No one can beat VOLBEAT!

Finally, we got in the ring with Volbeat last night! After having endured one year of being impatient -as I’d already bought the tickets back in September ’16- we drove into the Strijp-S area on our way to the famous Philips old ‘Klokgebouw’, and all of sudden a huge festival area arised…slowly it occurred to us that Volbeat might be playing there instead of at the Klokgebouw...

While having a delicious dinner at Restaurant Radio Royaal (located behind the stage), Amorphis blasted through the walls. And as we walked into the festival area, Flogging Molly’s Irish carnival music was already getting the party started, thanking Holland for believing in them from the start (as their first show ever took place in this country). And great to see that the youngsters dig them too!

After another round of beer, we paved our way through the crowd close enough to the ‘boxing ring’. The beautifully orchestrated show started off with one of my favorite songs ‘The Devil’s Bleeding Crown’, the opening song of their latest album ‘Seal the Deal.’ After this theatrical opening, Volbeat’s full blown guitar riffs, awesome drum bass sounds and THE voice of lead singer Michael Poulsen filled the whole Strijp-S area and beyond (according to quite a few tweets of heavily annoyed people haha). 

Highly influenced by Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley, his voice does resemble. But combined with the hard rock/ heavy metal sounds Michael's voice is still unique in its own way. After hearing him sing again last night, his voice has ended up in my top 3 of best rock voices ever (alongside Eddie Vedder and Chris Cornell, closely followed by Axl Rose and Robert Plant…). 

I was torn between staying in the moment and wanting to capture every second of this amazing show packed with fireworks, awesome footage, smoking machines, fire and ‘used toilet paper,’ as Michael joked around:

I couldn’t resist getting some footage of their new song teasing the crowd for their upcoming new album, if I remember correctly it’s called ‘Justify’ and of course 'Lola Montez' and 'For Evigt' had to be captured as well:

I still don’t get that I wasn’t aware of their existence until my first encounter last year at Graspop. They blew me away, so I had to see them again! And will do so for my remaining rock years.

We’ll definitely grow old together!

Oh and last but not least…Volbeat’s guitarist Rob Caggiono reposted my Instagram picture, I couldn’t be more honoured😊: