The biggest metal festival in Spain!
The year 2019 has started.
As we announced earlier, GYZE at the moment can't continue its activities. And this means that even though we have the shows planned for a year ahead we don't know if we'll be able to play. So now GYZE is up in the air.
And I think that it might be important to have such times...
But it's not in my nature to do nothing so I decided to write from time to time about our experience touring abroad.
Summer last year was busy.
GYZE is going to Europe now every year, and last summer we also spent August going around Europe.
In Japan all the attention is drawn to Waken but actually, there are many metal festivals in Summer in different places all over the world in different places around.
And today I'm gonna tell you about the biggest metal festival in Spain (Alicante) - Leyendas del Rock [Oficial].
Line-up was as follows↓
NIGHTWISH, MR BIG, DRAGONFORCE, POWERWOLF, CHILDREN OF BODOM, SONATA ARCTICA, KAMELOT, AMORPHIS, TURISAS…etc
And among them - GYZE! Becoming the first Japanese band to play there was pure happiness!
In 2017 we already had a chance to play in Spain 3 shows while touring Europe with Battle Beast. And we really felt that true feel of hot passionate Spain.
The audience reaction was awesome! ※I just wish we could bring more merch this time.
GYZE traveled from Narita to Vietnam → Frankfurt → Madrid → Alicante and all by air. So we spent almost 24h flying.
Last year we experienced more troubles and natural disasters than we could possibly imagine.
Due to a typhoon we had to change our flights when going to the final meeting to Tokyo.
As the airline we were using started a strike we had no choice but staying overnight in Germany.
And on top of everything -
On the way Madrid → Alicante Shuji's luggage with drums equipment got lost...
If talking about Spain in comparison with Japan - it is situated similarity to Okinawa, with dry air and pleasant sunlight. A very nice place.
As we arrived to the hotel we absolutely no time to rest as we had to immediately get on the shuttle to the fest site.
Somehow we managed to rent the gear on that day, however as it was just the first day if the Europe tour -
when we couldn't rent the gear we couldn't play the show.
(after all, a show in Belgium got cancelled)
The fest site was situated on the top of the hill; the location a little bit resembled Niseko.
Usually, there's no soundcheck at the festivals overseas so hoping to get a couple minutes for checking the sound during changeover is all you can hope for.
And indeed, we've never ever had sufficient time for the soundcheck yet.
For many reasons, including traveling by air a lot, I just plug iRig into my guitar and open the app on my iPhone.
This way there are less troubles, I can finish setting up fast, also, I prefer app's sound to that from the real amplified.
Moreover, no matter where you perform the sound would stay the same.
On one hand, as I couldn't check the in-ear monitors enough, I didn't hear the rhythm section in the first song, on the other hand passionate and enthusiastic Spanish people stir up, started singing and even went on in the circle pit even before I asked them too!
Even though you might think that at the festivals there is always a crowd gathering for all the groups. But actually it's not really true. Usually, for the first couple song there are not so many people in front of the stage.
And taking it into account I've chosen the track DRAGON CALLING, that I'm really confident in, to be the first song.
This song has a lot of chorus to be sang with audience so I decided that exactly this track will make the biggest impact!
And my bid, my prediction paid off!
By the end of the 60 set we couldn't even see where the crowd ends. Our show reached the maximum possible capacity for the stage we performed on.
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SET LIST
1.Dragon Calling
2.Japanese Elegy
3.Pirates of Upas
4.In Grief
5.The Rising Dragon
6.Kamuy
7.The Bloodthirsty Prince
8.Final Revenge
9.Desire
10.Northern Hell Song
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Tears well up even just by the fact that so many people so far away are listening to my song that I wrote alone in my room in Japan.
I was really moved to see and feel thousands of people sharing the same interest, gathered in such a distant location to share the joy of listening to music and watching the picturesque views together.
I feel this way equally when I'm in Japan and abroad.
At the moment, GYZE can't enjoy and make such precious memories like those I mentioned above.
Its not that in wanna soak in the memories, but now I have more free time than usual, so I decided little by little to share with you the days that made such a deep impression on me.
Ryoji