read also: Introduction => 99-08-20&21&22 Ieper HC festival
pics taken (99-08-20) and donated by Ivo Lozej (Slovenia)
Here’s a report (part 1) about Ieperfest 99 from the Slovenian zine 13.Brat #7 written by Valter Cijan [bassist of the Slovenian bands ‘Man In The Shadow’ & ‘Entreat’]:
After a long time I’m getting back to writing. I will try to describe a short excursion to Belgium. The purpose of this trip was to attend the three-day hardcore festival ‘Hardcore: The Next Generation’ in Ieper (and we succeeded).
We took off on Wednesday (August 18th) in the morning (not too early, because we are lazy) around 10 a.m.
The crew consisted of Seba Kanauc – the driver and owner of the Citroen CX Prestige, which was our vehicle (why a vehicle? drive it once and you’ll know) to Belgium and back (I guess), ‘Mikla’ the axeman of ‘Entreat’ and the main ‘casanova’ [Dejan: irony] in Vipava [town in Slovenia], Radovan [Lozej] the axeman of ‘Low Punch’ [HC band from Ajdovščina], Ivo Lozej [bassist of ‘Low Punch’], an honorary member of the windmill crew and my little darling, the biggest fan and director of the Slovenian windmill crew.
Seba picks up ‘Mikla’ and me in Nova Gorica, and then we drive to Ajdovščina to pick up the other two. And so begins our journey towards Belgium. Before Vrhnika, I start to feel sick so that we have to stop for ten minutes to take an anti-nausea pill (that’s what happens when you’re too tired). The road to Klagenfurt is going well, there we met Hannes (singer from ‘Animotion’). After an hour and a half we finally find it. Hannes shows us the citycentre. At 19:00 we sail from Klagenfurt towards Germany. To avoid the tunnels (we are too stingy to pay for them), we go over two passes which are about 1.700m high. We take a short break on the second one and find out that the temperature is around 10 degrees. As appropriate, we walk around in shorts, and the rest of the tourists in jackets (find out who’s the bigger moron). The ride continues without incidents but not for long. Immediately after Munich, it starts drizzle. We stop at the first gasstation and decide to continue our journey in the morning. So we had a very comfortable night: imagine sleeping with five in the car, three of them are vegan and emit unique smells. A gas-bubble of some kind. I wake up in the morning feeling like I’ve been run over by a bulldozer, a little morning exercise and a Nutella breakfast. I take over the piloting of the vehicle, somewhere around Stuttgart we accidentally come across a shoppingcentre that had food at very reasonable prices. There we arm ourselves with food (me with a new jar of Nutella), take a short break for lunch and continue our journey towards Belgium. We arrive in Luxemburg around 5 p.m. We spend almost an hour trying to find a parkingspace. We go for a walk around the city, we soon realize that we won’t stay too long because of the excessive crowd in the streets and the uncomfortable feeling. Prestige-stores, showing off luxury cars and other crap. I hope that it is not the same in the other parts of Luxembourg and that it’s only in the capital, because the landscape really charmed me and I hope that I will have the opportunity to see it better.
At 19:00 we are already on our way to Ieper. We arrived in Ieper around 10 p.m. without any major complications, only got a bit lost before Kortrijk. People help you with directions without any problems. The thing is that they can only speak French, which fortunately is a little like Italian.
So finally we arrived at the promised paradise. Seba inquired at the Vort’n Vis (alternative cultural centre) if it’s possible to pay for an overnight stay. We find out that it is fully occupied, only Seba and Radovan find an empty corner, and the other three sleep in the car. It turns out that it’s quite comfortable like that. Before noon, we settled in a very nice campsite, which was also very cheap and only a five-minute walk from the concert-place. There we also found Miran [Rusjan], the main person of Choose Life recs, who’s also the guitarist of the popfunk band ‘Man In The Shadow’ and his girlfriend Špela. And us, mere mortals, got the honour of being able to eat together. Truly something unique. This year the festival took place in an open, pleasant schoolyard, whereas in other years in was in the Vort’n Vis. The entrance-fee for three days was 4.500 SIT [Slovenian Tolar; less than 20 Euro], which isn’t much for 36 bands.
I will try to describe the bands that performed, although it’s almost impossible to watch and remember everything. The concert started at 1 p.m. on Friday. The Belgians of ‘Hundred Years Of Forgetting’ were the first to perform, as far as I remember they played emo with screaming vocals. I don’t think it was anything special. The Norwegian ‘JR Ewing’ directly surprised with excellent emocore mixed with an ‘Unbroken’ style; their 7” sold out in an instant. The Belgian band ‘Once…Never Again’ followed, I recall it was very metal and boring. Phew, then it was ‘Redemption’ (from Rome) ’s turn. Never mind, I won’t waste any words on them. I just know that they were very proud to belong to some unknown straight-edge legion and that the singer was very funny. We took advantage of their performance to get lunch and thus missed the ‘Timebomb’ concert (also from Rome). I remember the Belgian band ‘Hebriana’ superficially, I have this image in my head that they played calm emocore. ‘Heaven Shall Burn’ from Germany played with as many as three guitarists. I thought it was going to be a blast but it turned out that it was all bland. They played a mix of black/death-metal and hardcore, boring. ‘Discount’ from the U.S. played melodic punkrock with female vocals. It wasn’t bad, it’s a shame they had a bad sound. Oh and then it was Belgium’s ‘Sad Origin’s turn. Very metal and stupid stuff. During their set I got to witness how that most follish and violent windmill dance is performed. We noticed that the audience didn’t like this way of dancing, except for the couple of idiots who did it. Windmillers are instantly recognisable: almost all of them are wearing baggy sweatpants, flashy one are preferred. They were only present during concerts when a band was playing that you could throw their fists around. Thank god there were few such bands. What I was most looking forward to that evening was ‘As Friends Rust’, who hail from Florida. I was pleased with their performance, a really good mix of melodic hardcorepunk and emocore. Then it was the turn of the Dutch old-school attraction ‘Mainstrike’. They didn’t convince me too much, especially because of the singer’s statements. Most of the audience was quite enthusiastic about their performance though. At the end of the first night there was ‘Hot Water Music’, from the same town as ‘As Friends Rust’. I had heard only good things about them and the CD I had listened to, was quite good. Live, however, they are a totally kicking ass. Kind of a mix of punk and emocore with very catchy, singalong choruses, hard to describe it because they are too…
The first day ended and we all went to the campsite in good spirits. The night was quiet, damp and cold. I slept worse because I was still quite chilly. In the morning, I defeated my sleepiness with a Nutella-based breakfast and thus regained my energy for new HC adventures.
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‘As Friends Rust’: Damien Moyal (vocals)
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Roland ‘Big’ Roland Roller
Johnny van de Koolwijk (bass) & ‘Beertje’ Jeroen Vrijhoef (guitar)
‘Mainstrike’
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‘Hot Water Music’
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