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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That Was the Week That Was…

Rain come down and give this dirty town
A drink of water a drink of wine
~ Dire Straits

 The wackiness is unrelenting, heightening in intensity. It’s been that sort of a week. Fortunately for me, Jakarta is a long way away from what’s left of the smoldering forests and peatland in Sumatra and presumably the wind is also blowing in the right direction – sending the bilious smoke across the Malacca Strait to Malaysia and Singapore instead of to Indonesia’s capital city. The magnitude of this “disaster” is staggering – there are said to have been around 10,000 fires in the last month alone across Sumatra and in Kalimantan (Indonesia’s part of Borneo). This means a lot of smoke. So much so that Greenpeace even expects the Indonesian forest fires to emit more CO2 than the total annual carbon output of the UK! WTF!

 You wouldn’t expect our friends in Malaysia and Singapore to be overly pleased by this state of affairs but Indonesia’s Vice President Jusuf Kalla believes otherwise: 

“For 11 months, they (our neighbours) enjoyed nice air from Indonesia and they never thanked us. They have suffered because of the haze for one month and they get upset.”

 But Kalla’s comments seemed to strike a cord and a website was even set up to thank Indonesia for the smoke.

 Another burning issue in Sumatra – or at least in religiously fanatic Aceh – is lesbianism:

 On September 28, 2015, the Wilayatul Hisbah, or Sharia police, arrested the two women identified as AS, age 18, and N, age 19, when the police saw the pair hugging in a public place in Banda Aceh, the provincial capital. A police official told reporters that they “suspected the women were lesbians.”

 Suspected lesbians? My god whatever next? Soap opera actresses selling themselves for sex? Well actually yes!

 However, according to reports, the smoking hot (sorry!) model and actress Anggita Sari, who had allegedly been charging around Rp25 million (just less than US$2,000) for a gig, is now a reformed character (or so she says) and is looking to get a proper job in an office (she has an IP above 3):

 Hell, who wouldn’t want to work in the office with Anggita? 

Meanwhile, it’s still not clear if a new regulation will be issued by the Jakarta government requiring nightclubs to close by midnight – a bizarre idea considering that most revelers don’t even arrive at a club before that time. Following the recent clampdown on alcohol sales this just looks like more zealous lawmaking by numb-skulled lawmakers.

 And finally, after many months, it actually rained this week in Jakarta!

Rain come down
and give this dirty town
A drink of water
a drink of wine…

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