A wild night with Aes Dana and Datura

I was told by my friend Milambre that her Black Celtic Metal band Aes Dana would perform Saturday, February 17 in Montbéliard, a rather small (27000 people) city in the east of France. They were playing with two death metal bands : Pitbulls in the nursery and Datura, an almost local group coming from Saint-Dié, in the Vosges departement.

As I have some close family in Montbéliard (my aunt and uncle are living there), I thought it would be fun to go there for the gig. I asked my two cousins Fanny and Elise if they wanted to go with me (they live in Strasbourg now, not so far away...). Deal settled... yeeeessss !!!

OK, I must pay for this on Friday afternoon : there are four hours of train from Paris to Montbéliard, and you have switch trains on the way...

Fanny pick me at my arrival, and Friday evening goes in a flash, between the hearings of some crazy noise / experimental / other LPs from Slicing Grandpa (thanks John !!), and some (damn) excellent whiskey tasting...

Then, Saturday. The gig began at half past eight, and the day flowed so fast... We went together to the gig, Fanny (yes, your suit was OK for a metal gig), Elise (what's the name of the band on your T-shirt, I forgot it one more time !!)...and me I was a guest of Aes Dana, and man, it is soo cooool to be a VIP. The first band was Datura. I must admit that I had mixed impressions at the beginning with their music, but I was wrong : they play some good death metal, and they have no problem to fully exist on stage too... Second was Aes Dana. They played some parts of La Chasse Sauvage, their first album, and a great deal of Formors. They were awesome (call me a fan, but they were really THAT good, such is the general impressions about them that night !!).

Je rêve du fracas de cette unique bataille que nous avons perdue
Et je vois
La lance et le chaudron déchiquetés par mille crocs de glace

The last band was Pitbulls in the nursery, they were good too, but not very cheerful (who said metal bands must be cheerful toward the public ?).

The end of the gig was not the end of the night. An after-party has been organized far, far away from the big (!!) city of Montbéliard (approx. 20 kms), not far from Switzerland..

This was a wild, wild metallic night !! A handful of the people there drank much much too much beer...but they were not violent. I almost never saw some violent metalheads, maybe they say let us live our own life, or fuck you all, but they have no need to be violent to exist (even if death and black metal music deals about war, death, blood and violence).

Me and Elise ended (till almost 6 in the morning) speaking, laughing, and drinking beer (OK, OK), with Aes Dana and Datura friendly folks (thanks you all, you rule !!).

This was a wild, wild metallic night !! Ending (??) with Datura's bassist (crazy that night, but also funny to death !!) trying to put himself in a drawer, or recreating this with the guitarist :

I won't tell you anything more, if you choose to watch football on T.V. instead of living metal for a while, too bad for you !!! (same for you, hardcore WOW gamers !!)

And now some pics coming from envust blog, thanks man, even if you did not like all of the gig...

Datura

Aes Dana

Pittbulls

It was a hell of fun. Folks, I wish you were there.