Written by:	Baz Anderson
Published:	24.05.2007

Ok, so lets update you all as to what is going on!

After lots of travelling from here to Peterborough and back and -£91 later I finally have my passport!! Rejoice!! This means I have ordered my tickets for the full three days of Hellfest and my bus there and back - and I am very very excited indeed. I have been wanting to travel out of this country and off this island for quite a while now so as well as getting to do that, I will also be seeing a lot of really really great bands and not just that but I will get to meet the people I work with on here and all you metal stormers out there that will be at the festival as well!

Not only will this be my second time off this island in my life, it will be my first journey to France and my first open air festival I have ever attended. All of this and I am making my way down there by myself! You can imagine I am nervous but also very very excited as this will be something I remember for the rest of my life, as Marcel said to me this morning "like my first gig or first kiss". If I survive this then I will have much more experience of these things for future years, where hopefully I will be going to many more festivals.

Also in the past week I have put up a few more reviews, ones I mentioned in my last 'blog' entry. Two of which are of Syrian band The Hourglass, and doing these reviews made me think about what I am actually doing. The normal procedure is once you have received a CD in the post, listen to it a few times and do a review as soon as I can, email the band and then onto any more reviews waiting - but doing these Hourglass reviews made me realise that they do actually have an impact on the band and it really means something if you recommend their music. These guys being from Syria as well, so far away from here, it was a pleasure to hear something from a country that I had personally not heard anything from at all. Metal really is a universal language it would seem.

One week ago I was seeing Saxon and Masterplan playing a spectacular show where Saxon, happy to be back in their home country played a fantastic set of two hours, and also Masterplan played a brilliant set introducing themselves to plenty of people over here who had never heard of them before.
Before the show I had the sheer delight in meeting Roland and Jan from Masterplan to conduct an interview, I couldn't believe my eyes when Roland walked up to me and shook my hand - this guy that I first knew of in Helloween and was there for 13 years and also now original co-mastermind behind the glorious Masterplan.
The interview went well and I have over an hours worth of recording with him which will take me days and days to type up unfortunately - be sure to look forward to it though, it has lots of nice juicy stuff in it!!

Thats pretty much all for now! For anyone interested I got that Togekiss up to Lv 100 and it is a monster! Very powerful indeed! I am now currently training a Ninjask and Shedinja to see what these little bugs can do.
Now thats all for now!!