Feedback from METALFEST (CZ)! (Patreon)

Hello me Hearties!

How are you all doing?? Is the weather starting to treat you better for my European Sailors in here? ⛈️

Terrible weather has been our daily experience for weeks in here for many parts of Europe and it didn't miss to hit the lands of Czech Republic on this METALFEST weekend! Some of you who were experiencing European festivals for the first time had quite a hard time and I totally feel you!!

Intense rainfalls, paired with thunder....I heard parts of the camping site got evacuated and the festival site itself around the stage area was covered in mud... Bands were praying for mercy to the weather gods backstage haha! 🙏🏻

I have to admit that VOA and Feuerschwanz and Dimmu Borgir on the last day got the best weather and it rained only a little bit during our set...! The Sun even greeted us!

We felt quite relieved about this because things got quite stressful enough on that day...and for good reasons: we just got our brand new stage structure: a beautiful wooden ship!!

We managed to have it delivered last minute to Czech Republic after the manufacturing company told us that they don't deliver outside of Germany... We had never seen the structure in real life, had never tried to build it and we only had a 20mn changed over after Dominum! We had the chance that we knew our merch girl Mary and her boyfriend were at the festival and that they offered to help us. Mary's boyfriend being a carpenter and used to handle historical restitutions! It took below 10mn to have the whole structure on stage and we could start the show on time!

Since we love to bring a comic twist to our show which creates a nice contrast with the depth of our topics sometimes, we decided to use a very special song as pre-show mood-setter right before our set: "Jack Sparrow" from The Lonely Island. We love the song and the band for it's super fun and even if it was hard to tell if the audience understood this song was our choice and had a real connection to our show, it was fun to broadcast it right before going on stage!

We had a wonderful time with the Czech crowd even if we could recognize many faces in the first rows that were not from the country and many of you were here! 🤩 Even some of you from the US, it was so cool to see you again in these circumstances!

Yet, this stage at METALFEST is very unique and not the easiest to approach. The front part is rounded and VERY wide which is a real challenge when it comes to use this space and try to connect with the whole audience. We ended up running around a lot and we got out of breath for the most part ^^ 🥵I gotta work on my cardio again!
On top of this, my in-ear channel wasn't the best and I got quite some dropouts during the show which were a bit annoying but didn't stop me from enjoying my time there 100%!!

Our ship structure looked super cool and was fun to play with! It was designed for our fall tour and it's going to look even better in dark clubs were the light effects on it will be even more visible!

Before and after our show we had a great time hanging out with Illumishade, Dominum, Feueurschwanz, we all know each other! It was nice to meet with Steven from Orden Ogan and I even had the chance to greet Tarja after her show since we arrived on the night before our show day.
Our biggest surprise was when Chris from Alestorm, attending the festival incognito (he even bought his ticket for it!!) came to greet us at the signing session!! You guys have to know that the relationship between Alestorm and VOA isn't the best since we made that move of becoming a pirate inspired band. He also has personal business issues with our Thomas in regards of Alestorm's collaboration with Napalm Records. So Chris is often insulting us on some Reddit threads where he even said once "I'd rather die than playing with this band again" referring to us. We all know Chris has a thing for online drama and it's a smart way to catch attention which we don't really fall for. Yet we were VERY surprised to see him pop up at our signing session to say hi and congratulate us about our show! (Him and Tom then drank together for over 2 hours after the show! Hopefully that would mean that he maybe wants to make peace with us? Who knows ^^).

To finish this day we all attended Dimmu Borgir blending in with the crowd. I used to love them, especially the Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia and the Death Cult Armageddon albums. I had my moment when they played "Progenies of the Great Apocalypse" which to me, is a black symphonic metal masterpiece.

On the next day we departed early to drive back home... 6h to Bruck and then 4h by car back to Udine. I managed to be in the chat for the premiere of episode 5 of Die Rockstarvilla, it's a day of fun where we escaped the Villa!! But we might have to pay the price for this.....🫢

Alright, I get back to packing my place and answering interviews, our album drops in 1 month exactly and it's full press mode for Meek and I at the moment!

Wishing you all a nice day and we talk soon! I still need to figure out when to throw the hang out this month, I keep you posted :)

With love,
Clementine

PS: these beautiful pictures were taken by Vincent de Fallois