BMTH live in Jakarta 2024

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This time around Ravel gets it right and BMTH (Bring Me The Horizon) are headlining the Nexfest festival in Jakarta which also features Babymetal. In this format there is no seating - which makes for a much more intimate experience - although you do have to arrive really early if you want to pick a spot right up close to the stage.  We arrived about six hours before BMTH were scheduled to start their performance and bought plenty of drinks to stay hydrated in the tropical afternoon heat (mind you, some of those were Iceland vodka mix!) This was a gig I had long been looking forward to - especially after the debacle last year. Not everyone likes BMTH of course. For deathcore fans the band sold out. For metal heads the band is not purist enough. And for the wider mainstream audience, the band is too heavy. You can't please everyone of course but there are few bands in the rock world which can match the sheer emotional velocity of BMTH. To bring metal and even aspects of metalcore t...
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The Jakarta Cathedral, tempo dulu and now

It’s certainly not easy to find neo-gothic style architecture in Jakarta, but one building constructed in this style is the Jakarta Cathedral, originally built as the Catholic Church in 1828 but later upgraded to a cathedral in 1901. Here's a pic of the original church:

 And here’s a bird’s eye view of the church surrounded - rather incongruously it seems given the state of the capital today - by a hell of a lot of trees! What we would give for a few of those today!

The Jakarta Cathedral For better or worse (probably the latter), Catholicism is Indonesia’s most notable import from Portugal, a fierce trading and ideological rival of the Dutch in times long gone, and the Dutch, in their infinite wisdom, chose to ban the religion in the country from 1602 until 1799. 

But when Louis Bonaparte was appointed as the King of Holland on June 5, 1806 by his brother, the Emperor of France aka the very evil Napoleon Bonaparte, the ban was quickly lifted after agreement was reached with the Vatican in 1807. 

The Jakarta Cathedral is located close to Monas and just a short distance from the huge Istiqual Mosque whose construction was completed in 1978. 

And here's a picture of the cathedral as it looks today:

The Jakarta Cathedral

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