Trinkets and strangely shaped baubles for all... it's

Dani's Inferno

Pact Sixteen - Heavy Metal Xmas

This month's sojourn into mental suffering comes courtesy of the three-day Dynamo extravaganza in Holland and the inevitable kidney failure that followed. Upon this particular crest in rock pisstory, over 80 bands took to four stages whilst a record 45,000 fans converged to eat, sleep and shit that most poignant of Hermaphrodisiacs - Heavy Metal Music.This pursuit obviously sat hand in leather gauntlet with that of lager, drugs and shouting (well it did in the backstage area, at least) but as the Shite Rev. Rudas Priest (alias Lez, Lector, knackered ol' cunt and one still commiserating the death of Sir Ollie Reed in similar fashion) so expertly diagnosed, since the demise of that other celebrated boozeatheon Donington, the annual Dynamo music festival has taken over definitely as Heavy Metal Christmas.

I certainly managed to iceberg the proverbial boat and of the six bands I actually dragged my sorry carcass to see, five, - Marduk, Sodom, Biohazard, Monster Magnet and S.O.D. were right crackers, whilst Metallica, headlining what must have been Heavy Metal Boxing Day, were definitely a roast prize-winning turkey. Hearsay that they were paid a $250,000 to perform aside, not only did they play a relatively snoozy set, but they also had a dozen tourbuses, including ours, relocated from behind stage to what seemed like the border of Belgium, just so that their fleet of hairdressing salons could be tailored in (for legal persuasions, that may be an exaggeration).

Attempting to return to our travel-coffins after our post-show piss-ups), myself and new drummer Dave tried a shortcut by clinging to the rigging of a passing P.A. truck, only to bail out 30-odd metres up the road when the bloodey thing sped to a breathtaking ten maybe 15 miles per hour. Imagine our embarassment on picking ourselves up off the asphalt only to find ourselves at the feet of a few fans who'd obviously used their initiative to stand by a festival bus stop! Such blatant twattery onour behalf was fueled further by making an introduction.

"Hello (adopting novelty English gentry voice), we're from (hic) Cradle Of Filth don't you know?"

"Yes (responding in a relatively normal English accent) we (hic) guessed." Ironically though, Metallica still had to endure the ten-ton heap of twiggy compost that had been thoughtfully dropped in the bus park, deliciously fragrant on that first day's hot summer air when the only thing between it and our tour bus was another tour bus and our namesake Cradle Of Filth cast our personal hygiene into another light, especially when friends and staff had to brave the flies to visit. In all truth, the whole site had a faint pongy whiff to her, nestled as she was between countryside, golf course and sileage dump. And Every now and then, when another punter walkway needed some more muddy stuff underfoot just in case it should rain (which thankfully it didn't), a JCB digger would come, eat a bit, then disappear whilst a fresh load was delivered by truck. Bizarre. Pervaded by shit the breeze may have been. Pervaded with shit the actual weekend wasn't. Of the many incidents I amazingly can still remember, there were several incidents worth mentioning. Firstly, standing a tad too close while singing to flame cannon as they lit up frontstage and then pretending not to lose the contents of my poo-tract in the process (my eyebrows would have been a bonus); drinking with the tallest man in Holland and miraculously convincing a few drunker people that he was my son (despite his age and let alone his height); watching Manowar prepare to go onstage after us riding four Harley Davidsons (whilst we gleaned clearance to use two golf carts for the job, right up until they obviously got wind of your comical little scheme - which was a pity, imagining the metal warriorness of it all, spiky guitars held aloft to a thundergods whilst we pootled in on electric two-seaters!); the undertaking of a brief photoshoot in the driving seat of a new VW Bug Dutch police car with pockets crammed with class A weed; S.O.D.'s faintly xenophobic 'Speak English Or Die' being played to a vast crowd, 99 per cent non-compliant; falling into a ditch, pissed midafternoon on the Sunday, attempting to cross it to get to the loos; and finally, though the mental list goes on... seeing a coachful of children who'd alighted from the ferry gantry directly before us, being frisked while our busload of dirty metal hybrids, no doubt returning from Holland laden with goodies was spared ever a second glance. As hinted at earlier, the first faint strains of chaos calling, Lez's alter ego Rudas Priest made an unsurprising appearance Heavy Metal Xmas Eve. Stumbling round the backstage bars with Anathema keyboardist Martin, declaring to all and sundry that he and his mate alone harnessed the true power of rock (organs being the new guitars in metal - his slurs, not mine) whilst the next couple of nights, Heavy Metal presents obviously opened and forgotten, bore witness to a self-declaration of benderness, an attack on a fishy wheelie bin with Martin inside it and 'incidents' involving wrestling innocent by-standers to the ground including several bemused girls. Thankfully now back in England, Lez has man-handled the sodden priest back into his box where he sits, rocking back and forth, awaiting Cradle Of Filth's next European campaign, which would presumably be Heavy Metal's New Year's or Easter... Until next we mate, Eighties disco dancing on a Sealink dancefloor,

Your fiend,
Dani