Long Live Metal III - And Also How to Have Fun in Belgium and France

Long Live Metal III - And Also How to Have Fun in Belgium and France, Part I

“You’re going to Belgium? Really? On purpose?” This comment from my cheeky friend Eddie sums up what many think of Belgium, it’s people, and its nightlife. The stereotype of a Belgian is a dull, unsociable, and uninteresting person. None of this bothered us. We were going to a metal festival. We would be with the people who were touched by the same madness as us. They’re always good craic wherever you meet them.

Besides, I was with Liam (feckin Dean feckin Moriarty) and despite all else that might be said about him: The man breaks ice with a sledgehammer - so even if these people were more introverted than the average Paddy, it wouldn’t be too much of a problem.

We had some time to kill before and after the festival. So, what is there to do in Belgium? I have two words for you - beer tasting! Say what you like about the Belgians but no other country has a national pastime as cool as that.

Liam and I might have been beer connoisseurs by Irish standards. In Ireland the nearest thing to a beer connoisseur is one who rummages through the shelves of Redmonds hoping for something new and tasty. By Belgian standards we were mere beginners and we were glad to have the opportunity to improve ourselves in that respect.

Our first stop after arriving in Brussels Airport on Friday morning was a place called Café Delirium. It’s a bar which earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records for having more varieties of beer than anywhere else in the world. At any given time this a minimum of two thousand beers to choose from.

We couldn’t get through even a small fraction of the selection but we would do our best. Liam had printed out a list of recommendations which he got from his Internet friend Chuck. Liam says the guy knows everything. We didn’t have any other way of finding our way around the the beer menu which looked like a telephone directory so I agreed we would we would see how good this guy’s list was. I’m jealously sceptical whenever I’m told about people who know everything - that’s my thing!

Liam was especially interested in a beer called Westvleteren which is impossible to get outside Belgium and almost impossible to get inside Belgium. It comes from an obscure monastery and its brewers never want to make it a commercial success. They promote sensible drinking unlike the crazy-ass monks of Buckfast Abbey (who, by the way, are conspiring to bring down a worldwide drunken apocalypse - I thought you should know).

Westvletteren, this “Holy Graal of beers” was the first thing Liam asked for in Café Delirium. The barman answered him by pointing at a sign that read “No Westvletteren”. We obviously weren’t the first tourists to ask for it. I thought the sign was a nice way of making us feel like asses.

A pretty barwoman came and served us and we ordered from Liam’s friend’s list. I have to say… wow! It was good beer. At each new bottle I felt like I had never tasted beer before. I was like the boy in the Frank Zappa movie saying “What is this strange elixir?” I can’t remember names of all the beers but Liam and I agree that Lotterbol was our favourite.

The barman who hadn’t been talkative to us earlier saw something we were drinking and he looked surprised and curious. He asked me “are you lucky?” wondering if we knew what we were doing or if we had just randomly picked a gem. I showed him the list we were using and he was impressed by it. The printout was passed among the bar flies and it met with universal approval. Our barman warmed to us after that, probably because he knew we were making an effort and we weren’t mere swine who had come to munch on his pearls.

He chatted to us and recommended beers to us whenever we described what we wanted. Despite our first impressions, the place is very tourist friendly - though not touristy enough compromise its character. Surprisingly this session didn’t burn a huge hole in our pocket. These beers cost on average 3.50 per bottle. We spent a few hours there and got pretty drunk. We went straight from there to our train.

The festival was in an obscure place on the border of Belgium and France. The nearest city it was Lille in France and we had booked a hotel room there for two nights. We got a very fast train from Brussels and it only took us about 40 minutes to get there. We arrived in Lille less than two hours after the Delirium session had ended. We went straight to bed for a nap before the warm up gig.

We crashed out in our hotel room for a few hours longer than expected. We woke up at ten o’clock, knowing “shit, we’ve missed most of the warm up gig”. The warm up gig was in Lille itself and we got to the Venue in half an hour by taxi but it was nearly over. We didn’t get to see any bands, but we had one consolation: We got to drink with Manilla Road.

Can you imagine it? You meet one of your favourite bands and they are just as happy to see you as you are to see them? Manilla Road were like that with everyone they met. They remembered everyone and were asking after everyone they had met on previous occasions. They are down-to-earth, mellow, friendly guys. They enjoy poo jokes and the occasional toke. They seem get along great with each other and this is good news for fans who want them to keep going.

Shark has been soldiering on for thirty years and has accumulated the respect of so-called “metal elitists” all over the world. People will always be surprised to find that he doesn’t have a stick up his arse. He should have at least one. Airport security often give him a full cavity search just to be sure. There is no stick up there.

They talked about what they were doing and what they were planing. Instead going on a long tour this year, they are just making a few weekend trips (three of them in Europe). They’re using the rest of their vacation time to take a break and let each of them do his own thing. Sometime this summer, Shark is bringing his mother to Scotland to participate in an ancient clan meeting.

She and all the other heavy metal grannies are going to perform a ritual to resurrect the Bonnie Prince. Once he’s back from the dead they will descend on England to fuck shit up. There are rumors that Manilla Road might one day get to Ireland. Shark says if the band doesn’t play here then he’ll come anyway. It won’t happen this year though. Session!

I also made friends with Nathalie from Legion of Death Records, a French label who have a preference for crazy far-eastern metal. She promised to bring French wine for Manilla Road to taste but she didn’t approve of them drinking before they played. Helroadie and Cory taught her how to say, “You want some red wine?… after the show, bitch!”

We spent most of that night standing outside the venue drinking, talking to Manilla Road and making new friends with the locals. The Venue didn’t stay open very late and after they had stopped serving, Liam begged them for more beer: “Please, we need more beer…. we’re Irish.” We got two more on the house. The Barman said to us as he was leaving “Make sure you remember the name of this bar and tell everybody about it wherever you go.” I forget what the bar was called. It was a nice place.

After the Venue was closed, Liam and I hung around outside chatting to two Frenchmen, Ben and a guy whose name sounds like “Taytos”. It was fun trying to get over the language barrier. Ben was talking to me in German, and at the same time interpreting for Taytos who was trying to have a conversation with Liam who in turn was doing his best to resurrect his school French. (Confusing, eh?)

Liam and Taytos were the pair who could communicate with each other least of all but they were enjoying their conversation more than any of us. One of the two would mention a long forgotten band name and then they would both say “yeah! yeah!”. As the conversation went on, they became more and more enthusiastic until they were both jumping up and down giving the horns on both hands.

Ben tried to call a taxi for us. The taxi company said to call back later. Ben and Taytos stayed with us while we waited to try calling again. We didn’t have any joy the second time and then when seemed impossible, the guys decided to drive us even though our hotel was a different direction to where they were going. They even went so far as to walk us to the door of our hotel. Things like that happened all weekend. Everywhere we went we were welcomed like some long lost brothers.

(Note: after writing this, I have since found out that our friend Ben is Reinheitsgebot from Children of Doom and Taytos is Big Baby Frog from the same band)

Getting to the Festival on saturday was another example of the hospitality we received. It was miles from anywhere and we had no way of figuring out how to get there. Once again we were looked after by the French lodge of the metal fraternity. On Friday, Liam consulted Lauran the festival organiser and within minutes he arranged a lift for us.

We were told to simply stand outside our hotel at two o’clock on Saturday afternoon. We knew they wouldn’t let us down. Two young thrashers arrived at the appointed time and brought us to the venue. They were great guys. Later that day, the driver accidentally kicked me in the face. It was a proper kick in the face but I was full of the crazies at the time and I didn’t even feel it. I don’t think he noticed that he did it and I didn’t tell him about it afterward. I had no reason to say anything about it. Besides, if I am destined to get a kick in the face, it might as well be from such lovely people.

The Venue was an old redbrick farmhouse with an authentic nineteenth century feel to it. It had a very high, steeply slanting roof like you wouldn’t get in other kinds of buildings. It was very… farmy, but without the cow shit. There was room for a few hundred in the audience. There was a small restaurant in a building adjacent to it (Heavy Metal Samurai Sauce!) and yet another building had a nightclub. It would have been a popular place if it wasn’t in the middle of nowhere.

“Aren’t we all mad?” I remarked to Liam. We were a few hundred lunatics from many different countries. We were all converging on a place that nobody knows to see bands that nobody has heard. Thoughts like that made the event more fun.

I felt like a wimp and a poser for missing all the bands at the warm up gig the night before. It was heartbreaking when my new friends eagerly asked what I thought of their local guys who had played. I had to confess that my Irish pissheaddedness had prevented me from seeing any of them. I was determined to see every band on the Saturday to make up for it. I managed it more or less and here are some of my impressions:

A great true metal band, Hurlement, kick started the festival. They are appropriately named: Hurlement means “Screaming” in French and the singer’s voice soars to some Everest hights. He was the best vocalist of the festival.

Serpent saints followed them. Strongly influenced by Merciful Fate, they went a notch higher in the Vocal Department: The singer had King Diamond-esque makeup. He waved an inverted cross around and occasionally spat out plastic eyeballs into the audience. I was hit by them more times than the law of averages should allow. One of their finales was a very respectable cover of Come To The Sabbath. “Do know Merciful Fate? Yes, you do. YES YOU DOOOO!”

Witchsmeller Persuivant were another great band. The singer Luciver Vecken (pronounced “Lucifer Feckin” in Flemmish) also sings in The Hooded Priest. The latter is a doom band whereas Witchsmeller are heavy metal - “Heavy as Fuck” as their song title says. Mr Feckin is eccentric enough to stand out even at a metal gathering. As a frontman, he has a magnetic presence and he looks like a ragged drunken wizard even when he is not on stage. He unfortunately has one foot longer than the other and he looks like he is staggering from intoxication even when he’s sober.

This speech is an example of the man’s eccentricity: He says, “Do you know Justin from Ireland? Justin lent me money. I was really surprised because he doesn’t even know me very well. I only see him at every festival and we’re always drinking together. It really meant a lot to me. It was the end of the night and I ran out of money so Justin gave me enough for a taxi. I was reallygrateful and I was determined to pay it back.

I knew that Procession had a tour date in Dublin, so I gave the money to Danius their bass player in the hope that he could find Justin there. If he didn’t find him then he could bring me back some merch.” Mr Feckin was talking about five euro. I know that times are hard and musicians are poor but who even talks about five euro?

Rising Dust were another great band. These guys were the only doomy band that day. They had a wiff of Trouble off them. (I decided some time ago that I would get into Trouble. I wrote a pamphlet entitled “Women’s Suffrage And The Decline Of Civilisation”. That got me into trouble!)

By the time Thrustor came on, I was starting to feel the weight of beer on me. I was worried I wouldn’t be on form later so I had a nap inside the venue. I lay along the wall at the side where nobody was standing. It is probably not a complement to a thrash band for a guy to lie down and go to sleep for the duration of their set, but I probably just looked like another fallen drunk. I had failed in my determination to watch every band. You could say that I wimped out, but at least I didn’t leave the hall.

When Liam was talking to Thrustor, it turned out that they knew Chuck who had made the beer list for us. This once again proved the “six degrees of separation theory”. I think it was the last TV documentary Liam had watched and it came up often in his monologues.

It is the thingy where you’re connected to anybody else in the world through six people. If you take anybody in the world at random, then no matter where they are you know someone, who knows someone, who knows someone, etc. who knows that person. There is rarely more than one degree of separation in metal. Everybody there knew at least one person I know. The majority knew Barry who apparently is Rory Gallagher’s cousin.

Though I mainly came to see Manilla Road, I was glad that Metal Inquisitor were on the bill. I really like the band and the only time I ever saw them play was at Wacken in 2006. Their set at Wacken was a very quiet event. It was half an hour in the small tent in the afternoon of universal hangovers. The show at Long Live Metal contrasted greatly with that. Everybody went… fucking… mental! At any given time there were at least two people crowd surfing, a semi-mosh pit, and gangs of us arm in arm, fist thumping and singing rowdily along.

As mentioned earlier, I got kicked in the face. I also lost my glasses three times and they miraculously survived. I didn’t care, I was going madder than everybody else. I remember shouting “O Caution, I cast thee to the wind. Thou belongest with the wind. The wind longeth for thee and thou longest for it. BE GONE!” I would have sounded pretty weird but nobody heard me. The chaos swallowed every sound.

And then came the main event: Manilla Road! We had travelled far to see them. We were expecting the best and they did not disappoint. I can never remember entire set lists, but some songs included in it were: Witches Brew, Mask of the Red Death, Mystification, The Veils of Negative Existence, Cage of Mirrors, Necropolis, Voyager.

The encore, surprisingly was Avatar. I’m glad this song is getting a more prominent place in their repertoire. I spoke to Shark the night before about how much I like that song and he agreed with me (despite taking years to release the damn thing). Cory mentioned told me later that he didn’t feel himself on form during the set. Some of his joints were locking up, as occasionally happens to drummers. It all sounded good from where I was. The sign of good musicianship is when you kick ass on your bad day.

On the Sunday night we went back to Delirium. This time our taste buds were already wrecked from the excesses of the weekend. I remembered something we were told last time we were there: “There is no point in taking notes when tasting beer. Even with the same beer, every bottle you open is different and every time you lift the glass it is a new experience. The glass half full is not the same as when it was first poured and every sip has more dimensions than you can notice at once.” I thought the barman who had said this was slightly mad but it rung true when we returned there after a weekend of drinking.

The same beer did taste different. I was reminded of Heraclitus: “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.” No man drinks the same beer twice. This was not the same beer and I was not the same man as I was before the festival. I scratched my beard and said “Hmmmm.” We stayed on our bar stools until closing.

When Delerium eventually closed we asked at the bar if there were other places open nearby. We were told there was a place across the street. We weren’t fussy and were happy enough that the place was open. We once more got far more than we expected. We walked into the place called The Florist (or something). A Jazz band had just finished and they were playing “the Best of the Doors” from start to finish.

I thought that was good enough for this time of night. We noticed the two guys behind the bar had Nazirite hair like our own and I said to Liam, “Do you reckon they’re metal?” As soon as we asked them we were once again welcomed with open arms. The CD was changed and we listened to the first Black Sabbath album three times over until all the Best-of-the-Doors people were gone. It was a fairly busy bar and they emptied it with Black Sabbath.

They were just happy at the chance to go nuts with us for a few hours. It was as if they said “right - this is now a metal bar.” We asked them for beer recommendations but they specialised in spirits rather than beer. They didn’t have any of the beers they thought they should recommend so they left the bar, went outside, and came back with two bottles every time we were ready for another one. They wouldn’t take money for them. At one point Liam handed one of them a twenty for his round and the guy sneakily handed back as his change a tenner and two fivers.

We said goodbye to our new swordbrothers at six in the morning. Then we got lost again, as we often did in Brussels. This time we were helped by two gay men. There had been a gay pride rally earlier that day and we had heard their awful pop music in the distance. (I still don’t know how they expect to make friends by blaring music that only a twelve-year-old girl would listen to. How does that work?) These two guys didn’t seem at all intimidating despite being strangers at a strange hour of the morning in a strange city.

They used our map to find the place where we were staying and walked there with us. We were very grateful and Liam sincerely wished the the best by saying “I hope you guys go and have a really good bumfucking.” It turns out the two guys were just friends and not partners. “We like to bumfuck, but not each other” one of them explained. They had the right idea; representing their own subculture by doing their best for strangers who could use their help. That’s pride. That’s how it’s done.

Monday morning was hard work, even though we were still in Brussels with time for a good few hours drinking. We went back to Delirium (again, yawn!) We got there soon after it opened. As we were the only people there, I got an undiluted dose of Liam. This can be a bit much when you’re hungover. “Dude, I don’t mean to sound egotistical or anything and I never want to say, ‘I’m like totally awesome, dude,’ but can you honestly tell me that you know anybody who is… like… more completely over-the-top than me?”

The worst part of all this was the fact that I couldn’t zone out and stop listening like I do for everybody else because whenever I stopped answering him he would prod me on my shoulder, saying “dude? dude?” This was our last day and I thought that if I could just put up with this for just a little longer then I would truly earn the title of Heavy Metal Monk.

I would be revered the throughout the known world. People would go look for vials of my holy water and pregnant metal warrioresses would queue outside my hermitage to have me bless their babies. After an hour I offloaded him on two Americans who had wandered into the bar and I went back contemplation.

We’ll call these two newcomers at the bar P_ and C_ . They had some interesting things to say whenever Liam allowed them to get a word in edgeways. P_ was a soldier on leave from Iraq and C_ was his brother who had travelled to meet him. His contract had already run out and on the day he was due to go home they announced that he had to stay longer.

He was understandably raging about that. He showed me a black armband he was wearing for a dead friend. His friend was dead because he was standing where P_ should have been standing. He had been filling in for P_ who was unable to work his shift that day. The guys may be coming to Dublin this weekend. Hopefully we’ll see them again.

We had a different barman in Delirium on the Monday. It turned out he was a friend of one of the guys from the Florist where we were the night before. He followed their queue and played some more Black Sabbath and any other metal he had. At one point he decided to call his friend. His friend had a message for us: “Fuck off!”

Apparently he would have loved to have had a drink with us if he knew we were going to be there. That’s Irish conditioning for you - no matter how good a barman is to us, we still have it in our heads that they only want rid of us. All the same I think it was an affectionate “fuck off”. I knew the guy was a fan of Monty Python, so I said to send the message back to him: “How shall we fuck off, O Lord”.

We weren’t exactly sober on the way back to the airport and we didn’t leave ourselves the standard two hours for check in. I think we were becoming dependent on the kind of luck we had been experiencing up to now. I remember at one point we were looking for a “platform thirteen” in the metro station. Liam says, “Look up there: Nine, ten, eleven, twelve… there’s platform thirteen… You see, sometimes I surprise people with my alertness and sense of logic even in the midst of drunkenness.”

Immediately after he made this self-satisfied statement he turned and started trying to walk up a down moving escalator. I gave him the jibes he deserved. We got to the airport just about on time and the gods had delayed the plane just to be sure we got it.

This is a very long blog for such a short trip. I’m almost as exhausted from writing it as I am from travelling. So many great things happened to us and I didn’t want to leave any of them out. The fact that it was full of so many pleasant surprises is another reason to doubt that the universe is governed by blind chance. At least we proved that it is possible - nay, easy - to have fun in Belgium. We will go there again, on purpose!