Messed!Up
I usually have one day off to join the party and as it happens, Thursday accidentally turned into a long party before the bands started. There wasn’t anything super interesting until Prisma anyway, thus I spent the day visiting friends’ camps and was offered everything from GTs to Cuba Libres and warm beer, and just after mid-day I slept it all off in a field somewhere at the campsite. And at the Roskilde Festival that’s not a problem. In fact, people pop by and poke on you to see that you are alive and if you seem to be breathing they give you a beer and walk away. That’s why I have returned year after year for the last 30 years – the community.
To sober up I thought hardcore would be a good start and off I went to watch Soul Glo at the Gloria stage as I’ve been a fan of the band since their 2022 album Diaspora Problems. Let’s say it was wild and crazy from the start but being ‘locked in’ and a blacked-out Gloria wasn’t really what I needed to burn out the last remnants of gin and rum, and I left for a burger and a bit of sleep in a hammock at the festival area. Two hours later I was back to normal and ready to take on doom metal four-piece Electric Wizard.
Doom and sludge have been on high rotation on my player ever since the pandemic started and I was looking forward to an amazing show but it just didn’t happen. It may be that doom metal bands have problems causing a riot at festivals – it’s just a too big space – or it may be that I had quite a problem watching their vampire-porno films used as a video backdrop. It just didn’t work out and I was quite disappointed. But I’ve got the same type of feeling at doom gigs at festivals before, and I guess my brain is set for moshpits and chaos at festivals. No more doom at festivals, that’s for the club season. An hour later, however, I knew it would be a great show.
Danish sister duo Prisma did an amazing show at Roskilde Festival already last year and when they played at Reeperbahn Festival in September the same year, at our favorite club Molotow, I bought records and t-shirts. It was an awesome experience in a hot and sweaty Molotow. After several critically acclaimed EPs, the duo made themselves a name in their home country Denmark, and have righteously earned themselves a spot at the ‘real’ festival (last year, they played during the pre-festival days). I brought some Swedes with that haven’t heard anything by the band before and just like that Prisma got some new fans. In songs like “Bangs”, “I Never Wanted To Meet You” and, my favorite, “Drive” everyone at the Avalon stage sang along. After Queens of the Stone Age, Prisma was by far the best gig of the festival and I was ready for bedtime, especially as it had started to drizzle a bit and I hadn’t brought with me my raincoat. But I thought “Why not catch a glimpse of Nova Twins, just to tick a box”. And that’s how I had the festival experience of the year.
Imagine you have a fairly new band and have released your first EP, ready to put yourself out on the slab and start the really hard work to build your fanbase, and then your most vocal celebrity supporter and avid listener is Rage Against The Machine’s guitarist Tom Morello. The path to fame and glory is set, ey? When Amy Love and Georgia South released their first EP, that’s what happened.
Their debut album, Who Are the Girls?, was released three weeks before the first UK lockdown, which should have spelled disaster, but, by the end of 2020, they were picking up awards and lobbying the Mobos to include a rock/alternative category. The hype around Nova Twins was kept at a simmer by the feeling that, with live shows largely on the shelf, a key ingredient was missing.
Backed only by a touring drummer, they dredge remarkable sounds from their instruments in the style of Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, putting serious chops and technical wizardry to use on riffs that swerve between crushing heft and glitchy Prodigy-style blowouts. At times throughout the set, I feel like this can’t possibly be the band playing live. It’s immaculate, flawless and they don’t even seem to break a sweat. Surely live music isn’t meant to sound this good? Songs like “Antagonist”, “Choose Your Fighter” and “Cleopatra” are what the future looks and sounds like.
This is a testament to them being queens of their craft and an invisible force within the scene, reinforcing the fact that these girls are the direction in which rock music needs to be going. That’s it, I don’t really need anything else because the epiphany I got at the Nova Twins gig is enough to call it a day and spend the rest of the festival enjoying the party. But I realized there’s still a Wargasm gig to come. Let’s just wait a bit, shall we?
