Monthly Archives: May 2015

Horns Up!

I read recently that the site of metal music festival Hellfest in France was vandalised. Some small extreme catholic group is being suspected.

Isn’t it ironic that a group of people who preach against Satan go set fire to someone else’s property? … Anyway.

A few years ago it was a political woman who stood against Hellfest. I don’t remember her name; I don’t bother remembering such names.
I remember though that it cost the Hellfest one of their biggest sponsors.

Hellfest .trexsound.com

Isn’t it ironic that people who attack extreme music do it in such an extreme manner?… Anyway.

Metal music remains a misunderstood music genre for many people in France.
The main media in France are mostly located in Paris and they are held by a handful of people whose values are quite the opposite of those of metal music.

It could be that these people like some of the edgy rock / metal bands, if only they tried listening to them. But since they don’t try, and since they don’t know, they fear, they judge, they underestimate, they respond with arrogance to the whole music genre.

Isn’t it ironic that people who are supposed to be the most educated can be thus narrow-minded? … Anyway.

These past years the metal music media have been organising themselves in France.
Radio Metal, La Grosse Radio, Metal XS, l’équipe de Hard Force, Metallian, Rock Hard for example and many webzines such as Violent Solutions have been doing a great job.

HardForce-blog-69

http://www.radiometal.com

There is a strong community of metalheads in France.
Some listen to extreme metal music, some listen to melodic metal music.

I remember when we booked gigs ourselves on our ‘DCas’ tour  in France.
We avoided using the words ‘metal music’ when we called venues, so that we would not be segregated straight away… When people listened without prejudice, they usually enjoyed our songs.

EILERA Poster

I remember when metal music was so underground in France and me and my friends ordered our favourite albums. How happy we we were when we received them home!

How much positive energy we shared when we listened to Carcass’s ‘Heartwork’, to Death’s ‘Individual Thought’s Pattern’ and so on.

Carcass

“Eh les gars, vous avez écouté le dernier Dimmu Borgir? C’est une tuerie!”, I heard my corsican friend Jé say many times.

I remember when we drove hundreds of kilometres through the snow to go see The Gathering play a show on their “Nighttime birds” tour and what moment of magic it was,

The Gathering Live

I remember my emotion when I finally saw Death live in Lyon, a couple of years before Chuck Schuldiner died,

I remember this amazing show of In Flames in Bordeaux, in a very small venue. How amazingly passionate and strong it felt!

In Flames Live

I remember this show of Nightwish in Marseille on their Wishmastour when they were still learning their job and Tarja fell from a loose cable on stage.

I remember driving to Germany to be in the audience of the Summerbreeze festival,

I remember offering each other’s CDs with my boyfriend on our birthdays; I got Lacuna Coil’s Reveries, he got a Katatonia’s Brave Murder Day.

Katatonia-Brave-Murder-Day

Isn’t it ironic that a music supposedly so negative has been giving me, my friends, my family and my bandmates such positive vibes? … Anyway:

Horns up!

in France and everywhere else.

souvenir from the DCas tour, with from down right: Caroline Legrand, Eilera, Jan Sormo, Aurélien Garcia, Jean Ferry, Sébastien "Casquette", Loïc Tézénas
souvenir from the DCas tour, with from the down right: Caroline Legrand, Eilera, Jan Sormo, Aurélien Garcia, Jean Ferry, Sébastien “Casquette”, Loïc Tézénas