VARIOUS ARTISTS - Out Of The Crowd Festival (20th and 21st February, 2004)

17 songs
53 minutes
***** ***
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The first Out Of The Crowd Festival took place at the Kulturfabrik in Esch/Alzette the third weekend in February 2004. 6 bands were playing on Friday and 10 bands were scheduled for Saturday. About a year later, there was a DVD release portraying what happened on Saturday.

The DVD starts with the headliner HONEY FOR PETZI from Switzerland, an instrumental post rock band. On one song (4 minutes), you can enjoy really complicated and strangely structured head music. Well played, but meanwhile quite trendy.

Next are SEVEN FEET FOUR from Sweden, who are very noisy and even tend toward slight chaos. (2 songs, 6 minutes).

A very different band are GREGOR SAMSA from the USA. Their music is atmospheric, mostly instrumental with a few female vocal parts. Some people will find this music relaxing, other probably boring. But following their song structures is really exciting. (2 songs, 8 minutes).

Next are 3 songs (7 minutes) from ARMY OF PONCH (USA). While the first song is quite traditional instrumental post rock, the other two tracks are much faster and more extreme. Especially the furious vocals are overwhelming.

BARRA HEAD from Denmark were a very positive discovery for most in the audience. They play finest indie rock with a strong emotional touch. Unlike other bands from the same genre, their music is still powerful, energetic and angry. It's a pity that the DVD only contains one Barra Head (3 minutes).

The first band from Luxemburg are DEFDUMP. They have been together for more than 10 years and have done such huge efforts in all this time that no other hardcore band in Luxembourg can reach their level. On 2 songs (6 minutes), you can convince yourself that their whatever core has international standard.

LOVEKILL from the USA are another band I appreciated very much. Their cool mixture of punk, noise and lo-fi reminds me of the Dead Kennedys. The fun unfortunately ends already after 1 song (3 minutes).

Another fine Luxemburgish live band are EYSTON playing a mixture of math and chaos core. Unfortunately they are the only band on the DVD suffering from a bad sound. Especially their vocals are sounding totally distorted. For once I was not sorry that their gig ended after 2 songs (5 minutes).

ACTARUS are another national post rock legend. Their gig was awesome again, but the band has meanwhile split up. You can find the musicians now in Mutiny On The Bounty and Treasure Chest At The End Of The Rainbow (2 songs, 7 minutes).

The DVD comes to an end with GANESHA, a very brutal metal band on highest technical level from Luxemburg where only Mutiny On The Bounty can boast to have such a great guitar player (1 song, 4 minutes).

That's it for the first edition of the Out Of The Crowd festival organised by Schalltot, Jugend Fir de Fridden an Infoladen. There was another edition of this festival in 2005. I missed it completely as I was on holiday. So a DVD would interest me again to see if it was as good as the first one. I only regret that this DVD is a bit short. Maybe there were problems with the international bands, but the local ones could have been features with more than one track.