2005 EUROPEAN TOUR REVIEWS

June 18th, 2005 - 'Fields Of Rock Festival' - Evenemententerrein Goffertpark - Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Armijn Hemel:

OK, I've waken up a bit, so it's time for a more thorough review of Sabbath's set.  The set list was the same.   The "medleys" that were mentioned on the page were mostly just intros ("Symptom", "Sweet Leaf", etc.).  I thought Ozzy's voice was good.  Geezer was banging away on his bass and Tony was his cool self.  Probably Adam Wakeman was behind the stage somewhere, because he couldn't be seen anywhere.  To be honest, I quite forgot about him, until I read other reviews and was like "Oh yeah, he must have been there too, but where?".

As usual, Ozzy warmed up the crowd during the intro tape before he got on stage.  First, Bill came on stage, about two minutes before the others.  They started with "N.I.B." towards the end of the song Ozzy showed us his behind.

It was pretty warm, so no one minded that Ozzy was throwing buckets of water.  A funny thing happened when he was throwing one of the buckets.  There were cameras all around to film it for the screens on the side.  He threw one bucket right over the camera. You could see the cameraman was *not* amused (because it was the second time Ozzy hit him with water).  As Ozzy was running back to the mike, he noticed what he had done.  He turned around, shouted and "SORRY!" to the cameraman (obvious from his lips).  I thought that was kind of  sweet.  I mean, there you have the "Prince of Darkness" apologizing for throwing water on a very expensive TV camera and actually feeling bad enough to apologize for it.  Talking about the TV cameras, I don't know if they kept these recordings.

After "Dirty Women", they crashed immediately into "Symptom Of The Universe".  Oh, if anyone doubts that if Ozzy played the harmonica, I'm really sure he did, because it sounded not at all like on record.  They wouldn't have made mistakes in a sample, now would they? ;-)  (This as a reaction to other reviews on sabbathlive and black-sabbath.com) 

The heaviest songs were definitely "Black Sabbath" and "Children Of The Grave".  There was no outro tape with "Changes".  The sound level was loud.  I was actually glad I was wearing earplugs (as I usually do).  Afterwards, we were wondering if it really was 90 minutes, because it seemed a lot shorter.  I really hope we don't have to wait another 5.5 years to see them again.

Because the festival was so massive, there were several barriers put in place.  There was one right in front of the stage (as usual), then one about 10 or 15 yards in front of the PA, then there was another one.  To be allowed in the part behind the 2nd barrier, you needed a special wristband.  We were smart enough to get one during Motorhead, so during Black Sabbath we were at the 2nd barrier.  We weren't right in front
of the stage, but still close enough to make it feel intimate for us.  We saw a part of Motorhead and all of Slayer from the field and that just didn't make it feel right.

As for as the other bands...  What other bands?

Bullet for my Valentine was replaced by Autumn on the day of the festival itself.  I think they left the running order intact.

Motorhead was OK.  My concert buddy told me this was the 13th time we saw them.  They're always OK, as they were this time.  

Slayer - Ah well.  Tom Araya has a little goatee now (with gray hairs), which actually makes him look really friendly.  Kerry King also has tattoos on the back of his head now.  

Velvet Revolver - We liked the Guns 'n Roses songs they did.

Audioslave - Ah well.  

Rammstein - Lots of pyrotechnics and I mean a *LOT*.  They were supposed to play 15 minutes longer than they did and it was not clear were finished.  We expected a huge grenade like thing as the final encore, with lots of fireworks , but a tape was played instead.  Everyone was confused if it was the end and so it was more like a party popper.

That was all the bands we saw.  We decided to leave a bit later. There were about 45,000 people there, and to be honest, they weren't all there for Black Sabbath.  I got the impression that when Chris Cornell mentioned that the other bands that would
play on the main stage people were cheering louder for Black Sabbath than for Rammstein.  But there were already quite a few people in front of the stage where Black Sabbath would play, including me, so it might have been just a matter of perception...

Quite a lot of people were there for Rammstein, nice weather, drinking beer, sitting in the grass and watching a few bands play.  For us the prime thing is the music.

Merchandise was extremely expensive.  I saw a pretty normal Motorhead shirt for EUR 45 (about $50).  That equals fl 100.  Back in 1998. I bought my Motorhead shirt for fl 35.

Anyway, judge for yourself (and sorry: the sound is bad and it's on stamp format.  I just found out 1 minute ago I hadn't set it to 640x480, but to 160x120 or so. Stupid stupid stupid!):

View Armijn's photos

"After Forever" [160 x 120 AVI - 20 MB]

Band Introductions / "Sleeping Village" (intro) [128 kbps MP3 - 2 MB; from camera AVI]

I just wished I would have not made the resolution mistake.  I had a 512 MB flash card in it and a spare 128 MB flashcard, so there was plenty of space.  I knew the sound was going to be shit, because the microphone in it is major crap.  Ah well. I think a better source will pop up...  I wouldn't have succeeded into bringing a Minidisc, as I was searched pretty thorough.

Dennis (Germany)

Hello Robert!!
I just wanted to correct the review of the "Fields Of Rock" review, as "Symptom Of The Universe" (of course) came in the same order as during the rest of the last shows, directly after "Fairies Wear Boots".  No "Smartass" intention from my side, just to avoid any confusion, right?  The whole gig itself was KILLER!!  I'd seen them 'bout 2 weeks before in Dortmund and thought it was awesome, but the gig in Nijmwegen was even better.  I've seen SABBATH for the fourth time now since '99, and this was probably the finest of them all.  Too bad they're not playing "Snowblind" nowadays, but hearing (even just a short bit of) "Sleeping Village" made up for it.  Also, as you could hear, I really liked the fact that Bill got extra "exposure" from Ozzy during the obvious band introductions.  Man, Bill is the fucking best!!  Although it's bloody obvious that he's playing some "safer" versions (for a lack of better word)
nowadays, I'd rather see 'em with Bill like that than ANY other drummer - doing it exactly like in the 70's.

Alright, that's all from me now.  Lastly, I wanna say, that you do a KILLER job with your site, Rob!!  Keep up the good work and all the best to you!!

Regards,
Dennis/Germany