MEGADETH WAKE UP THE DEAD AT HAMMERSONIC INDONESIA 28th May 2017 Words and pictures: Umar Rachman Hammersonic Festival is the biggest open air Metal event in South East Asia and was again held at Ancol Ecopark, Indonesia. The format of the festival presents an entire day of Metal music performances in lavish grounds surrounded by some merchandise stalls selling t-shirts and patches plus numerous food outlets selling tasty local Indonesian food. There is also a dedication award for those who are achievers and meritorious in the world of Indonesian Metal with the Hammersonic Metal Award. More than thirty bands are performing on three stages, two main stages on the open field, the Hammer Stage and Sonic Stage, and an indoor stage named Soul Of Steel: Krisna Sadrach Stage which is a form of appreciation to the late Krisna Sadrach, one of the founders of Hammersonic Indonesian Festival and Metal legend with his band Suckerhead. Beside some the best Indonesian Metal bands like Suckerhead, Siksa Kubur, Valerian, some bands from Asia-Pacific region are here too such as Lord from Australia, Flesh Juicer from Taiwan, Massacre Conspiracy from Malaysia, Truth Be Known from Singapore and many others. The main bands that appear on the Hammer stage and Sonic stage like Revenge The Fate, Burgerkill, The Faceless, Krisiun, Entombed AD, Earth Crisis, Whitechapel, The Black Dahlia Murder, Abbath and Tarja and the most awaited in this year's event, headliner Megadeth. From the morning the area around the venue has been crowded with masses of black t-shirts, some of them coming early to exchange coupons that have been purchased to get their hands on the physical ticket. The event began at an awakening time of 9.30am and intermittently bands performed at Krisna Sadrach stage. The crowd gets more brutal and violent in the afternoon, not too tired to make numerous circle pits, moshing, slamdancing, crowd surfing and there's also a giant wall of death. One of the bands that received a warm respond from the crowd was Entombed AD. This fragmented Entombed was able to tame the wild Hammersonic crowd when they performed older songs such as Stranger Aeons, Eyemaster, Living Dead and Left Hand Path. With a break for the Maghrib Prayer for Muslims, Earth Crisis immediately hit the Hammer stage and made the crowd go crazy. The ferocity of Whitechapel kept the madness going. Then it was The Black Dhalia Murder's turn to destroy the crowd at Hammer Stage with their very dangerous and consuming setlist. Abbath, driven by the former Immortal vocalist, suffered sound trouble in the first two songs as a whole they performed a total and extraordinary set with an additional comedy gimick by the vocalist. After Abbath got off the stage, the Hammer stage was filled by the most beautiful main performer that night, Tarja. Tarja was excellent and performed to the maximum of her abilities with the high range quality of her extraordinary vocals. Headliners Megadeth kicked off with Hangar 18 followed by a fierce Wake Up Dead and In My Darkest Hour. Dave Mustaine didn’t say much on the stage of Hammersonic, and even reprimanded the seemingly lacklustre crowd. Yes, the night crowd was exhausted after a day in the soaring heat being battered by a brain damaging day of dangerous Metal. Although the crowd is still powered by making a circle pit and many energetic fans crowd surfing. Megadeth bring seventeen songs with a cool sound that includes an old school list of lists such as 'Tornado Of Souls', 'Symphony Of Destruction' and new song, the title track from the 'Dystopia' album. Megadeth's performance at Hammersonic was their third overall appearance in Indonesia after 2001 in Medan and 2007 in Senayan, Jakarta, each time with different line-ups, this time, besides of course the boss Dave Mustaine, we have David Ellefson, Kiko Loureiro and Dirk Verbeuren. We can say that Hammersonic 2017 was the best yet due to a significant increase from all aspects of the organisation, such as mapping out the field , merchandise area and food court that makes people walk orderly to follow the paths, public toilet facilities that do not cause long queues and also the rundown of the events that ran on time. And thankfully no rain. Hopefully Hammersonic will always be present for years to come in the city of Jakarta, Indonesia and become Metal Day or in Bahasa, "Hari Raya Metal" for the Metal heads of Indonesia.