ComEnts

So the Metropolis festival was really good. Pirates were great. On the Saturday we totally randomly met the Pirates out drinking in Rotterdam after one of my dutch friends said "Hey, I think I saw your brother at a bar..." and it turns out the Pirates had randomly chosen to drink in a bar under the apartment block where we were staying.

That evening we went to "De Parade" which is like a small festival in the center of the city. They close off an area of the town center and put up loads of tents for various acts to perform. We drank a lot of sangria and little beers without actually going to see any acts.



Sunday started off cold, wet and rainy but by the time we got to the festival it was really sunny. Totally unprepared for this I got sunburnt, or as my dutch friends called it "an English tan". The festival was really big, much bigger than I expected. The crowd was in the thousands not hundreds. I guess somewhere around 20,000?



There were 5 stages set up in 3 locations. The Pirates were on the Thinkers Stage which was twinned with the workers stage, so they'd change over and soundcheck one stage whilst the other was playing. Apparently backstage it was all really well run and everyone was really nice. The organisers put on cars for all the bands and provided all the amps the pirates had requested for use etc. The sound guys were very professional, all the bands sounded good. The principle of the festival was "the best bands you've never heard" so there were no big names, but plenty of interesting stuff. The only ones I'd heard of were Datarock, who I liked. I also really enjoyed The 1990s, who were also from the uk.


The Aftershow party was at Rotown, back in Rotterdam where we managed to catch up with the pirates again. All in all a really nice weekend and I can definitely recommend playing at Metropolis, or visiting it if you get the chance. We were staying with a friend, and the festival is free, so it was actually cheaper to go to Metropolis than to Reading festival for a day. Crazy.