A Shirt On Sunday: HRH Hammerfest – 21-23/3/2019 – Prestatyn, Wales

I’m not doing that again! Not the music, but the sharing a caravan. And no disrespect to Andy, Grace and Kathryn who I shared with, and had a great time with but I am no longer able to sleep through the chaos when every movement and every sound can be heard and felt at the far end of the caravan…
I am, as Danny Glover used to say: “Too old for this shit.”

I’ve been to Hammerfest. It’s a picturesque fishing village in a Norwegian Fjord. I think I might have preferred a Prestatyn festival in Hammerfest, but this was Hammerfest in Prestatyn, North Wales, languishing between Anglesey and England. The train trip took a mere 4 hours and was smooth, comfortable and involved coffee. I saw a lone (female) train-spotter on the platform at Rugby, and some people being trained as telegraph pole engineers on very, very short telegraph poles.

Hammerfest, Norway

Prestatyn is about what you’d expect of a seaside town servicing a caravan park of over 1,100 caravans. Not so much dilapidated as lacking life. However, there was a very nice pub – The William Morris who did an excellent pint of Brains’ SA.

The caravan park, 45 minutes’ walk from the station, seems an endless grid of identical units, propped up on bricks. Ours was ‘Beaumaris 61’, distinguished from ‘Beaumaris 60’ and ‘Beaumaris 62’ by a faded sticker on one corner. In the middle of this sea of little boxes there is a pool (closed), sports area (closed), mini-golf (closed), climbing area (also closed) and the central complex where the entertainment area and casino had been converted to stages. Stages with very low ceilings. It’s quite amusing watching the drummer of a major metal band minding his head as he gets onto his drum riser.

Hammerfest, Wales - Kill II This

The music? The music was metal…

Thursday
Kill II This – Faith No More / Rage Against the Machine-style band, so right up my street. Top track: “God on Drugs”. Slightly disappointing in that all the good vocals were pre-recorded and we just got growling-man.
Actually, most of the bands were using pre-recordings of keyboards, atmospherics, etc. Apparently that’s okay these days (“When I were a lad…”).
Cruachan – the best folk metal band of the weekend. Even did a version of Christy Moore’s ‘Ride On’. Much better than they are on record.
Paradise Lost were a bit too Linkin Park for my tastes, but I did like the song I thought was called ‘Sorrow’.

Cruachan, featuring a new bass player, who was a touch deer-in-the-headlights

Friday
Absolva – A cracking thrash metal band, with more than a nod of the head to early Metallica. Apparently they are Blayze (Iron Maiden for 5 minutes) Bayley’s backing band. I meant to buy their t-shirt but failed. Possibly my top discovery of the weekend.

King Creature – Thin Lizzy-style boogie metal. Possibly my top discovery of the weekend, sadly without any merchandise.

Boss Keloid – Prog-metal and possibly my top discovery of the weekend. Either their guitar player had some really nifty effect pedals, or was in perfect synch with the keyboard player. Bumped into the band as they were packing their car to leave, and was overly enthusiastic at them.

Pythia were okay - but I wandered off after a few songs.

Gévauden were much better live than on record, in a slow-Black Sabbath style, with a guitarist modelled after Catweazel.

Cellar Darling feature the hurdy gurdy player who used to be in Isarnos. Good band, but a bit samey after a while.

Arkham Witch – Not as good as their records, but still good fun.

Darkane – Thrash metal and better than I expected

Reign of Fury – Really good stoner rock. Their albums make them look like a bad LA thrash band, which is weird.

Flotsam & Jetsam were having lots of fun. An Arizona band who’ve been going since the 80s, their singer had much of the Bruce Dickinson about him, so they put on a great show, even for those of us who knew nothing about them.

Overkill were staggering. Forty years in the business; they started as a New York punk band and are now a skater-rap/metal juggernaut. The singer has a neat trick of balancing his mic stand against his thigh so he didn’t need to hold it while shrieking at the crowd. Apparently he once had a heart attack on stage. I had planned to mosh, but people were bleeding, and so in deference to my thumb I stayed on the edge. This was the band whose drummer had to mind his head. We also got the fun of watching one of the guitarists hurling abuse at the lighting people because a floodlight was about 3 feet from his face. Why didn’t he move?

Ward 16 gave us the sight of a heavily pregnant front-woman pretending to disembowel someone and eat their intestines. Good music too. By now my phone had run out of power, so you'll have to use your imagination

Iron Seawolf sent us to bed with sea shanties and silliness.

After the non-stop glory of Friday, Saturday was a recovery day.
Winter Storm were better than last time I saw them in Birmingham. Unfortunately the leader has no stagecraft and negative charisma. This seemed to be a problem with a couple of the female-fronted bands of the weekend (e.g. Pythia). No lack of musical talent, but no oomph either, so any between-song chat killed the mood.

Black Moth were another good stoner act. No problem with the women fronting the band, but the male guitarist seemed to be in another band: off to one side and posing like he should be in Whitesnake.

Pist*n are a reformed Brooklyn metal band from the 90s. As if The Sopranos had guitars.

Wolf - Scandinavian 80s metal. Couple of great tracks but mostly about the hair.

Skyforger are a really good thrashy pagan band and my favourites of the day.

Skálmöld are Iceland’s biggest heavy metal band. Possibly because they have a lot of people on stage. This gave them some great Gregorian harmonies at times but they were otherwise another doom metal band.

By this time the lack of proper sleep had caught up on me, so I missed Kamelot. Probably a good job as the mosh was apparently quite intense.

All-in-all some good music, but I needed more sleep to enjoy it fully. HRH are moving to Great Yarmouth now where I can stay in a B&B within walking distance. Which is rather decent of them.

Sorry, out of blogging time so no videos