Wolf, Michael Schenker’s Temple Of Rock and W.A.S.P. complete the line-up for the Alcatraz Metal Festival. Those 3 bands all will be playing on Saturday 8 August in Kortrijk.
Saturday 8 August
The Swedish heavy metal band Wolf kicks off the festival.
Armored Saint, another heavy metal band, plays next. The Los Angeles based band debuted in 1984. John Bush [Anthrax) is the vocalist.
After that, Death Angel, another Californian band will mount the stage. The trash metal quintet from San Francisco, the Bay Area scene will perform at Alcatraz for the 3rd time.
Then it’s time for the gothic metal institute Moonspell. They visit Alcatraz for the 2nd time. The Portuguese band released Extinct, an excellent album, earlier this year. The road to extinction tour passed in Vorselaar, where the crowd could see an intense and impressive live show. Their debut Wolfheart is 20 years old now and became a classic.
Queensrÿche, the American progressive hard rock band, will play next. Their monumental album Operation Mindcrime (’88) is number 7 in Martin Popoff’s book ‘The top 500 heavy metal albums of all time’. On AMF Queensrÿche might play some songs from their new album Building The Empire.
Michael Schenker’s Temple Of Rock is the following band. Martin Schenker, ex-Scorpions and ex-UFO, is considered to be one of the most influential guitarists. He’s a top class guitar player such as Page, Blackmore, Malmsteen and Van Halen.
Overkill, the New Jersey based trash metal pioneers will also attend the festival.
Blackie Lawless returns with the shock rockers W.A.S.P. They present their new album.
Then it’s time for Trivium. The trash metal band from Florida, that had the ambition to become the new Metallica, played a solid set at the previous edition of Graspop.
The headliner on Saturday is Nightwish, the Finnish female fronted symphonic metal band. People worried when Tarja Turunen left the band in 2004. The band replaced her by Anette Olzon and remained succesfull. Nowadays the Dutch Floor Jansen (ex-After Forever) is the band’s front woman.
Sunday 9 August
The Danish hard rock band D.A.D. kick off the 2nd festival day. In their homeland Disneyland After Dark are even more popular than Volbeat.
Powerwolf, the German power metal combo plays next.
Death (DTA) is the following band. Death guitarist Chuck Schindler pioneered the death metal genre with his brutal music and grunts. He passed away in 2001. Two years ago the remaining members formed Death To All as a tribute to the band.
After that it’s time for Annihilator, the Canadian melodic trash metal band from Jeff Waters. The band is known for classic albums such as Alice In Hell (’89) and Set The World On Fire (’93) At Graspop the band proved to be a live sensation.
Carcass, the death metal band from Liverpool that reformed in 2007, plays next.
They are followed up by Behemoth. They play occult blackened death. In 2014 the band from Poland released the critical acclaimed album The Satanists. At Graspop they even succeeded convincing people that aren’t fond of black/death metal.
Then it’s time for another German band, Accept. Udo Dirkschneider, who is also famous for his solo career as U.D.O. is a member of this heavy metal band.
Venom, the black metal pioneers from Newcastle, are next. Cronos (bass & vocals) is the only original member that remains from the band that wrote the benchmark album Black Metal in 1982.
Top of the bill is the glorious Sabaton. This popular Swedish power metal combo doesn’t need an introduction.
