Hard Rock Hell III The Dragons Ball - Day 1 @ Pontins, Wales

Hard Rock Hell III – The Dragons Ball

Day 1 - Friday

4.12.2009

@

Pontins, Wales

Ireland’s own Waylander warm the audience up with folk/black metal tunes, adopting a heavy metal approach. With plenty of material from ‘Honour Among Chaos’, their feral music goes down a treat with the metal veterans present. Picking up with the folk thread are Die Apokalyptischen Reiter, inclusive of a gimp keyboard player. Fun folk metal songs are merrily executed by the Germans who appear to baffle the audience by instructing a wall of death. Too old a crowd, methinks.

Female fronted metal makes an appearance with Delain, pouring out dull symphonic metal melodies and an overpowering vibrato. The male vocals come across as redundant and a poor attempt to ape Within Temptation or Nightwish.

Gun’s display of hard rock is nothing special but the positive attitude held by the frontman places the audience into his hands as he bounces all over the stage. Die-hards are clearly audible as Gun ostensibly give their fans what they need. Over to the hard rock veterans Ratt who cough out an intense set, regardless of their ageing condition. ‘You Think You’re Tough’, ‘Lay It Down’ and ‘You’re In Love’ immediately position them in favour of the audience but it’s catchy closer ‘Round and Round’ that gets truly everyone rockin’ like it’s 1984 again.

Terrorvision can’t compete with them, as their watered-down, modern hard rock washes over an enviously-sized audience who are actually there awaiting headliners Monster Magnet who layer fan favourite after fan favourite in their setlist. Their boisterous hard rock ripped right through the venue to an attentive audience with tracks like ‘Space Lord’ securing the most riotous of ovations. Picking up the pieces afterwards are Finnish power metallers Sonata Arctica whose audience occupy about a third of the hall. A setlist fixated on their newest material, forsaking classics like ‘Wolf and Raven’ and even ‘The Cage’ isolates their fans but not as much as finishing the set ten minutes earlier – as if they couldn’t be bothered.