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Interesting start to my holidays
So my holidays have just started since yesterday and I basically spent the entire day at work talking to people about the upcoming Graspop festival and other things. It was a fun day where I also discussed a salary increase with my boss and him potentially paying for my study that I’m going to be starting probably next February. So it was a fun day mostly, but also rather productive. After work I went to my mom’s and ate there and as you may know, things aren’t so great between us.
This ended in a little bit of argument which was frustrating but she didn’t actually wanted to discuss what mattered. This didn’t come as a surprise as that’s been the case for nearly a year. So I left and since I had holidays, it would leave things like this for the coming 3 weeks. I asked multiple times to talk it over since I didn’t want to leave it like that. But that’s how the cookie crumbled and I left. I started to pack my stuff for the festival and also take care of some mortgage stuff. Whilst I was doing that I got a message from my mom saying that I really should read my e-mail and as such we exchanged some mails and eventually she called me in tears and basically she had broken down and was saying stuff like she didn’t want to live anymore.
So I went over, despite it being midnight and I had wanted to go to bed early. So she finally ended up opening up a little and wanted to view different viewpoints about the whole issue that’s been going for years (about a parking spot, for crying out loud!). So I ended up talking for hours and much crying and yelling on her part later, I seem to have managed to convince her to maybe look at it a little differently and that it’s not worth all the trouble she’s making of it. It’s certainly not worth a depression and completely isolation, that’s for sure.
As such it was around 3am and talking wasn’t useful anymore as she was too tired to even think anymore it seemed. So I decided I’d go and she could go sleep. However, my car wouldn’t start. It had power, but the key wouldn’t turn. So I ended up calling emergency services and they luckily could fix it, the steeringwheel lock seems dodgy and just tugging at it and turning it a little will “unlock” it and thus allow you to start the engine. By then it was rather late and I went to bed as soon as I could. However thanks to my internal clock I woke up at 7am and couldn’t really sleep anymore after that, but I did stay in until 9am and then decided I’d get up.
As such, at the start of a really exhaustive weekend of standing, moshing, headbanging and lots of drinking: I woke up really tired. We’ll see how I fare, not well I’m guessing!
My piles of bandshirts
I’ve been buying them at concerts I deem worthy of really remembering. It’s a treasure trove of memories dating back nearly 10 years now. These are about 50 shirts.
Socially awkward Aeterna strikes again!
So I went to a concert yesterday (De Heideroosjes + The Offspring) which was great. A nice set of bands and good company. I went with 2 friends and one is a girl I’ve started to develop some feelings for. I got on well with her before and it’s a ton of fun to hang out and talk and whatever, we’re both just in it to have fun.
She’s not currently looking for a relationship and as such is single. Those 2 facts combined made it so my heart apparently decided; “Hey, you know this chick that you’re having fun with? How about we go jeopardize that?”. This to me isn’t worth it since I know that there’s a whole group of guys after her and it’d be unlikely to even stand a chance, especially with a cool girl like that.
Anyhow, I decided I didn’t want to bother and to maybe prevent my stubborn feelings from completely biting down, I’d get it over with quickly as the feelings weren’t that strong yet. As such I told her during the concert and that really isn’t the best spot to do that at. But I felt like I had to get it outta my system and so I did. I just wish I would have thought about it for at least half a second before I did and how I did it.
So now I’m just left facepalming in the aftermath and wishing I’d have done it “better”.
This is what I feel like now, when it comes to love and feelings.
Photo with “De Heideroosjes”
Me and 2 friends in the middle. Photo was taken after they opened for The Offspeing, terrific evening. 
Die Apokalyptischen Reiter + Children of Bodom – Melkweg – 06-15-2012
It’s concert time again! This time it was a Children of Bodom tour with Die Apokalyptischen Reiter as openers. It was also in a venue I have only been to once before and that was many many years ago, I hardly even recognized it to be fair. Anyhow, I drove there straight after work and managed to get there in time luckily and as it turned out, there was still around 15min left until the first band started.
Die Apokalyptischen Reiter
Video: Friede Seit Mit Dir, Es wird schlimmer, Der Weg
When DAR got onstage the crowd kind of remained quiet and it seemed that hardly anyone knew who they were. So their keyboard player has an interesting getup to say the least, and they’re certainly entertaining as a live band. After every song the crowd applauded loudly, but didn’t seem to do much more than that. This may also be because they played a bunch of slower songs, which sounded fine.. but that’s not what the crowd was hoping for. When they played a couple of fast songs, it was terrific. It’s some groovy kind of metal that everybody really started to get into, just swinging and all-around good time. They really know how to build a good atmosphere, they certainly have that german-quality in them, I’m not sure what it is.. but they’ve got it. It was a real shame that they had to get off-stage and the crowd ended up getting into them.
If you get the chance to see these guys, be sure to do so as they’re a ton of fun!
Children of Bodom
Video: Needled 24/7, Downfall, In Your Face
This was I think my 5th Children of Bodom concert and this one ended up being much like the others. I mainly go to see them for their old albums, which are simply classics. Their live shows aren’t terrific as the lead singer just isn’t a good frontman. I don’t think that he’s simply poor at english and as such doesn’t speak, but I’m not sure what the reason is. After every single song Alexi will say something along the lines of “Holy fuck, that was amazing”, even when the entire crowd just stood there when they played a song nobody really cared for.
Either way, the set was alright as they did play a bunch of their classic songs at which I decided to vent some frustration in the moshpit. I have to say that it felt good to be in the thick of things and just go nuts again, that’s what I love about concerts. There was 1 real downside though, and that was the horrible-sounding keyboard. My god, was it horribly tuned, it either drowned everything out or you couldn’t hear it.
In short then: Seeing Children of Bodom is never a bad time, but Die Apokalyptischen Reiter were way more entertaining and definitely the band that I’ll remember and will be seeing again!
Sometimes some people just speak the absolute truth (Link)
So this link links to a guy who’s feeling very down and the advice someone gives to him.
I can’t help but feel that every word he speaks is dead on. Of course it hits home for me due to the situation from some months ago, but this is absolutely how I feel.
The bullshit Nathalie pulled on me got put into anger and action and now I’m feeling better than I have many years in the past.
Upcoming Month
As you may know already, the upcoming period is rather interesting for me. I’m currently dealing with a mortgage I’m trying to get for an apartment (in the center of my town) I’ve signed a buying contract for. I have 2 talks with 2 different banks tomorrow and in between those I still have work. Then on friday I have a Children of Bodom & Die Apokalyptischen Reiter concert which I’m driving to straight from work. Then I might drop by a friend for some drinks/fun, gotta get a haircut and shave off this beard I’ve been growing for a little while on saturday and probably deal with some more mortgage stuff by then.
Then on Monday I have to get up early and drive for 1.5 hours to my school where I’m starting a new study to have a meeting about me potentially skipping certain courses due to certificates or working experience. I also have another concert: De Heideroosjes & The Offspring, for which I’m getting picked up straight after work. Should prove to be an interesting day to say the least and definitely a long one. There’s also some stuff that will likely happen that day which I’m curious about but shall not get into now as it may be preemptive and knowing my luck probably won’t go well (with such a description you can probably guess the theme 
).
After that I basically have 2 more days to deal with the mortgage and possibly the portfolio I’ll have to make for my school. That is because on that thursday I’ll be heading over to Belgium for Graspop 2012. That should be a mindblowingly good time as the first 2 days of the show I’ll basically be running from stage to stage to see all the bands I really want to see, having no time for drinks or food really. Then that’ll be tons of fun obviously and then the drinking afterwards will obviously be a good time, curious to see how little sleep I’ll get this time. 
Then after that festival I’ll be recovering at home for a couple of days and then I’ll be flying to New York where I’ll be touristy and then I’ll travel up north to the Boston area to see a friend and stay there for 4th of July for instance. So then I’ll be seeing more things around that area and then eventually I’ll move to Niagara Falls where I’ll cross the border to Canada. There I’ll then quickly pass through Toronto and move my way up to Algonquin Park where I’ve booked a cabin at a big lake which should be absolutely amazing to relax and enjoy nature.
After Algonquin I’ll be moving over to another friend where I’ll hang around for a little bit and from there I’ll be going to the airport and then I’ll fly back. Then I’ll have roughly a day to de-jetlag myself and then I’ll have a regular workweek.. except on the friday I then have another festival in Germany with a friend: Devilside Festival.
Summary
So in summary; I’ll be away from home and therefore my PC from 21st of june until the 14th of july. So that means I won’t be able to record or upload videos. I have tried to have a good enough of a backlog to keep videos going up during this time; but I don’t have enough to cover the entire period and I’m not sure if I can find the time to record more before I leave. So if I can’t do that; Sorry guys, I tried.
So.. E3 is happening?
This is rather strange for me but I don’t really feel bothered about E3 at all. I’m hardly paying attention to it. I’ve only watched Giantbomb’s summary videos which seem fair enough, they give you the run-down and that’s really all (even more than I need) you need to know to be honest. From the sounds of things, not too much innovation is happening. I’ve only heard about literally some of the games to be of interest, among which was Watch Dog. Other than that it sounds like the new Need For Speed is apparently really good, combining Most Wanted with Burnout: Paradise.
So is there anything I’ve been missing thus far that I really ought to check out?
A king among weekends
So my past weekend was pretty great. I took the friday off and on thursday after work I drove off to Utrecht (Tivoli) to see Killswitch Engage with AxeWound as opener. This was actually AxeWound’s first show ever and especially knowing that, they did very well. Though they were extremely metalcore, they did have some songs with some thrash influences which were quite enjoyable.
Then Killswitch Engage came on stage and the venue rather exploded. This was the original singer’s 2nd show back with the band and you could tell he was excited to be there again. Him being there was also the reason for me to go to the show as I dig the albums the band put out when he was there and the new singer definitely changed their style.
It was a great concert and really physical, full of crowdsurfers and a real enthusiastic crowd. During some songs there would literally be 5 crowdsurfers jumping over/on me (I was standing at the very front, right before the pit). The singer at one time just said he felt like moshing and then jumped into the crowd and ran in the moshpit. Definitely not a show I”m going to forget anytime soon!
After that I drove over to a friend’s place and caught her while she was showering, kind of an awkward moment to ring the doorbell, but hey. So lots of talking and drinking ensued followed by roughly 3 hours of sleep. The next day I drove us over to Heerlen (De Nieuwe Nor) for the album release of Carach Angren‘s “Where the corpses sink forever”.
The show started with The Unknown, who started playing without a singer and it sounded really good, some nice thrash/deathmetal. But thenafter the first song the singer came onstage and.. his attitude really mismatched with the music. The music I have to say was good, but the performance was a bit weird with the vocalist.
After that Carach Angren put on a great show, a lovely mix of melody and black metal. I really can’t criticize them in any way other than that they didn’t play “Little Hector what have you done?”, which I think is a fantastic song. One funny thing was that me and my friend were almost the only ones headbanging where the music allowed it. The only others were standing around us, the rest of the hall just stood there nodding.
So after that show we went over to a friend’s place and had some drinks and laughs until again late in the morning and I had another 3 hours of sleep before I/we had to get up and then I drove back to my town and dropped my friend off at the train station and then I dropped my car home and immediately started walking to Fortarock.
Fortarock has a lineup that’s basically a mini-Graspop, not saying that that’s a bad thing at all. It’s a nice warmup for Graspop which is a couple of weeks after that, but bigger. When I got there I ran into some friends in the queue and hung out with them for a little while until I either lost them or saw some other friends and that’s basically what I did throughout the day. I hung out with different friends from time to time and that was definitely fun.
It was a great day and the weather couldn’t have been better, a nice ~20C and it being rather sunny. Not too hot, not too cold. Among others I saw Solstafir, Meshuggah, Machine Head, The Devin Townsend Project, Lamb of God, Steel Panther and Slayer. All-in-all it was a terrific day and afterwards I hugged some new friends goodbye and walked home for another 30 minutes. Afterwards I was so tired from the lack of sleep and standing/rocking out all day for the last couple of days that I wanted to take off my shoes, but fell asleep before I even could.
tl;dr
I had a great weekend filled with concerts, laughs and drinks.