Introduction => 2000-08-18&19&20 Ieperfest
Laurent Chopard & Olivier Bresson (from Besançon, France) wrote in their zine Co-existence:
Arriving at the entrance it seemed like we heared a well-interpreted cover of ‘Serene’; in fact, to Laurent’s great despair, it was the last piece of a surprise reunon of the band. And to add to our frustration we also missed ‘Ariel Kill Him’ and ‘With Love’. Things started off in a bad way. In addition we were denied access to the distro-space. The bouncer in service at the entrance claimed there was a lack of space, even though we had only two miserable boxes. Once the distro was set up, we could finally enjoy the sweet metal melodies.
It wasn’t until ‘Reiziger’ we found a little consolation. But Olivier found that a little too long. Fortunately for him the English legend ‘Voorhees’ took the stage. For Olivier it was the best concert of the festival, Laurent got tired of it after 5 or 6 songs, and the mangled ‘D.R.I.’ cover didn’t make things better. ‘Ensign’ concluded the evening in a déjà-vu kind of way (not to sound mean).
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‘AmenRa’s performance here – “Mix of hard and soft mid-tempo doomy core; all star formation!” – was their first time in Ieper… That was with (ex ‘Spineless’ guys) Kristof Mondy on bass, Mathieu Vandekerckhove playing guitar & Colin Van Eeckhout singing; plus Bjorn Lebon on drums & Jan Maelfait (ex ‘Spirit Of Youth’, ‘Blindfold’) on extra bass.
‘Ariel Kill Him’ (from Gävle, Sweden) – “David ‘Leiah’ solo with guests! Acoustic emo-pop” – was indeed the band of David Lehnberg (guitar/vocals). That year the album She Wears The Stars Like Him (alternative/indie rock, emo) was out. No idea who supported him: Alec Ahlénius (drums)?, Magnus Björk (keyboards)?…
In 1996 ‘With Love’ was added to the bill last minute. (96-08-18) In 2000, the band (from the Triviso area, in Italy) had an album (entitled I Love Cul-De-Sac) out on Green recs that year. It was recorded with Paolo Riscica (guitar), Giovanni Donadini (bass; canedicoda.com), Nico Vascellari (vocals; pinchukartcentre.org), Andrea Giotto (guitar) & Nicolò Fortuni (drums). They were described as “screaming emo rock”.
‘With Love’ (courtesy of Paolo Riscica)
‘Lvmen’ (Prague, Czech Republic) were announced wit the phrase “As pompous as ‘Neurosis’, as bright as ‘Unbroken’!”… The band at that time consisted of Petr ‘Husar’ Proft (vocals/keyboards), ‘Melnick’ Robert Taschner (drums), David Mirda (guitar; R.I.P.), Tomis (guitar), Tschepitz/Čepic (bass; ex ‘Rat Race’). They had several releases on the Czech label Day After recs (ran by Miroslav Pátý) by that time 2 albums (a self-titled one and Raison D’Être).
‘Lvmen’ (source unknown)
‘Cataract’ – “Brilliant brutal metalcore/mosh presenting their new CD” – was a band from Zürich, Switzerland. In 1999 they did a couple of EPs (one of which was on Marco Walzel’s label Join The Team Player recs). In 2000 Carl Severson released the album Golem on his label Ferret recs (with vocalist ‘Mosh’ Chris(tian) Ebert, guitarists Simon Füllemann & Greg(or) Mäder, bassist Michael ‘Michi’ Henggeler and drummer Patrick ‘Ricky Lions’ Dürst). Federico ‘Fedi’ Carminitana probably sang for the band here…
‘Cataract’ (source unknown)
The German band (from the Münster area) ‘January Star’ – “Soft & delicate emo-pop! Like drinking a mineral water on a sunny day…” – had an album out on Genet recs in 2000: Home Without A Heart. Line-up: Andre Beyer (bass/vocals), Lars Röhm, Jan Flick & Henrik Neumann. They were often compared with ‘The Get Up Kids’…
‘January Star’ (source unknown)
‘Building’, a “youth-crew style” SxE HC from Antwerp, had played at the fest before (98-08-14). Supposedly this here was their goodbye show. The line-up probably was: Olivier ‘Paco’ Packolet (vocals; later ‘True Colors’), Jelle De Cremer (guitar), Werner Boes (bass, also ‘Kombat’; replacing (P)Andy Van Den Wijngaert) & original drummer Bruno had left and was replaced by Gert Jacobs (drums; later ‘Dead Stop’). They released material on SoberMind recs: In Time We’ll Grow (1998) & split-7” with ‘Up Front’ (1999). There’s also a live-tape of them playing at the GoodLife 1999 summer-fest. “Old school mosh heroes, nailed to the X!”
‘Cast In Fire’ (originally named ‘Full Assault’) – “Brutal, stomping, slow & heavy Detroit m-o-o-o-s-h”. In 2000 they had a split-7” out with (the Belgian) ‘Kombat’, and Genet recs released their Apology album. The people in the band were Jake Dufour (drums), Vincent ‘Vinny’ Dufour (guitar), Nate Stickney (guitar), Ricardo ‘Fire’ Hernandez (bass) and Len(ny) Adams (vocals; ex ‘Earthmover’).
‘Cast In Fire’ ([1] & [2] photographed by Roel Brals; [3]?)
‘Out For Blood’ – “BXL style moshcore, back on the map!” – was a hatecore band with Alain Herszaft on vocals (he ran Released Power Productions label and was the singer of ‘Mental Disturbance’ in the 80s). Apparently they didn’t make it over. There was a surprise show by ‘Serene’ (see 97-08-16). Read the remark below…
‘Reiziger’, announced here as “top quality European emo HC”, had played a few fests before this one: 97-08-15, 98-08-16.
‘Voorhees’ (“Power-violence legend, around since ages!”) hadn’t been ablo to make to the Vort’n Vis 1994. In 1999 they had their album entiled 13 released on Richard Corbridge’s label Armed With Anger recs. It was recorded with a totally different line-up than in ’94: only vocalist Ian Leck remained. The others on that were Andrew Wright (bass; ex ‘Ironside, ‘Unborn’), Dave(y) Allen (drums) and guitarists James Atkinson & Rich(ard) Armitage (ex ‘Ironside’). It was followed by a split-12” with ‘Out Cold’ in 2000 (on Ian Glasper’s Blackfish recs). The split-7” with ‘Kill Your Idols’ was recorded in August with Steve Stewart on bass (who’s mentioned in the guestbook). It was released by Dave Mandel on his label Indecision recs.
‘Ensign’ with ‘Fedi Edge’ of ‘Cataract’ (pic taken by by Patrrick Federli)
In the announcements for this fest, Bruno poses the question “Remember last year’s circle-pit with 1000 kids?!” referring to the show they played the year before (99-08-21)… ‘Ensign’ was a hardcore/punk band from New Jersey. I read somewhere that guitarist Ryan Donoghue had left the band before that tour. Read Nate’s remark below though… Nate ‘Edge’ (Nathan Gluck) switched from bass to guitar and Chris Oliver became the new bassist on the tour. Tim(othy) Shaw was the vocalist. In June 2000, the band recorded for the For What It’s Worth EP with drummer John ‘Vince Vegas’ O’Neill.
Brob
I totally had forgotten about his… How I experienced it?… Ieperfest was always THE show/experience of the year. Back then it was still the biggest underground HC festival I think, so everyone was looking forward to it. Internet was not that prominent but people were eager to meet up with international friends. I remember being impressed by ‘Knut’, ‘Children of Fall’ and ‘As Friends Rust’ [the next days]. The first 2 became real friends: I played with some of the guys of ‘Knut’s new band; I did the drawing for the cover of the ‘Children Of Fall’ CD… ‘Knut’ played that off-beat hardcore (Hydra Head recs) that sounded super-tight live. ‘C.O.F.’ was in the Swedish emo-core vein, live one big lump of passion. And ‘As Friends Rust’… a party on stage, poppy up-tempo hardcore with one of the best frontmen of that era (Damien Moyal). Sweet… Good times!
Kristof Mondy, ‘AmenRa’ bassist
Our first show ever, I believe. Not many people know this or took note of it but in the beginning (just a few shows) we had 2 bassplayers. The second was Jan Maelfait.
Colin H Van Eeckhout, ‘AmenRa’ vocalist
First time ‘AmenRa’ was indeed Colin, Mathieu, Bjorn, Kristof Mondy (with cowboy-hat, if I remember correctly) & Jan.
Lennart Bossu, later ‘AmenRa’ guitarist
One of my clearest memories was watching ‘Serene’ doing their one-off reunion gig here. Not the complete original line-up. Olle [Johansson], the drummer of ‘Serene’, got a nasty infection on his leg after doing a huge tattoo while we were on tour. I think he had to cancel Ieper because of that and go home?
Gunnar Forsman, ‘Leiah’ drummer
I didn’t play in ‘Reiziger’ anymore there…
Arne Van Petegem
Pretty sure that was the line-up with Ryan Murphy on drums (ex ‘Undertow’) and ‘Mackenzie’ [Ryan Donoghue] (the younger kid that played/recorded with ‘Ensign’ on Cast The First Stone and did most of the touring with us) on guitar, plus me & Tim obviously. I know ‘Circle’ played, love that band. Most likely it was either Mad agency [Ute Füsgen, Berlin] or Avocado booking [Marco Walzel, München] that booked our tours, I just don’t remember off the top of my head. I believe in 2000 I was playing guitar at Ieperfest and our friend Chris was filling in on bass.
Nathan/Nate ‘Edge’ Gluck a.k.a. Nathan ‘Voorhees’
This was our last show on a ‘real’ European (3 weeks), before leaving for a tour of 10 days in Japan… I remember that that show started really well, good and powerful sound…but there was a technical problem after the first song (no more electricity?) and when the problem was solved the sound was awful! Good memories anyway…
Paolo Riscica, ‘With Love’ guitarist
After our appearance in 1996 [96-08-18] I think we weren’t able to play the festival again untill 2000. Our second album (I Love Cul De Sac) had been very well received and we left that summer for what has been the longest and best tour for With Love: an entire month around Europe and Japan. We were still excited by the vivid memories of the concert in ‘96 at the Vort’n Vis: that was absolutely one of those tings we were mostly looking forward to. We actually wanted to play there so badly that we accepted Bruno’s invitation even knowing that the day before we were playing in Barcelona (1.400 km away) and that we would have to play in the early afternoon as one of the first bands. That meant we would have had to start driving immediately after the show in order to catch our flight to Tokyo in Venice 2 days later (another 1.300 km). We arrived and basically had to get on stage immediately. The show started and it was incredible. There was so much energy in the air. At least for the first song. Than the electricity failed and it took what seemed like an hour (it was probably just 5 minutes) to be fixed. It happened again during the 3rd or 4th song of our set. That was surely one of the most frustrating and horrible shows we’ve ever played. Then we took of for a 16 hours drive. I’m not even sure why I miss touring sometimes…
Nico Vascellari, ‘With Love’ vocalist
Swiss guys living it up (shot by Patrick Federli)
Pat Federli came with us if I’m not mistaken…
‘Ricky Lions’, ‘Cataract’ drummer
I just remember trying to hold ‘Ensign’s drumkit together from the frontside: the stage was so crowded and everything was almost falling apart during their last song…
‘Fedi Edge’, ‘Cataract’ vocalist
excerpts from the V.V. guestbook:
additions wellcome!…
Vort'n Vis in the 90s 