Rock Hard Festival 2016 to be streamed and recorded by Rockpalast.de

The open air festival of the paper magazine Rock Hard has become well known in germany and many other countries around the world. It's based at a small location at a historical theater in Gelsenkirchen and features mostly smaller bands. It's said that the bands don't play there to make some cash in but instead play for the fans and thank them this way.

Most of all the Rockpalast crew confirmed on Facebook that there will be a live stream this year. So far Turbonegro has been announced as a band that has agreed to have their show streamed online.

The Rock Hard Festival 2016 will be streamed and recorded by the legendary TV format Rockpalast

Info on the Festival-Livestream

But there's more to come - here is the timetable for

Friday the 13th 2016 (all times are MEST)

Year Of The Goat       16:00 - 16:40 h
Satan                          17:05 - 17:50 h 
Tankard                      18:15 - 19:15 h
Destruction                 19:45 - 21:00 h
Sodom                       21:30 - 23:00 h

Saturday the 14th 2016 (all times are MEST)

Grand Magus       15:35 - 16:20 h
The Exploited       16:45 - 17:45 h
Kadavar               18:15 - 19:15 h
Metal Church       19:45 - 21:00 h 
Turbonegro          21:30 - 23:00 h

Sunday the 15th 2016 (all times are MEST)

Orden Ogan                                15:15 - 16:00 h
Moonspell                                   16:30 - 17:30 h
Riot V                                         18:00 - 19:00 h
Best Of Rock Hard 2015            19:05 - 21:00 h
Blind Guardian                            21:15 - 23:00 h 

You can find the livestream at the homepage of the Rockpalast web presence.

I'll update the schedule on the upcoming days if things should change. You can also connect with Heavy Metal Underdogs via Facebook - I'll post updates on the streaming schedule there as well.

Update 2016/05/24: In case you missed out the livestream of the Rock Hard festival 2016 or want to watch some of the gigs again follow this link. The first batch of live recordings is online now thanks to the hard working people of the Rockpalast crew.

Update 2016/05/14: Rockpalast has uploaded some live footage as well as interview material and pictures of the Rock Hard Festival 2016 on their homepage.

For all those who can't make it to the festival or watch the stream the legendary german TV format Rockpalast will also make recordings of the performances and air them later via the TV station WDR.

 

Info on the TV broadcast

Here is the TV broadcast schedule for the recorded material (all times are MEST please keep that in mind).
There is a livestream of the TV station available from their homepage but I cannot say if you access it from outside of germany.

Update 2016/05/24: Updated the schedule once again. The show on 27th June 2016 is a completly new announcement.

Update 2016/05/20: Updated the TV broadcast with exact starting and ending times and added the bands that will be shown during the shows.

23. May 2016, 23.55 - 03.25 h @ WDR Fernsehen
Bands:
SODOM
KADAVAR
TANKARD
YEAR OF THE GOAT

30. May 2016, 00.05 - 03.35 h @ WDR Fernsehen
Bands:
TURBONEGRO
DESTRUCTION
THE EXPLOITED

6. June 2016, 00.45 - 04.15 h @ WDR Fernsehen
Bands:
BLIND GUARDIAN
RIOT V
MOONSPELL

27. June 2016, 02.15 - 04.15 h @ WDR Fernsehen
METAL CHURCH
SATAN
GRAND MAGUS
ORDEN OGAN

The following band list shows which other band will also play at the Rock Hard Open Air 2016:

BLIND GUARDIAN
TURBONEGRO
SODOM
CANNIBAL CORPSE
METAL CHURCH
DESTRUCTION („Mad Butcher“-Set!)
MOONSPELL
THE EXPLOITED
RIOT V
TANKARD
KADAVAR
GRAND MAGUS
SATAN
ORDEN OGAN
TRIBULATION
BLACK TRIP
NIGHTINGALE
YEAR OF THE GOAT
SULPHUR AEON
SORCERER
ACCU§ER
DISCREATION

More information on the festival itself can be found on official Rock Hard Festival Homepage.

Wacken 2014 and beyond - streams online and boxset coming

Life can only be understood in reverse. But must be lived forwards… This quote from the Megadeth song "Losing my senses" is a good statement in my eyes. We should focus on the here and now rather than on the past.

Anyway, sometimes you may also like to look back as some memories can also be pretty sweet. This often comes into play when thinking about visiting a festival like the Wacken Open Air.

The german TV station zdf kultur has re-uploaded some of the broadcasts of the past Wacken Open Air from 2014. So here's one more chance to see this stuff if you haven't already.

Kreator

Schandmaul

Amon Amarth

Hammerfall

In addition to that a mediabook package with 3 DVDs / Blu-rays is coming our way which will reflect upon the Wacken Open Airs of all the past years called „25 Years of Wacken – Snapshots, Scraps, Thoughts And Sounds“ .

The german Rock Hard megazine has been given the honour to exclusively present a first insight into the book on their website showing stuff from the years 1990 - 1994. Unfortunately it's in german but the pictures inside should be of interest to many people.

For more infos from the boxset and some snippets from the DVDs watch the trailer below.

Rock Hard Festival 2014 live stream shows selected shows

On the upcoming weekend Friday 6th to Sunday 8th June 2014 the Rock Hard Festival will take place. This annual festival is organised by the well-known german Rock Hard megazine and the focus is set on smaller bands playing in the beautifull surroundings of the Amphitheater Gelsenkirchen, Germany.

Once again there will be a internet live stream this year showing some of the shows. The stream can be found at the side of the Rockpalast webpage. The following bands have been confirmed so far to be broadcasted along with the timetable:

Update 2014/06/06: Solstafir & Screamer added to the time-table on Saturday since they have been announced to be streamed as well.

Update 2014/06/10: Single videos from the performances of the bands have been uploaded to the Rockpalast homepage. Just click on the band names to jump to the site with the stream.
More stuff like interviews or pictures can be found on the main page of the event. Click on the band name and category to get the stuff you want.


Friday 06th June:

19:45h APOKALYPTISCHEN REITER.

21:30-23:00h TRIPTYKON


Saturday 07th June:

15:45- 16:30h SOLSTAFIR

14:45- 15:25h SCREAMER

18:15- 19:15h OBITUARY

19:45- 21:00h SACRED REICH

21:30- 23:00h CARCASS


Sunday 08th June:

13:00- 13:40h BLUES PILLS

14:05- 14:50h ORPHANED LAND

15:15- 16:00h INSOMNIUM

16:30- 17:40h MONSTER MAGNET

18:10- 19:20h ANNIHILATOR

Listen to the new Saxon live album already today

Check out the full new Saxon live album legally and for free at the website of the german RockHard magazine as a pre-listening. The double live album "St. George's Day - Live in Manchester" is set for release on 14th March 2014. Just listened to the first three tracks and they sound amazing. Great audience, seems to have a lot of fun. Enjoy. :-)

Full album streams from Evile, Megadeth and Tesseract available

Wow, these days many bands offer there albums on the internet for free streaming mostly even prior to the official release date. Today I'll give you a package of three bands, that have all set up their entire brand new albums for listening via the World Wide Web.

So let's start out with Tesseract and their album Altered State. The band has put quite a interessting concept behind their album, something that often run's across my mind - the changes in life we all go through and how we deal with them.

The band describes the concept in their own words: "The concept behind the presentation of 'Altered State' is very simple. It is about change, and how life is change. We have been through a very difficult period of time over the last few years. It is a miracle that the band has survived. I feel it is the ability to step back and see everything for what it is (hence the 'Perspective' EP) that has allowed us to get on with life and try to enjoy it. Reality is change."

Here is how the music turned out after this process:

It's been a sad day recently when I read about the sudden death of Slayer guitarist Jeff Hanneman. Rest in peace! You'll be always remembered for this unique playing style and some of the most intensive thrash songs ever.

If we focus on things there's often a feeling like it's black clouds and silver linings. Meaning most stuff doesn't look too good for some or other reason but there's sometimes a glimpse of hope hanging in the air.
As for this moment for me it's the young fresh bands that give these glimpse I'm talking about.

One of them is currently Evile, a young band digging also in this thrash direction. They got my attention some time ago when I first saw the video to the song "Cult" and now they are back with a fresh record entitled "Skull". Their record company has set up the whole album as a stream on youtube so without any further words enjoy it. :-)

Let's close these round-up with the full proven thrash music from US veteran's Megadeth that have just put out the new album called "Super Collider". Actually my very first impressions on this album are quite mixed but I'm looking forward to check out the full album later. First of all here is the link to the german Rock Hard magazine for you, so you can quickly check the record out for yourselfs. While you do so, why not leave a little comment here? I'd like to know what you think about these three albums.  

Festival footage online and on TV

The festival season is once more upon us. :-) Also the weather here in germany is a quite mixed thing right now it's time to celebrate the music we all love and adore together with other people while having a little party with it. If you know of more stuff that is up on TV or online please let me know though a comment or email. I'd like to put up as much stuff here as possible.

Vainstream Festival 2012

Some festivals are already over and TV stations have been there to capture some footage of what happened. One of them is iMusic 1 with their show iMusic rocks show. They recently took a look at the Vainstream festival and came back with some interviews and interview stuff (e.g. with Slayer). You can watch it online at their website. It's only 30 minutes long but worth watching it.

Rock Hard Festival 2012

Another TV station here in germany is the WDR. They did visit the Rock Hard festival 2012 here in Germany and will show tonight a cut-together of interview and concert stuff. After that they will also show 2 best of's of the shows from Graveyard and Unisonic. The exact time-table goes as follows:

Sunday to Monday, 15. upon 16. Juli 2012

00.15h Rock Hard Festival 2012
02.15h GRAVEYARD
02.45h UNISONIC

All times are german times. More info on this broadcast (in german) can be found here. In case they should add the stuff afterwards to their archive I'll put the exact links here up,too.

Update 2012/07/16: Happily they did upload the videos! Just click on the links to open a new window with the video in it.

Rock Hard Festival 2012 

Graveyard

Unisonic

Additionally you can watch stuff from the past 2011 Rock Hard festival and also from the 2010 RH festival stuff is still watchable online.

Update 2012/07/16: Just got the info that Heavy Metal Home TV has also taken some footage at the festival and did upload it to youtube for watching. The video is about half a hour long and features the following bands (each one contributes one full song to the vid):

TURBONEGRO, KVELERTAK, KRISIUN, RAM, DEATHFIST



Wacken Open Air 2012

Will there be a stream this year? I have no concrete info about this yet. At least the german TV station zdf kultur has announced to broadcast a four hour special on 4th August 2012, starting at 20h (german time). Maybe the NDR may do a stream. Their Wacken sub-page is still up and running so chances might be they'll do a stream. Let's keep the fingers crossed.

Update 2012/07/27:
There will be a internet livestream from the Wacken 2012 Festival! The following bands already confirmed that their shows will be shown online: Overkill, Dimmu Borgir, U.D.O. und Hammerfall.

On Thursday, Friday and Saturday the stream will be online, starting at 18h (german time) and end at 1h in the night. On Sunday their will be a stream up from some shows of the previous days that hasn't been shown in the time before. More details like the full time-table will follow in the next days. I'll update the related post on the frontpage of my blog when new info arrives, so stay tuned for more!

The internetstream can be seen at this site of the german TV station NDR, thanks to them that they will give us the possibility to take part of this great event also in 2012!

Update 2012/08/03:
ZDF kultur will broadcast some of the shows live through their TV station on 4th August 2012. The following bands will be shown at the mentioned german time:

20.00 Uhr, Amon Amarth (LIVE!)

21.25 Uhr, Volbeat

22.50 Uhr, Scorpions (LIVE!)

23.15 Uhr, Machine Head (LIVE!)

Update 2012/08/05: ZDF kultur has put the video for this online, full four hours of live-stuff!!!
But hurry, it's only up for a week. 

The highlight shows in the week after the Wacken Open Air will contain the following bands at the mentioned days with german timeframe:

Update 2012/08/07: Seems like every show will be added to the on-demand-archive of the TV station for free watching after the broadcast so I'll add the links here as fast as I can. Just click on the desired show and a new window with the chosen on-demand stream will appear. :-) But hurry, every video is only up for a week. Enjoy!


6. August, 17.55 Uhr: Sepultura & Les Tambours du Bronx

7. August, 17.55 Uhr: Hammerfall

8. August, 17.55 Uhr: D.A.D und The Boss Hoss

9. August, 17.55 Uhr: Saxon

10. August, 18 Uhr: Dimmu Borgir & Orchestra

13. August, 17.55 Uhr: Edguy

14. August, 17.55 Uhr: Testament

15. August, 17.55 Uhr: Ministry

16. August 17.55 Uhr: In Extremo

17. August, 18 Uhr: In Flames

More info on the timetable regarding the broadcast on german TV station zdf kultur and the highlight shows can be found on this site  

The TV NDR station has put up the full Show from Cirle II Cirle for seven days on the Wacken subpage. The band performed Savatage's "The wake of Magellan" album in it's entirely so it's something very special.  

Update 2012/08/12: The german Metal Hammer magazine has put together some nice links as a media review shwoing what german magazine's and TV stations did report about the WOA: See the clipping with all the links attached right here. 

Update 2012/10/19: Meanwhile the german documentary "Heavy Metal trifft Karniggels" has been uploaded to this location. Having taken a look at the stuff it seems to me that the documentary stuff has been left in but the videos from the band performances have been cut out. Guess that's because of legal rights missing to stream this stuff. Anyway, nice they did put this one up at least as (optional HD) flash videos and additionally also as Windows Media Stream in three qualities.If you want to know more about the director Detlev Buck, there is another german sub-website from NDR station describing his life and work quite in detail.

In addition to this they also did set up a subpage with all the performances of the bands that played at the "Wacken metal battle" Contest. So if you saw a band there that you liked a lot or just wanna checkt out some fresh new bands, this is the place for you to go. I counted 17 videos on that page. Great so see they support young bands that much.

AREA 4 festival

There was a stream online and now some of the shows are online. Check my corresponding post for details on where to see the stuff. 


Hellfest 2012

German TV station Arte did broadcast a documentation about this Open Air located in France with it's very mixed line-up. It's nicely done, with much livemusic, interviews and some personal insights into the time the both reporters spend at the festival. Check out the movie here. It will be online for about a week. (added the link on August 5th 2012).

Omas Teich Festival 2012

A smaller festival in the eastfrisian region (northern) of germany with mostly Independent band and the like, mostly not with metal bands. ZDF kultur will broadcast a cut-together on 28th Juli 2012, starting at 20h (german time) and some specials in the week after the festival. Read the (german) announcement here. You can get more info about the festival on the official homepage.

Melt, Isle of Wight,Hurricane and Berlin Festival

Besides all of this the ZDF has some concert footage of Melt, Isle of Wight,Hurricane and Berlin Festival in their mediathek service currently online, but only for a week. Go here and click on the image to choose your desired festival stuff.

Graspop Metal Meeting 2012

Adrenaline Mob have uploaded two pro-shot videos of their performance at the Graspop Metal Meeting. Nice stuff, check it out below for yourselfes.

Overkill / Cover CD for german Rock Hard megazine

Here we go with New York's finest thrashers around so far - it's time to wreck everything. ;-) Wow, this band has been around now since the early 80th's and provided their unique heavy and brutal force of thrash to their fans worldwide every since in constant quality but also never forgot to move forward by including modern elements into their sound that are dominated by Bobby “Blitz” Ellsworth vocals as well as the bass guitar performance of D.D. Verni. Personally I would also add the guitars of Dave Linsk as another trademark to the sound of the band, also he joined the band shortly before millenium's change in 1999 on the "Necroshine" album. The continuity that the band provides surely has helped the band to build up a stable fan-base that often buy's their albums and shows up when the band's on tour.

By now the band is working on their upcoming record entitled "The Electric Age". It's set up for release on March 27th 2012. The band already released one song of that particular album. To me the song reminds me alot of the old stuff the band did on "Taking Over" bringing in more roughness back to the band's sound but also adding some nice surprises into the song. Let's listen for yourselfs below, hope you'll enjoy.



The band has also put out some nice video stuff showing the making of the album. They are very well worth checking out.





The next issue of german Rock Hard magazine comes with a Overkill cover CD feat. two new songs as well as four Livetracks including rare stuff like ´Death Rider´ and ´The Beast Within´. Release date is 28th of March 2012. Listen to some snippets in the youtube video linked below.



Update 2012-03-24: The band has just released a lyric video for the Song "Wish you were dead". Makes me gettin' even more interested in the upcoming record.



Finally after all do also visit the bands website to find out more about this cool band.

Anathema

So if you're looking for a bit slower and more sadden styled band in metal then Anathema might be a good choice for you. If've been introduced to them through a cover CD that was released with the german Rock Hard Magazine back in 1998.
The song was called "Fragile Dreams" and it fastly got me by it's catchy refrain and it's powerfull drumming. At this time the sound of the band was ofter compared to Paradise Lost and the similarities to the album "Draconian Times" from Paradise Lost were hard to deny.

A lot of time has passed ever since and the band seems to have changed a lot more to a softer style with progressive and dream-like melodies. Recently I focussed back on the band after years after not having heard anything from the band. It was a new message on the Rock Hard magazine's website  that brought back my attention.Currently the band has released a new album called "Weather systems" and has given out one track of that particular album for free listening and even more for downloading. Just check it out and let's see if you like it.



New song  "The Beginning and the End" download Link (joining the Kscope mailing list is required)

The Beginning and the End-Stream and download

For more info also see the band's website

Premiere of new Asphyx song now online

Looking around here I realised that Death Metal is a style of our beloved music that I've led out so far. No problem, this can still be changed. :-)

As for Asphyx it's interesting how I got to know them. I remember I saw them for the first time live back in 2000 at my first Bang your Head festival. They played as a opening slot for Cannibal Corpse at the warm-up show the evening before the main event started. I never heard them before so I was pretty amazed that they did play Death Metal mixed up with a good portion of Thrash and melody, a mixture I started to like pretty much.

By now the band has had it's revival after some years of silence and is currently working on a new album which is set to be released on 02/24/2012 entitled "Deathhammer". The german monthly magazine RockHard is currently exclusively streaming the title track at this side, it's a typical song by the band. Go in here to find out if you like their style of Death Metal:

Asphyx Song "Deathhammer" Stream at Rock Hard magazine

Charred walls of the damned

Nowadays a lot of new bands are coming up. Often these are a result of a teaming-up of well known musicians.

Charred walls of the damned are one of these. This band features Tim 'Ripper' Owens (ex Judas Priest) on vocals,while Richard Christy (ex Death) has done the drums. You can check out their first album for free at the site of the german metal magazine Rock Hard:

http://www.rockhard.de/megazine/praesentationen/charred-walls-of-the-damned.html

For more info on this band go to:

http://www.metalblade.com/cwotd