Fear the return!
2010 marked the second year Metalmoments visited the flagship of Czech metal festivals, the Brutal Assault festival in Josefov, but the festival itself has a much longer and darker history than that. In fact, this year marked the 15th anniversary for the festival, and it is still pumping out its death, black and hardcore rhythms over the old army fortress where it is so fittingly placed.

The festival has grown a lot in those years, or so I’ve been told, but I could feel that at least the attendance of visitors had grown considerably only since last year, and it felt as though the festival was nearing its capacity for how many people it can take in, at least in the current surroundings.
Ok, so the festival area had been slightly enlarged compared to 2009, adding a new shortcut path between the stage area and the metal market, and also a so called chill out area reaching from one of the existing food streets and around the back of the natural stand coming out near the official merchandise stand. Still, even with these areas being very frequented (the chill out area was nice when your legs were getting tired from walking and standing a whole day, and you needed a short rest form the music), it was still a very crowded festival area we saw, and when the main acts where playing and almost all the visitors where in front of the stages at the same time, you could hardly move…

Also in the band line-up it could be seen that the festival is getting a very nice international reputation, as seen by the six headliners of the festival (one for each of the stages, and for each of the three days); Thursday had Fear Factory and Children Of Bodom kicking up a storm, followed by Devin Townsend and Cannibal Corpse during Friday and well rounded off by a double Swedish attack during Saturday featuring Meshuggah and Hypocrisy. Of course, it is also in the ‘smaller’ names that you can find real treats of a festival, and Brutal Assault held several treats in this position which we didn’t see anywhere at all the other festivals we visited this year.
I was particularly interested in Sigh from Japan and Diablo Swing Orchestra from Sweden, both brining a very special and personal style of music to the table, and bands like Gwar and Macabre always bring a smile to my face when I see them coming.
Though, it was not reserved for the headliners to be large and famous, bands like Sepultura, My Dying Bride and Agnostic Front certainly held a lot of weight in the program as well.
As an extra, Brutal Assault opened up its doors a day early this year for a warm-up party of some eight or so small bands performing on a special for the occasion stage raised in the metal market area. The day was supposed to be rounded off by a special Fear Factory show performed outside the festival at a local venue, but sadly this was cancelled due to the band being caught in traffic and thus being unable to make it in time.
For those still hungry for more, Brutal Assault had arranged for no less than two official afterparties, one in Prague and the other in Košice, making this years’ festival span a total of six days for those who were up to it. Quite impressive!

Being from Denmark, it is always nice to visit the Czech Republic, and being from a metalzine it is especially nice to visit one of its many festivals. Compared to where we come from, everything is so cheap here, that you can go by on a fairly stripped festival budget, and still get by without making any real sacrifices or compromises.
Just take the festival beer tents as a good example; this year Brutal Assault was offering no less than five (!) fine beer sorts to its visitors, ranging in price from one to one and a half coupon each. The beer was an ice-cold half litre draught, and a coupon (which is the official festival currency) was about 1.15 Euros. Now, if that price doesn’t knock you of your chair, I don’t know what will!
New additions were a beer called Master, a pretty dark but nice little thing, and one called Radegast Birell, but my favourites was still the nice and smooth Gambrinus and the pitch-black yet seductively sweet Kozel.
For connoisseurs of other kinds, there was also an alcohol-free beer, a newly installed wine cellar and drink vendors. Being a beer-man myself, I stuck to the normal bar tents though, except for the occasional Red Bull to keep me on my toes.
The food tents were pretty much the same as last year; selling every fast-food conceivable to man, at least as long as it was able to be pickled! We had pickled cucumbers in four or five different tastes, other assorted pickled vegetables and even pickled sausages! Other than these, what I must presume to be local specialities, there were of course the burger, kebab and noodle stands you see at every festival, although I was missing some of the great decorations I saw last year (check the photo gallery for 2009). Another disaster dawned upon us, as we noticed that Lunah’s (Lauridsen, our photographer) favourite food-shack, the toast sellers were missing this year! Woe upon us, if we weren’t able to quickly find a fitting replacement; luckily we did though, in the guise of another toast booth where you actually got two for the price of one coupon! They even had some very tasty dessert toast, with an apple filling and topped with (I think) caramel, cinnamon and whipped cream. This was something I have never heard of before, and although the combination still has an odd ring to it, I must kneel in the dust and declare that they were in fact incredibly tasty! My personal favourite was the Asian noodle wagon down the street, where you got a large meal for little money, and you could make it as strong as you wished with the soy and chilli sauces they had put on the counter.

Going from one thing to something completely other; this year marked a very special first for us, as this was the very first time ever we slept at a hotel while visiting a festival (or one of the first time we used a hotel at all in our journeys for that sake). There are a few different reasons for this, including the fact that you are not able to bring your car to the official camping grounds, and we had had a bit of a problem finding a good parking-lot in the local streets the last year.
So, when we saw that Brutal Assault had joined forces with the Hotel Cernigov in Hradec Králové with a special festival offer, we immediately picked up on the idea and made reservations for our visit. Funny thing here, is that several of the bands were put up in the same hotel, and this created a very nice atmosphere everyone spoke to everyone, and after the festival-day was over, the party continued till early in the morning in the hotel bar and lobby.
A special shuttle bus had been arranged, taking visitors from the hotel the 20 some kilometres out to the festival ground in the day, and then back during the night, all included in the room price, so you never had to worry about not being able to pay the fair. Although it didn’t work exactly as announced, where you should be able to call at any time and it would be there for you within the hour, it was still very effective and had several runs both ways throughout the day, and you just needed to sign up for time most fitting to your needs. Only problem was, no matter how hard the girl sitting in the hotel worked on making things as convenient for all of us (and she really did a great job, I’ll take my hat for that), for the first two days, the persons in the INFO box at the festival entrance, where you were supposed to get your return ticket, knew nothing about either a hotel or a shuttle bus service. Nor were they very helpful to begin with, for the first night we were only handed a festival program with a general emergency hotline phone-number and then we were pretty much on our own... The last two days saw a new guy in the INFO box who was solely there with the purpose of handling the shuttle bus issues (and some online gaming), and from there on out, things worked out smoothly.
One funny story which springs to mind as I sit thinking about the shuttle bus was when, during the trip to the festival on the last day, the driver without a word suddenly stopped in the middle of an intersection and just walked off. After several minutes without knowing what was going on, he, again without so much as a word, reappeared carrying a lunchbox and a large glass of pickled cucumbers (again with the pickles!) and drove on. The sheer absurdity of it all brought out smiles and laughs of all of us travelling.

Just prior to the festival, some talk had revolved around how it would be affected by the sudden flooding occurring in the region of northern Czech Republic, southern Poland and east Germany. While looking at a map, it did look awfully close to where Brutal Assault was located, but the festival management was very reassuring that the bad weather was far from the site, and would have no effect on the festival as such.
In retrospect, I must say that any concern on our behalf was completely necessary; our route took us from Leipzig via Dresden and Prague out to Hradec Králové and the hotel, and this route should, as far as my navigational skills go, take us almost straight through the inflicted region, but somehow we didn’t manage to see a single drop of rain on the whole journey there.
At the festival we were mostly spared as well, thankfully, and there was a clearly larger chance of getting burnt by the sun there was getting drenched by rain. Unless you were a Devin Townsend fan of course; just as his show began, the skies opened up, and suddenly it became clear to us just exactly what they meant by flooding. I don’t think I have ever seen such an aggressive rain before, the only thing that could compete would possibly be some of the weather we’ve tried at Metalcamp, Slovenia. Still, no matter how hard the rain was, it didn’t bother us as we were prepared with rain ponchos, and we had the best of times while it lasted (except for the fact that my beer got quite watered down...), and it only lasted for about 15-20 minutes or so...
The afterparty in Prague was a different story altogether, but more on that in its own review.

So, what can I say to round things of?
Well, there were some flaws in the organisation, but nothing that couldn’t be handled, and the staff was, for most of the time, as helpful as they possibly could be. The weather was much kinder than it had threatened with. The surroundings are still some of the coolest, and most functional I have seen at a festival, what with all the cavernous halls of the old dungeons where you can escape the tumultuous outside, and sit down and relax with friends and strangers alike. We actually met up with a couple from Australia, can’t remember exactly how now, but we had a great time every time we bumped into each other, and it was also nice to see some of the faces we remembered from last year.
I had several musical highlights, with shows from Fear Factory, Macabre and Diablo Swing Orchestra sticking out like the most shining stars, though there were several others as well. Hypocrisy, for instance played a great gig in front of a massive audience, and I was very surprised by the fact that I enjoyed Monstrosity, a band I would have never figured I’d go for normally.
Sure, there was a dark side as well, where Gorgoroth took the grand prize as the most disappointing act of all, way ahead of all the competition, although Cannibal Corpse where making quite an effort for that one as well.
All in all though, I do still enjoy Brutal Assault, and the good things outweigh the bad by far, so I hope for another visit soon.