Soundtrack: Summer '13

I've been putting together a personalized playlist for the summer. It works during the day on the beach, it works  around the table with your friends and it works in the sunset with something pretty beside you!

It's different from your average summer playlist in the sense that it almost completely lacks new, popular radio hits and it lacks any club/house music. It's just real music; up-tempo, slow songs, rock songs, ballads, acoustics. It's just a great playlist filled with artists and bands that you don't necessarily listen to, or even know about. 65 tracks (so far), each with a little something special and with a bit of a story. 

Here's a couple of examples on what you might find:

Sister Hazel / Editors / The Smiths / Eric Hutchinson / Gaslight Anthem / Jackopierce / NeedToBreathe / Marshall Crenshaw / Volbeat / Jason Isbell / The 1975 / Tom Petty / Temptations / Bruce Springsteen /

Click the link, sit back in the sun, have a beer and enjoy life!

Summer '13 on Spotify

Bråvalla Festival - Setlists and Reviews

Volbeat
Hallelujah Goat +++
A New Day ++
Guitar Gangsters & Cadillac Blood ++++
Pearl Heart ++++
Heaven Nor Hell ++++
Sad Man's Tongue +++
Lola Montez ++++
Fallen ++++
16 Dollars +++
Maybelline I Hofteholder ++++
Mary Ann's Place ++++
Dead But Rising +++
The Garden's Tale ++++
The Hangman's Body Count +++
Still Counting +++
Doc Holliday +++
Cape Of Our Hero +++++
The Mirror and The Ripper +++
Pool of Booze, Booze, Booza +++

Airbourne
Ready To Rock ++++
Chewin' The Fat +++

Diamonds In The Rough ++++

Back In The Game +++

Raise The Flag +++

Blonde, Bad and Beautiful ++++

Cheap Wine & Cheaper Women ++++
Black Dog Barking ++++
No Way But The Hard Way ++++
Live It Up ++++
Too Much, Too Young, Too Fast +++
Runnin' Wild +++++

Green Day
99 Revolutions ++
Know Your Enemy +++
Stay The Night ++
Stop When the Red Lights Flash ++
Letterbomb +++
Oh Love ++
Holiday ++++
Boulevard of Broken Dreams +++
Stray Heart ++
Murder City +++
Waiting ++
Burnout ++++
Hitchin' A Ride +++
When I Come Around +++
St Jimmy +++
Longview ++++
Basket Case ++++
She ++
King For A Day +++
Minority ++++
American Idiot ++++
Jesus of Suburbia +++++
Brutal Love ++

Rammstein
Ich Tu Dir Weh ++++
Wollt Ihr Dass Bett in Flammen Sehen ++
Keine Lust +++
Sehnsucht +++
Asche zu Asche +++
Feuer Frei ++++
Mein Teil +++
Ohne Dich +++
Wiener Blut ++
Du Riechst So Gut +++
Benzin ++++
Links 2-3-4 ++
Du Hast +++++
Bück Dich +++
Ich Will ++++
Mein Herz Brennt +++
Sonne ++++
Pussy ++++

In Flames
Sounds of A Playground Fading ++++
Where the Dead Ships Dwell ++++
Pinball Map ++
Trigger +++
The Hive ++
Cloud Connected ++++
Ropes ++++
Fear Is The Weakness ++++
The Quiet Place ++++
All For Me +++
The Mirror's Truth ++
Deliver Us ++++
Take This Life ++++
My Sweet Shadow +++

Stone Sour
Gone Sovereign +++
Absolute Zero ++++
Mission Statement ++
Made of Scars +++
Do Me A Favor +++
RU486 ++
Say You'll Haunt Me ++++
Bother +++
Through Glass +++
Children of the Grave ++++
Get Inside +++
30/30-150 ++++

Gaslight Antem
Handwritten ++++
The '59 Sound ++++
Biloxi Parish +++
American Slang ++++
1930 +++
Bonzo Goes To Bitburg (Ramones) ++
45 ++++
The Queen of Lower Chelsea +++
Astro Zombies (Misfits) ++
Here Comes My Man ++
Boomboxes and Dictionaries +++
Too Much Blood +++
The Backseat ++++

Bråvalla Festival 2013 - Summary

Just returned from three days at the brand new Bråvalla Festival in Sweden. The artists are a mix of rock, metal and house with more focus on the rock and metal acts. As it should be!

Camped in a caravan, walked through the mud, rocked out in the rain, ate bad food, looked at the ladies - and of course the beer. Beer for breakfast, beer for lunch, beer for dinner and beer for midnight snack. All in all, a rather classic swedish festival behavior!

So which bands did I see?
*Rammstein
*Green Day
*Volbeat
*In Flames
*Airbourne
*Stone Sour
*Gaslight Anthem
*Hoffmaestro
*Rival Sons
*Danko Jones (partial)
*Ron Pope (partial)
*Editors (partial)
*Bullet For My Valentine (partial)
*Eldkvarn (partial)
*Johnossi (partial)
*Ghost (partial)
*Timbuktu (partial)
*The Sounds (partial)
*Mando Diao (partial)
*Thåström (partial)
*Avicii (partial)
*Armin van Buuren (partial)

Biggest surprise? AIRBOURNE
Personal favorite? VOLBEAT
Biggest crowd? RAMMSTEIN
Most fun show? GREEN DAY
Biggest disappointment? MANDO DIAO
Personal reflections? I don't understand House, having a problem even calling it music. Avicii / van Buuren = press play, wave your hand awkwardly, people go crazy. I just don't get it!

Notes from the road
- Airbourne delivered a full throttle rock show from start to finish. One hour of complete balls-to-the-wall riff-driven rock. No ballads, no filler. Great frontman, great music. A joy for any rock-lover and the single most positive surprise. They really gave 110% and were soaking with sweat after like 2 songs. They really got the crowd going and I was having a ball in the front, rocking out in the rain. The rain actually made the show even better, how can any band even make that happen? Huge fan.

- Volbeat was as great live as I had heard before. A great setlist with many of my favorite songs and the band looked to be in fine form. Considering the songs and performance this was probably my favorite moment of the festival. Best song, a bit surprising, Cape of Our Hero.

- Rammstein was also a big surprise. I knew the show would be great, and I knew the music would be half-good/half-bad. But to see the huge spectacle of the show completely overshadow some of the not-so-great songs and making every song awesome to watch, that was a surprise! Because we look with the eyes as well, right?!

- Green Day is one of the few bands I've seen before. The show was very similar, but a bit too long with a bit too many new songs. The crowd didn't really get it on the new songs, and went crazy on the old ones. It was an up and down show, but we had a blast in the crowd in the front rows!

- In Flames delivered a strong set with a lot of songs from the latest album, which is my personal favorite, so I was very happy with that. Powerful performance as usual and great crowd. I really missed Only For The Weak - the only thing missing to make it a perfect metal show.

- Stone Sour was also a surprise. They've got a bunch of good songs, but I was surprised at how well they came out live. Cory Taylor was a better singer than I thought, and a great frontman at that. Fun to have seen them, and I need to start listening to them more.

- Gaslight Anthem started out their set with a bunch of their best songs like Handwritten, 45 and The '59 Sound. Great so far, but after that the show could only go downwards. It wasn't bad at all, but maybe they should have saved some for the finale. Need to listen to these guys more as well!

- Rival Sons is a band I have never heard or seen before and I'm really glad I went out to see them because it was great. Very good songs and a great live sound, and it struck me at how cool it would be to see them at a hot and sweaty club gig. Will listen more!

Countdown to Bråvalla #4 - Rammstein

From Germany with love, no sorry, from Germany with Firepower! That's what I meant. Because firepower is one thing Rammstein always brings. That and industrial rock as cold and hard as only pure metal can be. It's only fitting they bring enough fire to warm up all of Sweden during an entire winter.

I haven't seen Rammstein live before so I want to see flamethrowers, bombs, sex, blood, sweat and tears. Oh, and some songs to go with that:

Du Hast

Feuer Frei

Sonne

Ich Will

Amerika

Traveller - new album from Jorn

Norweigan hard rockers Jorn has just released a new album called Traveller. It's a 10 song kick-in-the-face album with one of the best singers out there, Jorn Lande.
And it really is Jorn himself that is the star of the album, as far as I'm concerned almost every song ever written can sound better with Jorn singing it. Such powerful vocals! The songs doesn't even have to be that good (as is the case with some of the songs on Traveller) - they still sound awesome.

Don't know who Jorn Lande is? Then look into some of his other bands like Masterplan, Ark, Allen/Lande and of course all of his work with Tobias Sammet in the Avantasia project. Do that now.

Back to Traveller; the best song is Monsoon. No doubt, no question, no competition. Other good songs worth noticing is Make Your Engine Scream, Traveller and Overload.

Traveller (full album)

Overload @ 00:00

Traveller @ 09:52

Make Your Engine Scream @ 19:59

Monsoon @ 39:11

Countdown to Bråvalla #3 - Airbourne

Next band on the list is Airbourne! With AC/DC as their biggest influence they bring a high-powered and energetic performance all the way from Australia to Sweden. A lot of great songs, but here's a couple I wanna hear:

Blonde, Bad and Beautiful

Runnin' Wild

Too Much, Too Young, Too Fast

Live It Up

Woman Like That

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Countdown to Bråvalla #2 - The Gaslight Anthem

Next band on my countdown list, and a must-see on Bravalla, is the Gaslight Anthem. A relatively new band with a great sound and some solid song-writing. Hope to hear my favorite song of theirs, Handwritten. That one kicks some major ass!

Handwritten

The '59 Sounds

"45"

The Boxer

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