All about this wonderful time at Hellfest!

Hello me Hearties!!

I am so thrilled to talk to you about this amazing festival!!
Oh god I'm stil getting emotional when I think back about it... What an intense and magical moment it was to me.

I didn't expect to see soooo many people gathered for our set. We can say that our show on this MainStage 2 has been better attended than other shows on the MainStages on that day and this was a total surprise.

A lot of people knew us and knew our show and our songs! We had such an amazing interaction with this crowd which was so ready to party with us. They gifted us with the biggest circle pit of our career! As well as spontaneous rowing, mosh pits and they slammed a lot too!! Their energy despite the heat was unbelievable! This touched us a lot. We could see this great crowd having fun with us and we had the best time ever.
It had been cloudy the whole day with the temperature rising from 31 to 36 degrees celsius but the sky cleared up for our set and the audience was in full sunlight! We also made it even worse - as cruel pirates that we are ^^ - by adding extra 10m flames!! We were frying on stage. Meek and I at times had trouble catching our breath and placing our voices. Herbert couldn't jump on Melancholy Angel he said, cause he would have passed out. But we wanted to put on a real big show, introducing ourselves for the first time at this festival with a real impact, making everyone understand how metal we are and how ready we are to put on a fight and a party hahaha!

To me, it's been challenging on several levels and especially the emotional one. First of all, I have to share with you that I had quite a stressful moment right before stage time (of course ^^) : I was about to put my in-ears on when I realized one of them was missing - it had fallen on my way from the dressing room to the stage...which is quite long!! I started to picture having to perform with one ear only, cause my spare ones were also in the dressing room and I felt a bit of panic invading me. I asked for help to our drum tech to find my in-ear and we went aaaaaalll the way back to the dressing room where he found it on the floor! I plugged it back in and ran back towards the stage. I was getting way too warm already but I took it as a body warm up before hitting the stage ^^

Back on stage, we did our regular chant as a band and then the show started. I had a few minutes on the intro of Master the Hurricane to catch my breath, try to find my focus back and slow my heart beat down. And then it was my turn, my first lines were about to start. I walk this amazing stage and realize how large the audience was and it warms my heart so much. Yet, I realize there's a problem with my mix in my ears: I hear no guitar, no backing vocals, no drums. I learnt afterwards that we loaded the wrong settings in our in-ear mixer. Half way through the set, the click also disappears.... So I'm here, back in Master the Hurricane, adapting to this new tricky environment, performing this beautiful song as good as I can until this soft middle part that is always so emotional to me. And there, when I turn round after letting Meek's hand and I hear them and see them all I realize, "I'm at Hellfest with my band, on the MainStage, and it's amazing", the emotion was just too strong. Paired with the pre-show stress my throat started to shrink and my hand holding my mic started to shake in a way it never did before. My heart was ponding, my thoughts started to go wild, but I clenched my microphone and held on more firmly on that vocal line that was trying to escape and I made it through - yet not as gracefully as I know I can ^^...I got my power back, reclaimed the power of my own flame haha and got back on track to perform a very intense show, connecting with this massive wave of an audience.

It went by in a blink of an eye. And since we all entered this zone on stage, where we are in a different state of consciousness, some of us realized hours after our set, how it truly felt, how it resonated. Herbert said this show "felt as a reward" for all the hard work and dedication that we have given for all these many years. And I can agree with this. It felt as a gift. I can still feel the energy of this show in me, even days after.

But it's been a challenging day for our entire crew. Our shuttle to the festival was planned at 9:00AM, we arrived on site at 9:40 and yet we couldn't get a dressing room before 14:30 when our stage time was planned for 16:00. It's way too short for all of us to get ready in peace and prepare everything. We had to stay 5 hours in the heat, roaming in the backstage area, trying to preserve our energy until we could really start getting prepared. I started to do my make up this way but I was sweating so much it wasn't even worth it to try to put foundation on ^^. When we got the dressing room, it had no air conditioning but at least we could fully open our suitcases and change privately. This situation played a part in the tension and stress before the show that potentially caused this mistake on the in-ear monitor settings. And we didn't have our regular crew either to help us, Meek had to plug a lot things and help with mounting the ship. Yet, when I think back of all of this, I am so full of gratitude, so happy that it could happen, that we were given the chance to live this. It's a wonderful memory to me, this festival means a lot to me as a French artist and I am so happy of how it turned out.

We had direct amazing feedbacks from other artists, professionals, and media people on site. Meek and I had to rush to give interviews from 5:30 to 8:30, before we could even take a shower! And we started to feel the impact our show had on people.

From after our show up until now we do receive a lot of feedbacks, from people that we don't even know, who share their love and enthusiasm for our show! And this is truly wonderful. This show was very important to us. A great performance at such a massive festival can change the perception of our band, our "market value" and our overall visibility on this territory and online. We are so happy that it went so well, that people appreciated our performance this much.

Thank you to those of you who were there in person and wrote us about it!

These beautiful pictures were taken by Gabor Toth whom we met on tour with Illumishade!

Now I start packing as we leave tomorrow very early for the next festivals: ODYSSEA in Romania and the next day SUMMERSIDE in Switzerland!!

Thank you all,
With love,
Clementine