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

Taman Ismail Marzuki Jakarta Arts Center (TIM) Cikini and the yobs

When I was a kid I had a mate whose old man owned a Chinese takeaway and who had a very attractive sister. It was a decent enough joint and I spent quite a lot of time over there - but not really getting any sort of positive reaction from my mate’s sister whose tight black leggings and wonderfully long, jet-black hair kept me in a sort of adolescent trance.

But I got to eat spring rolls. Lots of ‘em.

Anyway, on one particular occasion, I’ve stayed over a lot longer than usual (the clock says 11.20pm) and a bunch of yobs are milling around outside. Yep, the pubs have just chucked out and it’s Friday night.

They then come in, all six of them: raucous and obnoxious; making all sorts of nasty racial insults.

But they are pissed and they are slow. And, unlike my mate’s father, they don’t have a baseball bat (his one is handily kept behind the counter but out of sight of the yobs).

One of the yobs pays, takes his change, and then decides he’s been overcharged (even though the most basic arithmetic is probably beyond him).

The atmosphere is charged and I can sense something is gonna happen.

But before it does my mate’s father takes the baseball bat and holds it above his head ready to swing: a “preemptive strike” years before Bush got the idea into his head.

There’s an indeterminable pause when noone says anything and then the yobs just leave. They realise it ain’t worth it.

But here in Indonesia, such displays of aggressive, antisocial behavior like this are extremely rare. Even the premen in Tanah Abang are polite. Now I’m not saying that violence never erupts in Indonesia – because when the pressure cooker does explode all hell really does break loose (May 98 etc) – just that there’s a pleasant absence of that loutish, antisocial behavior that is so prevalent in many of the cities and towns of the so-called “West”.

But while the aggression may be missing in Indonesia, the social retards are still out there – and in huge numbers I imagine – as a recent visit to Taman Ismail Marzuki (TIM) in Cikini confirmed:


Ismail Marzuki may be one of Indonesia’s greatest composers, famed for such compositions as Halo-Halo Bandung (1946), Selendang Sutera (1946), Sepasang Mata Bola (1946), and Melati di Tapal Batas (1947), but his statue, erected at the site named after him, is covered in scrawling graffiti.

Yobs? Get everywhere don't they?

Taman Ismail Marzuki Jakarta Arts Center (TIM)
73 Jalan Cikini Raya Menteng-Cikini,
Jakarta, 10330
Tel: (021) 3193 4740

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