimes have big trouble listening to, it just gets boring to listen to same hi hat all the time and guitars tuned so low even Korn would blush.

However the audience enjoyed the show much more than I did and it would not be fair to say that Meshuggah I a bad band, they are professional musicians. The problem is that their stiff style of music becomes as boring live as in my livingroom; you must certainly be in a special mood to enjoy this (or a guitar technical freak). No I say, this was not their best moment, I know from earlier experiences that they only are this stiff themselves if they choose it.