"Weird..."

The hangovers are starting to subside, the memories are slowly filtering back in and antares got their Festival Cherry popped - Offset Fest was a total fucking blast this weekend! And, hey, things seem to be turning a corner with regards to our general luck as (pretty much) everything went to plan..

I only arrived on the Sunday due to my brother getting married the day before in Cardiff (4am Megabus after a day of red wine, great!), but from what I hear Rolo Tomassi and the dance tent (seperate entities!) were the Saturday Highlights..oh, and the vibrant colours of nature after psychadelics.
We hit the stage before the bars even opened, I'd had borderline No Sleep and everyone else was dealing with the previous nights excesses, so needless to say it wasn't the tightest or most energetic we've played but people seemed into us and we gathered a healthy crowd for Sunday Openers.
Most else of what I saw was from the Holy Roar stage..
Dead In The Woods followed us, and I was super-glad I caught them - 3 of them are back-in-the-day friends I didn't realise were in the band, and their sound was awesomely crushing, definitely one to check out.
Deal With It were next. Wasn't expecting to be too down with what they're doing now - after their demo, the recordings all sounded too Danzig for me - but Mike's a great front-man and took the piss in sterling fashion so the Glen-isms shone through with their intended shades of sarcasm (to me at least!)..also helped that they shredded-the-shit outta the set, Strife seems to be the keyword right now for 'em - no bad thing!
The bands that followed didn't really pull me in, and other sets I saw across the festival were equally unaluring, until Brontide landed back at Holy Roar - easily the best band I saw that day. Wacky young hipsters in the crowd did their best to steal attention from the band, but after the initial bursts of their ego-fuelled faux-dance maneuvers things were rightly all about the music again. Much credit to Jase Sanderson on the mixing board, as they sounded massive for a three-piece. I won't attempt a description as, like Dead In The Woods, there was much to the sound I was digging and for me a mere "Great" will suffice. Check them.
After this, our party were wanting to leave - our Danny was starting a new job at 7am the following morning, I was back to the office for 9am, Jase was getting increasingly annoyed by the overwhelming out-of-control fashion and bass, and our driver Jamie was wanting to tackle that beast called Road earlier rather than later.

Was great to see some old friends, and make some new ones, hopefully we'll get to play a few festivals next year..

As for the here-&-now, the list of things that needs sorting seems long as ever. We need to following sorting...UK tour, shirts printing, inlay idea (foil-blocking, yeah!) then CDr release for "espirit..", website overhaul, new bassist (Mr Waters, please stand up..), new recordings (Theo's currently putting the finishing touches to a second new song) and..well, all that's left is World Domination I guess. But that can wait..

- Steve