Laudio, it was great to meet you this weekend. Thanks for the review and I think that it was mostly spot on and was representative of my impressions. The only disagreement was maybe IQ. I probably liked them a little more than you did, but it was my first time seeing them. In addition, I cut them some slack on the performance since it must have been extremely difficult to go on stage after suffering the mishaps with travel that they did. I know that they should be professional, but they are also human.
But Karmakanic and Agents of Mercy were just spectacular headliners. Morgan Argren is a fantastic drummer and it was a huge surprise that he was Karmakanic's drummer. "Blixt" the album by Laswell, Argren and Bjorkenheim last year made my top 10. Fantastic fusion drummer and actually fit in very well with the other musicians from Karmakanic. And what can you say about Lalle Larsson? He is one of the best prog keyboardists that there is. It is just a real treat listening to him play, and then we got him again for Agents of Mercy.
Regarding IO Earth, I cut them some slack also. All their gigs are probably in dive bars in the UK. I don't think that they were used to performing in a theater. So the guitarist jumped around a little (it is progressive ROCK
), he was very good and I enjoyed him immensely.
I had a great time and it was overall a great lineup. This was my 5th consecutive RoSfest and the crowd looked to be the biggest. The sound was perfect. I must have been in the sweet spot in Row K, center. Now it's going to take me a week just to recuperate. It was nice meeting everyone for the AM picture.
Karl