TIME TO ROCK - Anticipation Blog #3 (Blog)

It’s very close now! In just less than 2 weeks I’ll once again be taking to the skies in a trip to Sweden! Yes, you’re right, I was also just there 3 weeks ago! I do that a lot. My happy place is concerts and festivals with awesome bands. Life is to be lived, and I do what I can to live my best life. The destination in question this time is a new one for me. In fact, until this year I’d never heard of Time To Rock Festival. But after seeing the lineup poster, I knew I was going right then and there!

As we wind closer to the event, Time To Rock has daily posts on their FB pages, all assisting in the building anticipation. There have been posts about certain bands playing. And I feel lots of informative posts. Things such as camping and parking updates. Festival busses and transportations. Ticket availability, including the release of single-day tickets. This festival has it all figured out too! They’ve got so many additional perks and organization things, it promises to be a great experience. Here’s just a little taste of the icing on the cake above the bands through a few of the FB posts that caught my eye.

Band Booker Contest

I almost entered this! There are so many Swedish bands that I’d love to see for the first time and a few I’d love to see again…..but probably it’s not for Canadians…..oh what the hell? I’m going for it!

The craziest competition of the year – NOT TOO LATE YET! DO YOU WANT TO BE A BAND BOOKER FOR A DAY?

Of course, you want to. Now is your chance. We will draw a winner in the competition which you can read about in a little further down here. The winner will get to decide a band that gets to play at Time To Rock on Rocknytt Stage 2024. It’s supposed to be a Swedish band and in the genre rock and obviously, it shouldn’t be “too expensive”, but we’ll have that discussion when you win. Of course, it can happen that the very band you want to play can’t or wants to for some reason, but you can attend a band booking meeting via Zoom with our band bookers, and we will help you get your will through. So good if you have different options once it becomes a sharp location. You get to pick a band!

So how do you do to compete?

Well, you take a picture of yourself and make the absolute worst, nicest, coolest face you can and post it here in this thread and tag at least one friend and share the post. In addition, you write which band you would prefer YOU to book for next year (Swedish band, don’t forget that).

The competition is open until June 28th.

So go hard now and good luck. Yes and have a wonderful midsummer!

Ps. The man in the picture loves heavy metal but dresses up as a banking official in order not to create anxiety at his workplace.

This year’s festival takes place July 7-10

Signing Schedule

I’m not a big one for signing sessions too much. I’m mostly an impatient bastard who hates to wait in lines….that stuff takes away from valuable beer-drinking time! So at places like Sweden Rock Festival, I’ll go nowhere near the signing area. But here, I get the sense that it will be much more relaxed and friendly perhaps. And I’d love to meet Tygers Of Pan Tang and Diamond Head again….so we’ll see.

June 18, 2023: Now this year’s signing schedule is up and already there are 15 bands that will sign during this year’s festival. More bands can be added. 19 days left until the festival starts!

Time To Rock Beer

This one is especially exciting for me….I’m a beer fan! I love a nice cold beer on a hot day, one of the best things in life I think. I also love to collect rock memorabilia and many bands have paired up these two things. There are a few band beers here in Canada, but Sweden has so many…..and I wanna try them all AND save the bottle to bring back home for my shelf! Well, Time To Rock Festival will also have its own festival-branded beer…COOL! And by my comments on their FB post, they’ll have enough to satisfy a Canadian beer drinker too….lol. Here’s the FB post they made:

Just in time for the festival, the brewer at Heavy Metal has finished brewing our very own, light, easy-to-drink stock. Perfect for hot festival days.

Maltese taste of light crispbread with light hints of citrus.

Suitable for dishes with heat, party drinks and home-cooked food. Yes actually for the most part! A beer with a high bucketability, someone would probably put it as Launch at the festival and will be released at Systembolaget in early August.

Time To Rock Whiskey

Time To Rock Festival has also released its own whiskey. The bottle looks cool and would make a great festival souvenir! They released the whiskey for sale at the Systembolaget (Swedish liquor stores) on June 20, 2023. There were only 255 bottles produced……..and it sold out in about 3hrs! I guess I won’t be taking a bottle home with me to Toronto, but maybe someone will be willing to share a taste with a Canadian?

CHARACTER
A platter and a whiskey with typical flavors from a bourbon barrel storage, complemented by Mackmyra‘s characteristic smoke distillate.

SHORT SUMMARY: Single cask, ex-Bourbon 200L, filled 2013-01-09. Bottled 2023-03-24 to an alcohol content of 48.0%, cask strength. The recipe is Mackmyra‘s smoky advice, from one of the last smoke distillations made at Mackmyra Bruk 2012.

SCENT: Vanilla and fruity citrus fruits are dominant in the scent. The smoke is there like a round and welcoming veil in the glass. As the whiskey is aired, tonnes of the foam and licorice root can be reinvented.

TASTE: The smoke becomes apparent in the taste and is reminiscent of a campfire. Fruity tones of pear and apple complement the sweeter citrus. Vanilla is the base course of whiskey and is always present.

AFTERTASTE: Warm aftertaste where the smoke dominates, now also with a hint of plain rice smoke. The pears linger for a long time and towards the end will also come spicy citrus.

Festival App

YOU HAVE DOWNLOADED OUR APP? IT IS ABSOLUTELY FREE OF COURSE!

If you want to have full control of when our 45 bands on three stages play, delve into this year’s lineup, find general info, get updates from the festival, bond with other fans and even be able to tailor your own festival schedule with gigs and broadcast activities, then this will be possible this year thanks to a collaboration with a new app called Bandbond!

Bandbond is a Swedish initiative and has its base in Gothenburg. In addition to their festival tools, in the app you can follow your favorite bands to get all the updates, you can find a global concert calendar and follow new album releases – if you don’t just want to talk hard rock in the app’s passionate community of course.

The app’s latest feature is a tool for hard rock festivals and their visitors. One has worked with great success on both Swedish and international festivals such as Gefle Metal Festival, Ruhrpott Metal Meeting (GER) and Takedown Festival (UK), etc. The goal is for the audience to be able to use the same app no matter what festival they attend.

Time To Rock is on the app and it looks awesome. So download Bandbond right now for pep and updates for our wonderful days in July!

Download Bandbond

World Exclusive Performance

Time To Rock Festival proudly presents a worldwide exclusive triple show: “A TOM GABRIEL WARRIOR TRILOGY”!

It is with pride and a sense of total euphoria that we at Time To Rock Festival can present a completely unique trilogy that will take place during all three festival days, 8-9-10 July 2023.

This exclusive performance with all three shows. will only be staged at one location worldwide: Time To Rock Festival in southern Sweden, so you can be sure that you will experience something very, very unique. This is your chance to witness a historic musical event.

This three-day series of concerts will showcase the legendary Tom Gabriel Warrior‘s life’s work. Tom is one of the absolute biggest pioneers in extreme metal. Throughout his illustrious career, he has been the frontman, leader and main songwriter for the genre-defining bands HELLHAMMER, CELTIC FROST and now TRIPTYKON.

THREE DAY. THREE UNIQUE SHOWS.
Saturday 8 July
HELLHAMMER performed by Tom Gabriel Warrior’s TRIUMPH OF DEATH
Sunday 9 July
TRIPTYKON performing CELTIC FROST
Monday 10 July
TRIPTYKON

Meister is Ready To Cover Time To Rock Festival for CGCM Rock Radio/Website

It all sounds literally lovely! They call themselves “cozy”. Not too sure how that’s going to work out given the size of the event, but I feel they have really strived to achieve this. The real family atmosphere feeling.

Recently I had production manager Martin Nilsson on my show for a half hour or so chat about Time To Rock. You can watch/listen to that segment of the show below. And if you’re going to Time To Rock, reach out, and let’s meet up for a pint! I love meeting new like-minded folks!

BUY: Tickets Here!

OFFICIAL WEBSITE / FACEBOOK

Cheers,