The Soundwave Festival hit Melbourne on Friday, and despite being on a school day, outside of school holidays, they managed a fairly decent crowd.
The festival featured the cream of the punk rock crop, spanning from arty acts like The Matches, to the brutality of Killswitch Engage and Divine Heresy, to the mellow acts like Alexisonfire guitarist City and Colour and Sparta front man Jim Ward.The youthful crowd lapped up the bands, who had them in the palm of their hands. Even the goth-ish Mindless Self Indulgence owned the crowd as singer Jimmy Urine mocked the crowd's attempts at being "goth" shouting "You can't be goth if you wear sandals!".
To the kids in the audience's credit, even when The Offspring opened with their 1992 track 'Bad Habit', they instantly recognised it, even if only for the infamous "stupid dumbsh*t goddamn motherf*cker" line.
One of the bands from the previous generation of punk rock, Infectious Grooves, sadly didn't crossover to a majority of the crowd, but those smart enough to pop in were treated to an all out display of genius musicianship and the most fun you possibly can have have watching a band. These freaks were here to party!
Brutality was assured with Divine Heresy, who picked up fans of guitarist Dino Cazares' previous band Fear Factory and floored them, or Killswitch Engage, who could be heard booming through the showgrounds in between Offspring songs.
The only downfall the festival had was the lack of local talent. The line up was almost entirely from North America and while probably a wet dream for any number of kids in attendance, it would've been good to showcase some local talent.
All in all, despite being at the horrible new showgrounds (the words "stale" and "soulless" come to mind), and despite landing on a week day thus leaving many kids unable to get there before the very end, the festival was quite a success and most importantly, it's always a pleasure to see kids listening to rock 'n' roll, no matter what sub-genre it comes from.
