Rose Kemp will be playing live at the Summer Darkness festival this Saturday, August 8. Her show starts at 4pm, venue is Tivoli De Helling in Utrecht, The Netherlands.

The Summer Darkness festival, with bands like Front 242 and Lacuna Coil, is taking place in Utrecht, The Netherlands from August 5 – 9.

Rose Kemp is the talented daughter of Maddy Prior and Rick Kemp, from Britsih folk legends Steeleye Span. After Rose played at Glastonbury 2006 she picked up a record deal with One Little Indian (Bjork) and toured with Dave Eugene Edwards/Woven Hand troughout Europe. In 2008 her most recent album Unholy Majesty was released on One Little Indian.

Earlier this year Rose called the Roadburn festival in the Netherlands, asking if she could play at the festival. And yes, everyone who was at her show at Roadburn agreed: it was one of the highlights of the festival. In October this year Rose Kemp will be playing as special guest on Porcupine Tree’s shows in Germany and Poland.

Rose Kemp on myspace, biography and discography on last.fm, Rose Kemp on www.classicrockmagazine.com and a videoclip of Rose Kemp earlier this year at WDR Rockpalast.

Petting Zoo favorites, Tourdates Petting Zoo favorites, Rose Kemp

Dutch symphonic metal band Delain will be playing a special show at the Broerenkerk church in Zwolle in the Netherlands on Saturday October 31. The event is called ‘Delain: November Rain (The Final Edition)’.

The church will be transformed into a rock temple for this very special event. Delain will be playing songs from their debut album Lucidity as well as from their latest album April Rain. Delain has invited some special guests to this event, incl. Marco Hietala from Finnish metal band Nightwish.

This special event is promoted together with Niek van der Sprong, who is known for his yearly ‘November Rain’ concerts en the Bevrijdingsfestival in Overijssel in the Netherlands. The Delain show in October will be the last ‘November Rain’ event in a series that took place in the Broerenkerk church since 2001.

Delain’s 2nd album April Rain was released in March 2009 and was in the Dutch album charts for 10 weeks. The album entered the charts on #14. After a succesful album release show, Delain joined the Jägerband program, promoted by the Jägermeister shot drink, toured Europe and played various major festivals like the Graspop Metal Meeting in Belgium and the Waldrock festival in the Netherlands. Delain will be playing at the Zwarte Cross festival and the Lowlands festival in the Netherlands this summer and do a clubtour in the fall.

More details about the special ‘November Rain’ event will be announced soon. For more info please visit www.delain.nl of www.roadrunnerrecords.nl

Presales for this event start on Saturday July 11 and can be ordered here.

Archive, Tourdates Delain, Roadrunner Records

On Saturday the Sonisphere festival was held for the first time in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Our good friends at Metal-Experience.com took great pictures of all the bands that played, check out some cool shots below or visit their website here! Click on the pics below to see a bigger version.

Down:

Lamb Of God:

Slipknot:

Kamelot:

Metallica:

Archive, Tourdates Down, Kamelot, Lamb Of God, Slipknot

Yeah! Wardruna will be playing at the 2009 edition of the Incubate festival in Tilburg, the Netherlands. The festival will take place on various locations in the city of Tilburg from 13-20 September.

Wardruna will be performing on Saturday September 19. Wardruna’s show will be set apart from the city. The setting in which they will perform is found around a rural inn called ‘In den Bockenreyder’. More info here.

The Incubate festival is the annual celebration of independent culture. Expect a diverse view on indie culture as a whole, including music, contemporary dance, film and visual arts. They bring more than 200 cutting edge artists in an intimate context to an international audience. Black metal next to free jazz. Street art next to academic dance.

Wardruna, a special folk project of Einar ‘Kvitrafn’ Selvik (Jotunspor and ex-Gorgoroth), creates ritualistic folk music with traditional instruments such as antlers and wooden logs, inspired by old runes. Fire, water, stones, and branches are also used. The natural atmosphere that flows out of the speakers is thick, peaceful and transforms any room in no time into an old pagan ritual site complete with trees, fires and druids. With the mighty Gaahl of God Seed (also ex-Gorgoroth) on vocals.

‘In den Bockenreyder’ lends its name from a malicious horde called De Bokkenrijders. They roamed the lands in the 18th century that are now the borders of the nation states Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. Their raids were aimed at farmers and monasteries in the region. The story goes they made a pact with the devil and rode at night on bucks.

There is an eyewitness that claimed that the oaths were taken while denouncing of God and vowing obedience to the devil (symbolized by a cut-off hand holding a candle) with the middle finger and the index finger pointed upwards, as well as the thumb. One of the places these Bokkenrijders repeatedly showed up was at Landgoed de Utrecht (Utrecht Estate), a little south of a little village called Esbeek. On these 2700 acres of land the inn ‘In den Bockenreyder’ is situated. The fascination of the Bokkenrijders horde for the occult, mysticism and magic is the reason the Incubate festival will present Wardruna on that historic site. One of the aims of this concert is to get people in contact with the historic landscape through the sounds and performance of Wardruna.

Indie Recordings, Tourdates Indie Recordings, Wardruna

Don’t forget it’s Waldrock time this weekend. Thousands of metalheads will be joining the great line-up of bands on the left for a big metal party! Waldrock 2009 is their 22nd edition of the festival, the 18th one as a rock/metal festival. Again it will take place in Bergum, Friesland.

This years line-up  features great hard rock and metal bands from all over the planet, including Roadrunner Records artists Heaven & Hell, Killswitch Engage, Trivium and Delain and SPV artist Motörhead.

Petting Zoo also also recommends Voivod (YEAH!!!), Wolves In The Throne Room, Napalm Death, Carcass and Legion Of The Damned.

There are still a few tickets left, click here for more info! For a small history or overview of all the bands that played the festival you can click here.

See you at Waldrock!

Archive, SPV, Tourdates Roadrunner Records, SPV, Waldrock

This years Zwarte Cross festival in Lichtenvoorde (NL), on July 24 – 26, is gonna be another HUGE party! The Zwarte Cross festival features 12 stages, a campsite, a theater area, a stunt arena, a kids corner and a full-blown motocross circuit. The Zwarte Cross has grown into one of the most unique festivals in Europe over the years and welcomed over 100,000 visitors in 2008.

Some of the heavier bands that will be playing this year are Roadrunner Records artists Delain and Opeth, Indie Recordings artists Vreid and Enslaved and a whole bunch more cool bands – what about Comeback Kid, The Death Letters, Walls Of Jericho, Pestilence, Peter Pan Speedrock, Normaal, The Shavers, The Datsuns, Mothers Finest, The Seatsniffers, Legion Of The Damned and Nevermore! The Petting Zoo also recommends Le Chat Noir and Dollhouse! Visit the official Zwarte Cross website here or click the official banner below to go there. Feel free to use this banner wherever you want!

Petting Zoo favorites, Tourdates Indie Recordings, Petting Zoo favorites, Roadrunner Records, Zwarte Cross

Here’s another great band we like at The Petting Zoo! Playing all major European festivals this summer and a club show here and there! Don’t miss this cool band live! The Nijmegen clubshow is already sold out, so go see them at the Effenaar in Eindhoven (w/ support from Tenement Kids).

Some cool press quotes about The Gaslight Anthem:

The Gaslight Anthem packs rich, lustrous songwriting into taut punk arrangements. Its casually observed storytelling, overflowing with detail, seethes with a cool desperation reminiscent of Mr. Springsteen in the late ’70s. – The New York Times (USA)

…this New Jersey quartet manage to sound like no one but themselves. Their second album is heady and, frankly, brilliant stuff. – Classic Rock magazine (UK) “Top Albums of 2008″ feature

The ’59 Sound is the New Jersey quartet’s excellent second album, a collection of tuneful, passionately sung stories about working-class folks and young romance…It’s more like a super-charged version of early Bruce Springsteen records or a no-frills take on the Replacements.” – Rolling Stone magazine (USA)

More info (great press quotes, music etc.) on www.myspace.com/thegaslightanthem, also check out the Effenaar website for tickets! Visit the band’s website www.gaslightanthem.com!

Petting Zoo favorites, Tourdates Effenaar, Petting Zoo favorites, The Gaslight Anthem

Heya! Another cool festival in the Netherlands this summer – FortaRock in Nijmegen, check out the line-up on the poster on the right (click for bigger size)! Roadrunner artists Delain and Satyricon, SPV artist Moonspell and Indie Recording artists Keep Of Kalessin will be playing on July 11th at Nijmegen’s Brakkestein park, together with great artists such as Candlemass, Meshuggah, Kataklysm and Death Angel! The FortaRock pre-party will be held on July 10th with the Dillinger Ecape Plan and the mighty Kylesa!

FortaRock provides a combination of various well-known and newcomers in the metal scene. You can expect death, gothic, math, black & everything in between…  The festival is a result of the association of FortaRock and the Doornroosje club in Nijmegen. FortaRock is all about heavy music! Tickets to the festival are €32,50 and are available at the Doornroosje website

More about the festival @ www.fortarock.nl

Tourdates Delain, Keep Of Kalessin, Moonspell, Satyricon

The title track of the new DevilDriver album, Pray For Villains, is available for free download here (e-mail sign-up required). The new album will be released in the Benelux on July 10 as a regular CD and a special edition, which is a CD/DVD package featuring three bonus tracks, a behind-the-scenes DVD and expanded artwork.

Dez Fafara: The ‘Pray For Villains artwork is based on the title track on the record. The chorus goes, ‘They pray for villains when their heroes let them down.’ The concept of the villain saving the day — when all else fails, you turn your eyes towards the badass that gets the job done. Not the clean-cut guy — often big-talking, slowacting, lacking in spirit and conviction!

“I needed something graphic to tie into the hero/villain idea.”

“I, personally, have been collecting owls for some time and the owl in many different cultures is seen as both the hero and villain. In Ireland, an owl that enters a house must be killed at once, for if it flies away it will takes the luck of the house with it. In Australia, aborigines believe bats represent the souls of men and owls the souls of woman. Owls are therefore sacred in their culture because your sister is an owl and the owl is your sister. For the Aztecs, one of their evil gods wore a screech owl on his head and in the Celtic culture, the owl is the sign of the underworld. So, the owl was the obvious choice as I wanted to feel as connected to the artwork as I do to the music and also give DEVILDRIVER another icon to work with and even further define us a band!”

Pray For Villains was recorded at Edge of the Earth studios in Los Angeles with producer Logan Mader.

DevilDriver filmed a video for an the title track of the new album on April 9 with director Nathan Cox (Queens Of The Stone Age, Marilyn Manson, Linkin Park).

DevilDriver will be playing in Europe in June and July, including dates in the Netherlands:

17/6/2009 – Rockhal, Luxemborg,  Luxembourg  (w/Anthrax, God Forbid)
28/6/2009 – Graspop Metal Meeting, Dessel,  Belgium
30/6/2009 – ‘t Paard, Den Haag,  Netherlands  (w/Anthrax, God Forbid)
1/7/2009  – Melkweg, Amsterdam,  Netherlands  (w/Anthrax, God Forbid, August Burns Red)

Archive, New releases, Tourdates DevilDriver, Roadrunner Records

The 5th episode of The Lowdown, the video podcast featuring the latest news about this year’s Download festival, set to take place June 12-14 in the United Kingdom, can be viewed here or below. Included is an interview with Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy as well as a video message from Killswitch Engage.

The Download festival continues to take place at Donington Park, which has established itself as the original and “spiritual” home of all things rock since the first Monsters of Rock festival in 1980.

Archive, Tourdates, Videos & trailers Dream Theater, Killswitch Engage, Roadrunner Records