It took us about 90 minutes on the train to Eindhoven, about 40 gabbers got on at Utrecht and soon they were chatting to us, giving us mad respect for coming over from England and generally having a banter. Funny as f**k, they started singing Rule Britannia and were openly boshing pills and smoking weed. Most bizarre of all was that quite a few of the normal passengers seemed to find this amusing, imagine that over here! I tell ye what tho - loads of them are HUGE. Mozz looked like a dwarf compared to them... Once we got there it was a quick 2 minute bop across to the venue, and into the real downside of the night, which was the queue. It was really badly organised, and basically turned into a scrum. We queued for nearly 3 hours, about an hour of which was spent watching and listening to the Nazis who occupied the steps off to the right. Weird...I found it hard to even be shocked, it was just so bizarre seeing such an extreme faction openly promoting white power. However it does seem to be a very small group, as the rest of the queue didn't get involved in the chants. Back to the queuing situation, apparently this is pretty standard for Dutch events, which I find crazy considering how many people go to these things. Anyway...finally we got to the doors, a quick search (where they took my camera, another thing standard for Dutch events, and I was gutted about it and we went in. Quite simply: FUCKING HELL. The only thing that could possibly come close is Rez, and even that would be an insult to MoH. The venue was massive, and everywhere you looked there were people bouncing up and down. The stage had a 1930s gangster theme, with old cars and a garage, and security dressed up like gangsters. There were around 12 video screens in total, sometimes showing footage of Scarface mixed with visuals, and other times showing the dj at work. Right in the centre of the venue there were two massive dance platforms, one to the left and one to the right, and there were around 4 huge lighting gantrys hanging down from the roof. Either side of the arena there was a bar running all the way down, and at the back there was a merchandise stand which puts the ones at Slammin and the like to shame - this was almost a full blown shop! There was a massive balcony all the way round the dancefloor. To the left this consisted of another bar and rows of benches for chilling out on, again highlighting how poor the chill-out facilities of British raves are. It wasn't always possible to get a seat, but this is always going to be the case. The difference this time was you didn't have to plonk yourself down at 10pm and stay there for the rest of the night in order to get a comfortable place to chill. To the right the balcony had 3 cloakrooms, another bar and a hot food stall selling hot dogs, burgers, and hot Dutch food, which I didn't ask for in order to save hassle :) The sound system - My god, it makes my brain hurt just thinking about it. I've never heard a sound system this loud and clear. No distortion, no fuzziness - and thinking about it, when we came out of the rave, no ringing in my ears. That's a first! You could make out every detail of the tune, and there were no problems at all throughout the night. God knows how big it was, but believe me, it more than did the job. Musically there was quite a bit of variation. Newstyle seems to be heading down a harder industrial route, although the screechy/trancy sound was still on show in places. When we came in Nosferatu (from Enzyme Records) was playing, and although it wasn't quite my preferred style it was just incredible hearing it played on that system. I was determined to put preconceptions aside for this night anyway, and just enjoy it for what it was! Although I still struggled to enjoy DJ Paul & Panic's set :) Just the typical screechy sound I'm bored to death of. After that it was Noize Suppressor live, which was basically lots of bassdrum fuckery and scratching over the top. Nothing outstanding but it was relentless which made up for it! The main thing that stood out when they were on was the start - up until then there were no lasers, which came as a surprise. But when the first bassdrum kicked in, suddenly four came on, two either side of the main stage, one from the back of the arena and one from the front of the dj booth. Arcing their way across the venue, reflecting off the glitterballs hanging from the light gantrys which were scattered throughout...it was mad to see, again blowing the socks off any laser show I've seen over here in a long time. Next up was Outblast, who I was looking forward to and who didn't disappoint with a savage newstyle set - plenty of Third Movement and Enzyme on show as well as some faster tunes - and probably the set of the night, followed by Placid K who really surprised me - I've never rated his tunes and was expecting some cheesy newstyle, but this was a superb set, bassdrums flying everywhere and really intense sounds. This was carried on by DJ Vince & JDA, who probably played the most varied set of the night - they kicked off with doomcore classics like Poltergeist and Atmos-Fear, before moving into more of the darker newstyle. They played a few screechy tunes but after that went into some faster stuff and finished off with the superb At War (sex sex sex is a war war war when a guy takes a girl on the floor floor floor :) ) Masters of Ceremony came on to do a PA, kicking off with Under Control and basically going through all the Neophyte Records classics, Jeroen was screaming like mad on the microphone and the crowd were going crazy. I can't remember which tune it was (and it's an anthem as well), but during the breakdown of it there was an awe-inspiring sight. In Holland it's known for the crowd to flash their lighters for certain tunes - that's exactly what happened here, but at the same time the all the lights cut out and all you could see was thousands of lighter flames dotted around the dancefloor and the balcony. I was so gutted I didn't have my camera! Then it was time for savageness. Hellfish & Producer coming on doing some serious damage, starting off fairly slow and winding up around 230bpm :) The crowd took a while to get into it, but by the end there was plenty of them going mad. Besides, all the British crew got down the front and showed them how to do it. I'm not sure what the people round us thought, we were getting some funny looks :) Having said that quite a few of the Dutch ravers were giving us respect so it's all good! Bass-D & King Matthew rounded off, and I was a little disappointed as they just played newstyle anthems of the last 3 or 4 years, with a couple of older tunes slipped in. They did finish off with No More Regrets by Delta 9 though, and that's one hell of a tune to finish a night off on :) A few things are very different. The tokens for drinks/food system and the toilet system (you pay 2 euros, get a token, and this is stamped - you can go four times then you have to buy another) have been mentioned before, the main difference was the crowd. Over there they don't really make noise, there's no cheering during breakdowns, though for the bigger anthems they'll sing along to the melody. They know all the samples as well, so often the dj will cut the music and you'll hear 15,000 people shouting something like "Thriiiiiiillseeeekaaaa!!!" at the same time. But apart from that noise is reserved to cheering and applause at the very end of the set. It's not a bad atmosphere at all though, just very different - everyone puts their energy into the dancing. Another thing that stood out was the minimal MCing (only at certain points throughout the night), but more so the introduction for each dj. It was a pre-recorded announcement lasting about 20 seconds, giving details of who they were and what they were known for. Any announcement that says "so all the pussies can get off the dancefloor" as an introduction for Hellfish & Producer gets my vote :) I'm sure there's loads of stuff I've missed, but it'd be impossible to remember it all, as so much went on. Looking back at it I had butterflies beforehand and I haven't stopped thinking about it since we left, and I haven't had that from a rave in YEARS. There have been nights in the last year where I thought I've really enjoyed myself and compared them to Energy 97 and the like...no way, it was something like this which really deserves to be called one of the best nights of my life. Put simply, apart from the queuing, and possibly the token system (it has it's flaws, i.e. if you don't use them all then that's you spent money on nothing), this was everything a rave in Britain should be. It actually saddened me to think we'll probably never see anything like it in this country again, but with Holland in easy reach I'll definitely be back. Plans already being made for Hellraiser on the 29th May! Shouts to: Astraboy, Big Alf, The Cone, Sawyer, Oli G, Thumpa, Mozz, Gazy J, Hiney, Wiggy, Pengs, Davespice, Riddler, Lee UHF and John D-Story. Also to Lunarsunrise and her mate Kat who we took round the red light district
