High Voltage Festival 2010

Victoria Park, London
24th-25th July 2010

Words: Andy Whittle

The inaugural High Voltage in London’s Victoria Park was everyone’s dad’s dream line-up. With a diverse line-up ranging from the legendary progressive ramblings of Emerson, Lake and Palmer to the infamous blues rock of ZZ Top all the way to the more modern sounds featured on Metal Hammer’s stage; there was truly something for everyone in the rock and heavy metal community.

Saturday 24th July

The first band I caught were prog-rockers Pendragon. Formed in 1978, it sets the tone for what the festival was all about: giving the legends of old the opportunity to take the stage at a major event once more. Pendragon’s sound (like many others of the progressive rock sub- genre) is characterised by experimental instrumental work, coming mainly from the use of keyboards. The band seem to have the proggers nicely warmed up for the rest of the day ahead, despite the blazing heat.

Pendragon

For me, this festival was about grasping the opportunity to see and review many bands I’d not witnessed before in a live environment, so in order to cover the sheer amount the festival had on offer, a lot of stage hopping was required due to conflicting stage schedules. Next up for me were Black Spiders on the Metal Hammer stage. There’s a lot of buzz surrounding this band lately, and it’s easy to see why. Blasting through a high octane set packed full of punk-infused hard rock energy, Black Spiders show their audience what all the fuss is about. It’s early days, but the band still play to one of the larger audiences to grace the Hammer stage this weekend.

Black Spiders

Holland’s Focus were one of those once-in-a-lifetime acts to see live, whom I was really looking forward to. Devastatingly, the band were boring at best. All the fun which could have been present in their performance were cancelled out by inane progressive ramblings, with little to no crowd interaction. The band close with the infamous ‘Hocus Pocus’, which is spoiled by a combination of being performed WAY too fast, excluding the well-loved yodelling and featuring long and cringe-worth drum solos every 30 seconds throughout the song.

Focus

After such disappointment, this reviewer needed cheering up. Who better to do this than Orange Goblin? With their ridiculously accessible doom/stoner metal sound, the Hammer stage is rammed once more. Blasting through fan-favourites such as ‘Some You Win, Some You Lose’, ‘They Come Back (Harvest of Skulls)’, ‘Cities of Frost’ and Scorpionica, all who watch are mesmerised. If you haven’t already: be sure to catch the Goblins when or wherever you get opportunity.

Orange Goblin

Orange Goblin are a tough act for any band to follow. Luckily next up are Swedish power metallers HammerFall, whom I hold a soft spot for. For the start of their performance, the sound is ridiculously muddy and you are lucky if you hear more than the audio from the stage. The sound engineer makes it very clear that he’s not a fan of balancing levels OR equalising, which makes it all the more interesting that he chose it for a profession. Weird. Not even he could spoil a HammerFall show for me. The band have a fairly bizarre choice of set in places, but tick all the necessary boxes for both the die-hard fan and the casual listener, playing a range of old and new material including ‘Punish and Enslave’, ‘Blood Bound’ and ‘Hearts on Fire’. HammerFall perhaps don’t have the largest crowd of the weekend, but they certainly exploit them to their full potential and can certainly be proud of their performance given that most the band have been sick recently.

Hammerfall

Intercepting mid-way through Gary Moore’s set; I’m greeted by some delightful guitar tones. The man is a blues-rock mastermind and has the audience to prove it. Though I didn’t get an awful lot of time to form an opinion of the overall set, the band was tight, the songs were great and the solos were phenomenal at times. The man’s still got that bluesy feel after all these years and it shows with the raw emotions demonstrated.

Gary Moore

With not an awful lot else going on, it was time to check out doom-metallers Cathedral. To this reviewer, they have a habit of sounding like a poor man’s Black Sabbath and again; they resemble this live. The band are tight as performers and clearly have a large fanbase, they’re just not really my cuppa, let’s say. If you take all the good moments of their set and splice them all together, you could probably make 2-3 interesting songs out of it, but as it stands; not the case.

Even though it’s an ongoing joke that Saxon will literally play every festival you attend; they never fail to impress. The audience are treated to an hour of heavy metal classics such as ‘747 (Strangers in the Night)’, ‘Crusader’ and ‘Wheels of Steel’. These guys certainly still know how to rock and vocalist Biff Byford has the energy of a man half his age when he’s
on-stage.

Saxon

Subsequently was possibly the most important show of the weekend: Heaven & Hell playing their tribute set to the late (and most certainly great) Ronnie James Dio. The occasion is a monumental one with the joy of celebrating a rock and roll legend’s life as well as the sadness and mourning of what the world has lost. The band open with ‘The Mob Rules’ and the energy flows just as if Ronnie was there himself, even though it’s Norwegian vocalist Jorn Lande taking the reins for this track. Ex-Black Sabbath vocalist Glenn Hughes joins the band for the 3rd track ‘Country Girl’. The man’s voice is great, but it’s easy to see that he’s both humbled and cut-up about the whole experience from his speeches between songs; hailing Ronnie as a God (which I’m sure most people in metal wouldn’t disagree with). It’s truly an honour for all present to witness the band’s last ever show and requires one to fight back the sorrow with the joy of the occasion. Heaven & Hell’s setlist was as follows:

01. The Mob Rules (Jorn Lande)
02. I (Jorn Lande)
03. Country Girl (Glenn Hughes)
04. Children Of The Sea (Glenn Hughes)
05. Turn Up The Night (Jorn Lande)
06. Voodoo (Jorn Lande)
07. Bible Black (Glenn Hughes)
08. Falling Off The Edge Of The World (Glenn Hughes)
09. Die Young (Jorn Lande)
10. Heaven And Hell (Jorn Lande, Glenn Hughes)
11. Neon Knights (Jorn Lande, Glenn Hughes, Philip Anselmo)

Tony Iommi, Heaven & Hell

ZZ Top were next on the main stage to finish up the day. It’s incredibly tough to follow on from what has graced the stage before them, but the trio are more than up for the occasion. The trademark beards flow in the wind as the band thunder through a set of classic blues infused hard rock. A moment to note is when front man Billy Gibbons has to change hats and cites it as a technical issue necessary to playing the blues. The set particularly picks up towards the end with a burst of classics that even a non-rock fan would be hard pushed not to recognise with songs like ‘Gimme All Your Lovin’’ and ‘Sharp Dressed Man’. Their setlist was as follows:

1. Got Me Under Pressure
2. Waitin For A Bus
3. Jesus Just Left Chicago
4. Pincushion
5. I’m Bad I’m Nationwide
6. Future Blues (Willie Brown cover)
7. Rock Me Baby (B.B. King cover)

8. Cheap Sunglasses
9. I Need You Tonight
10. My Head’s in Mississippi
11. Hey Joe (Jimi Hendrix cover)
12. Brown Sugar
13. Party on the Patio
14. Just Got Paid
15. Gimme All Your Lovin’
16. Sharp Dressed Man
17. Legs
18. La Grange
19. Tush

ZZ Top

Sunday 25th July

After a tiring first day, it was time to do the same all over again. Kicking off the day on the Prog stage were Martin Turner’s Wishbone Ash. Whilst being incredibly good at what they do, it was difficult to be captivated by it. Prog can be very hit and miss live, especially in a live environment. This seemed a little on the miss side, but there’s no doubt they have the potential to be excellent at their own shows.

Martin Turner's Wishbone Ash

Over on the Metal Hammer stage, Lethargy kick off with an energetic performance. It’s a shame the crowd is relatively small because the band clearly have a knack for songwriting and it would only take the right media outlets latching on for them to be absolutely huge. There’s nothing they aren’t doing better to the similar bands in the circuit and have the ability to captivate fans of all styles of hard rock and heavy metal. Closing with their album’s title track ‘Purification’, the humbled Welsh quartet are definitely ones to watch out for in future.

A little later on over on the main stage it was time for classic rock legends UFO. The band get off to a blazing start opening with ‘Saving Me’. Unfortunately, the straight after this track, the band starts to experience massive technical difficulties with guitarist Vinnie Moore’s equipment (this must be the only time in history that Engl amps haven’t been reliable). As soon as it’s fixed and Vinnie begins the riff of ‘Only You Can Rock Me’, it cuts out again. Front man Phil Mogg makes use of Victoria Park’s location and starts pointing towards Bethnal Green (where he was born) and giving us stories of his upbringing in a rather amusing manner. Once everything’s back up and running the band play a tight set of their strongest material with guitar wizardry clearly on display at every opportunity. The highlight of their set is definitely the classic ‘Doctor Doctor’ which gains a large sing-along from the crowd.

UFO

Mid-way through the afternoon, it was time to check out High on Fire – a band I’ve heard a lot of good things about. Doom seems to be making a regular appearance over at the Metal Hammer stage and is definitely popular with the audiences present. Though High on Fire are good, they (like all other doom acts) have fallen massively short of the high standards Orange Goblin set the day before. That said, the band play a tight and consistent set closing with ‘Frost Hammer’ and ‘Snakes for the Divine’.

High on Fire

Over at the Prog stage it was time for some more classic hard rock in the form of Magnum. Having not really listened to them before and knowing little more about them than the fact that Bob Catley had collaborated with many acts I listen to as a guest vocalist, I was pleasantly surprised by Magnum’s sound. The hard rock/cheesy ballad sound is something one isn’t shy of musically, so this goes down a treat. The cringe-worthy excellence (yes, figure that out) of the keyboards completes this acts sound. Their set included ‘Cry to Yourself’ and closer ‘Kingdom of Madness’.

Next for me were legendary progressive rockers Uriah Heep playing their critically acclaimed album ‘Demons and Wizards’ in its entirety. The band are great start to finish and prove they are still relevant from the huge audience which looks on in awe. Highlights of the album/set include the more upbeat rocker ‘Easy Livin’’ and the appropriately majestic ‘The Spell’. The band are tight and love what they’re doing. Uriah Heep cemented themselves as easily one of the best bands of the festival.

Uriah Heep

Opeth are a band that have never seemed to come off today. This was set as their final chance to impress this reviewer. As usual, they manage to have me captivated in just how pretentious prog-metal has the capability of being, but then quickly lose that attention through unholy amounts of repetition. Front man Mikael Akerfeldt introduces the band as legendary hair metallers ‘Poison’ from LA, which receives a chuckle or 2, but the man’s so strange he can occasionally cross over from having a good sense of humour to being just plain weird. The open air environment just wasn’t built for this kind of music, but they seem to have a strong cult-like following down the front.

Opeth

Down were the next act to take the Metal Hammer stage. Their audience is one of the largest on that particular stage of the weekend with far more crowd interaction and participation than most bands at the festival. It was nice to see a band that can be so criminally average on record come alive in the open air environment and sound huge. The riffs are smooth, yet heavy and Phil Anselmo’s vocals cut through with just the perfect balance of aggression. Clearly fans of cannabis, tracks like ‘Hail the Leaf’ and ‘Bury me in Smoke’ are highlights of the performance.

Down

Throughout Down’s set, I snuck over to the Prog stage to check out prog-rock prodigies Marillion. This was another one of those once in a lifetime bands for me, but again like Focus; Marillion were completely dull. Admittedly the vast amounts of sound spilling over from Down’s set on the Metal Hammer stage hardly enhanced the far quieter prog-rockers, but there didn’t seem to be an awful lot going on with them. Opening with the song ‘The Invisible Man’, it became clear that the real invisible man today was ex-vocalist ‘Fish’.

Progressive rock titans Emerson, Lake and Palmer were last up for the day to close the main stage and the weekend’s festivities, playing their first show in 15 years. Formed in 1970, it goes to show that the legends of old really do stand the test of time. Due to the band’s incredibly progressive nature, the set is a mere 11 songs, but still more than fills their allotted headlining slot. Their performance truly showcases their abilities as both composers and musicians, somehow managing to merge chords which by all means shouldn’t fit at all, but work completely. Their set features both drum solos from Carl Palmer and intense keyboard solos from Keith Emerson, including him playing an organ backwards and ripping the pedals off and jamming them into the keys. Once Emerson has had enough, he pushes the organ over with a loud crash (all the while the band are still playing backing to this). It’s truly a showcase of bizarre ideas that were groundbreaking in their day, yet would still stun a modern audience. The set closes with the well-known (even if you don’t think you know it, you do) ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’ and a large firework display over the main stage, making it a truly memorable experience for all.