Nordic Fest 2008

Last weekend was my 4th time at this amazing annual festival in Oslo, Norway => always a lot of awesome bands and great surroundings! But the main reason I do these festivals is because of the fellowship. This year I counted people from more than 10 different countries who came to Norway just for this weekend! ... Check it out at NordicFest.no

This year we were 20 people from Denmark. Here you can see a few of the always cheerful great danes :-) ... And a couple of Green Light District Festival t-shirts ;-)
The Thursday-Friday-Saturday concerts + Church service was held at SubScene / SubChurch in the heart of Oslo, but the accommodation, breakfast and seminars was at Holy Riders Cave deep inside this mountain outside of Oslo city!  
Pastor Bob and I did a seminar each and it was so great hanging out with PB again! He couldn't make it for Meltdown last week, so it had now been 4 month since a hug from the heavy metal pastor. ... It was an honer to be asked to do a seminar at Nordic Fest. This festival really means a lot to me, and together with Sub Church, Extol and other Oslo-bands and Nordic Mission, this festival has inspired and encouraged my metal ministry in Denmark a lot. It has been a great support having Brothers and Sisters in my neighbor country who has done it 5-10 years before us in Denmark. 

Therefore I had to share some of the amazing things which are going on in Denmark and with the Green Light District Festival and thank my foreign Family for staying true and keep fighting the good fight. All glory to God!! Besides telling stories I also talked about Brotherhood here at Nordic Fest, like I did last week at Meltdown in England.  
Below you see a picture of Slechtvalk from the Netherlands. I really like when Christian extreme metal bands are going to the extremes in stage performance as well, hehe. It kinda forces the audience to have an opinion about it. 

Meltdown Festival 2008

From November 6th-10th I went to England and Wales together with the guys from my band Solace The Day. There we played two shows, hung out with a lot of great people and attended the "hard music retreat" Meltdown. This was the 19th year of the Meltdown retreat Festival and the 3rd time I came to visit this great place! Meltdown is a weekend of fellowship, concerts, seminars and worship. A cool way and a cool place to celebrate your Christian faith!
Here's one more picture from the Solace The Day show at Meltdown. Somehow it always turns out to be a little bit crazy. But for us in a very nice way. If we don't have any bruises or scratches after playing a concert, we don't feel that we've delivered a good enough show B-)

On the picture below a little "circle-pit" is going on. We were also able to make a little "wall-of-death" at our show: The crowd divides into two and at a specific outstanding break-down in the music the two crowds run towards each other and become one. Isn't that beautiful? :)
The picture below is of the venue. Everything is inside this awesome castle. Inhere everybody eat, sleep, hang out in the café, play pool, attend the concerts, the worship and the seminars.

This year we had 3 seminars. My American friend Jim LaVerde and I did the two more Bible-oriented seminars. Jim's subject was worship; and I shared stories and scriptures about Brotherhood. We've been giving an AWESOME family with God as our loving heavenly Father and all fellow-Christians as Brothers and Sisters; how great is that!! 
Sunday night we went to meet some other cool people and play with Solace The Day at "Bar SOUTH", which was a lot of fun as well. I don't know what it is with metalheads and posing on pictures... But here we are (+ a new friend who sneaked into the picture):