Knotfest 2023 in Melbourne was my first endeavour back into the festival scene for a very, very, very long time and marked the start of a now annual tradition of 'catching a gig' with one of my oldest friends, AJ.
Although we were both 'Mid-40 Metal Dads' mixing it with the young'uns, we found it to be one of the most chilled / respectful crowds that we'd ever experienced at a festival, period. Putting aside the ridiculous wait time at the merch lines (old men gotta grump about something after all), it was well run, well catered and had the right amount of musical variation to suit most tastes... as long as those tastes all leaned toward the 'heavy' side of things!
I'm not going to purport that I'd been following Spirtbox since their beginnings - cos I honestly didn't have a clue who they were before that day: fatherdom had after all involved a lot more 'Giggle and Hoot' and 'Bluey' than it had Metalcore! But that's the point of engaging with live music right? To experience something new, and to work out whether it floats your boat or not?
Time to go sailing me thinks...
from Louder than Life 2024
from the album