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Rock Station Festival #9, Ankara Turkey


Event: Rock Station Festival
Written by: jupitreas
Published: 01.11.2006


Rock Station Festival #9 Ankara, Turkey
Venue - Saklikent
14-15 October 2006

Written by Erica Hughes and Jerry Szprot

Not many people in the world are familiar with the Turkish metal scene but it has been thriving for at least 20 years and has produced some decent bands over this time. We had an opportunity to see members of the legendary Turkish band Pentagram (known as Mezarkabul worldwide) play with Crossfire as well as some other talented bands 2 weeks ago at the 9th Rock Station Festival in Ankara. On the whole; however, out of the 17 bands gracing the stage during these two days, we only agree that 4 were good and each of us like 2 others.

Before we move onto descriptions of the bands, lets say a few words about the organization of the event. Saklikent is the largest venue in Ankara and as far as venues go, it is pretty damn good. There is a lot of room, you can see the stage from everywhere, beer is cold and available from multiple locations and there is a nice chill-out area in back with couches. There are also lots of toilets. Unfortunately, one of the sponsors was the Tuborg beer company, which therefore had a monopoly on beverage sales. We prefer the traditional Turkish lager, Efes. Luckily, re-entry was not a problem so we, like many others, went outside to eat or drink Efes.

Saturday October 14th

The show started one hour late with a band called Rectifier. They were a power trio playing death metal. The bass player sang and headbanged together with his guitarist. They had good stage presence but were not musically impressive. The sound levels were too low on the guitar.

The second band was horrible. We don't know what RTD stands for but we suggest Rotten Terrible Dismal. The worst member was the vocalist who insisted on tone-deaf singing instead of his mediocre growl. The music itself was pretty bland as well. When not indulging in metalcore clichés, the band treated us to riffs we already knew from Pantera et al.

The third band, Sagaris, impressed Jerry because of the cognitive dissonance of black metal in Turkey, but Erica wasn't amused and yelled about their poor makeup and frankly, pretty mediocre music. Their necro image inspired a few chuckles but then again, perhaps we all needed a relief after RTD.

We both hated the next band, Knightmare. Just look at the name? and then they played Final Countdown.

It was very difficult not to watch the singer for the fifth band, Rampage, since he had metal hooks instead of hands. As much as we respect his balls to get on stage, his voice wasn't all that good. It was very strong but he often hit the wrong notes.

Next up was an air guitar competition with a really nice Fender as a prize. As much as we like watching random people embarrass themselves on stage, we still went outside for lunch and a few beers.

Next up was Raven Woods, which Erica completely missed. Jerry did see them though and wasn't particularly impressed. Actually, their thrashy power metal wasn't the worst that we've heard during these two days but their song writing was not nearly memorable enough to leave a mark.

Magick followed. They had good stage presence and obviously a lot of fans but not so much talent. The singer is a pudgy, 35ish Dave Mustaine wannabe who tries singing in a heavy metal band. Erica liked his leather pants.

The best band that night, and even for the whole festival, did not play last on Saturday night. Crossfire blew the audience away with their unique take on thrash metal. It was a four-man band with a very talented vocalist who doubled on bass. Because the band was so well known in Ankara, we suffered through two terrible guest appearances and two really good ones. One of the latter was a striking performance of the song "Bir" by Pentagram with two of the original artists. The entire audience was in bliss, headbanging or gazing in rapture at the stage. This was by far the highlight of the entire festival. It was a grave mistake on the part of the organizers to have any band perform after this song.

The final band had traveled to Ankara from Austria; however most of the audience left after "Bir". This was disappointing for both of us since they were very talented. The music was creative, the songwriting original and the drummer was a beast full of fills. The 20 or so people remaining definitely enjoyed DeadSoul Tribe's innovative music. Unfortunately, in a festival where the audience expects unadulterated aggression, this band was simply a fish out of water. Somebody should have really thought twice about inviting them.

Sunday 15th

On day two, the sound check ran late and we all waited in the rain. This really pissed Erica off, but the first band put her in a good mood again. After entering the stage in a cowboy hat wielding a baseball bat, Blacktooth's vocalist proceeded to shred his larynx for a compact 30 minute set. Aside from Crossfire, the heaviest moshing happened during this band's performance. They ended with a cover though their original music was much better.

The second band, Apoplexy, had two females - one singing, one of keyboards. Neither was talented but the singer was kind of cute.

The third band, Phronesis, had serious sound problems. Perhaps this was because it was hard to equalize all of the microphones for the six members. There was both a male and a female vocalist. The male had a good brutal sound but the female sang like an untrained operatic soprano. We've heard shit like this before and we didn't like it then, don't like it now.

Erica really liked the next band, Arcane. All the members came from different metal traditions and the combined sound was an impressive hybrid. Her only criticism of the thrashy brutal sound was that the bass player should never sing. Luckily, he was only a backup.

The next band was more to Jerry's liking. This four piece played punk metal and in case you couldn't tell this from the music, all the members conveniently wore shirts informing us that this was, in fact, the genre that their band occupies. The singer was great at crowd rousing and the whole band had great energy. Jerry thinks we all need a little punk in our metal so Nitro was a much needed fix.

Moribund Oblivion, as you can tell from their name, believes they play black metal. However, even though they dressed in the typical black metal get-up, their music tended towards death. Aside from all of this, we both really enjoyed them. Erica though they would have become famous years ago if they had only learned to end a song properly.

The last good band we heard was Soul Sacrifice. The bass player/singer might look like an ox but he actually has a great voice and presence. The crowd ate them up. The band's groovy thrash assault was just what we all needed at this point of the festival.

It would have been perfect if it had all stopped there. Unfortunately, the second day ended in an anti-climax just like the day before. The goth-metal Catafalque sounded really wimpish after Soul Sacrifice and Whisky's 80s rocks antics impressed no one. Not even the singer's fluffy white poet shirt could prevent the audience from slowly migrating to another bar with a free concert.

Considering that the ticket price for this entire festival was about the equivalent of 12 Euros, it was money well spent. Although our report might seem overly critical, we actually had a great fucking time and enjoyed finding out more about the Turkish metal scene, the stars of which we agreed were Crossfire, Soul Sacrifice and Moribund Oblivion. We both liked DeadSoul Tribe, but they weren't Turkish. See you next year.

Thanks to the organization of the festival and management of the venue for making this review possible.






Written on 01.11.2006 by With Metal Storm since 2002, jupitreas has been subjecting the masses to his reviews for quite a while now. He lives in Warsaw, Poland, where he does his best to avoid prosecution for being so cool.



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