Let’s kick off the festival season in style! Rebirth Festival is back with the 9th edition. It took place on 8th and 9th of April in a small town called Haaren. Previous editions were defined by an amazing vibe, a great sound, an awesome line up and a small ticket price. We’ve been to Rebirth Festival 2017 and checked if they could keep up with the quality they were delivering throughout the past years! With Rebirth being the first bigger outdoor festival this year, the 2017 summer festival season is officially opened! Spoiler: This was awesome!
But first I need to mention our great B&B offer here. Thanks to Heerlyck Oisterwijk for your services and the great treatment. The B&B is located in the centre of Oisterwijk, a main street with shops, many café bars and restaurants is just around the corner. The B&B rooms offer lots of space, are very modern, freshly renovated and make you feel very comfortable. Two huge rooms will make you feel like home, the huge, waterfall similar shower let you relax after the event and calm you down. Additionally, the very kind guest family treats you with a breakfast you can just dream of. If that’s not enough, you get all this for just 140,- EUR for 4 people, 1 night! We had a great stay and highly recommend this B&B! Intents Festival is about to take place soon, in case you still need an accommodation check Heerlyck Oisterwijk. It’s Hardstyle Mag approved!
Rebirth Festival – The Unexpected World offered a grand line up and more stages than ever before: Rebirth, the mainstage, Rebellion, in case you love the raw sounds, Relish, for those who like it the freestyle way, Reactivate, with just the best classic sets and Reborn, the talent stage.
Line up-wise every visitor should have had something he loved. With a great variety of different music styles and artists Rebirth Festival kicked off the festival season how we like it! Huge names like War Force, Minus Militia, Warface, Radical Redemption, Noisecontrollers, Da Tweekaz, Ran-D, Phuture Noize and B-Front were representing their music.
With Several live acts like Ran-D Live, War Force, Minus Militia, Pat B live, Theracords: The Opposition Live, DNR Live, 2 Sidez Live and many more the organizer spiced up the line up. Furthermore, a few special showcases like B-Fronts album showcase or E-Force live, the Gearbox Overdrive set or the Roughstate closing on Sunday made the line up complete.
Facilities
The moment you entered the world of Rebirth made you feel like you step into a different world for two days. This feeling was stronger than ever before. They really tried to pull visitors into the theme, into the festival and offer two days of an environment, where you can just let go and set your mind free. With an expanded festival ground Rebirth Festival had more space to increase the size of the tents, but also to have more space for visitors and all the facilities.
When talking about facilities, we can surely say we didn’t miss anything. Besides the obligatory chill areas, lockers, EHBO, the merchandise booths and the food corner, Rebirth even offered a funfair for the first time and some sort of Bavaria centre, with wooden tables and seats. As standard as this sounds, we think due to its increased size it felt more comfortable. It also resulted in less crowded places.
Show, Stages and Decoration
The stages of rebirth festival were looking good. We think especially the main stage was one of a kind and compared to the past years bigger, better and more detailed than ever before. Step into the church of hardstyle. That’s how it felt when entering the main tent. What we really liked is the fact of the LED panels surrounding the crowd. Therefore, the stage looked even bigger and more monstrous! It felt like as a visitor you are part of the stage, part of what’s happening in the front.
The DJ podium was placed in front of three huge arcs, with LED screens as the “window”. Packed with lights, lasers, fire at the front row and on some pillars, C02 and confetti made the main tent show-wise to the best what we’ve seen in Rebirth’s saga! The animation on the screens are worth to point out, as they were very detailed and felt very smooth, supported every act differently and created a great atmosphere. Awesome job!
Besides that, the sound was again very, very good. It was powerful, but still very clear and not distorted. This in the Rebirth area, but also in the Rebellion area. The other stages offered a good sound. However, we feel like the bass could have been a little less in the Reactivate area.
This year the raw Hardstyle tent was as big as the main stage tent! However, we missed the lasers in that area. All other areas were nice and did their job. If you check the ticket price and what you actually get, not only show-wise, we think the value is very high and makes Rebirth Festival worth to attend!
Day 1 – The Sets
Being greeted by weather that was sunny, summary and warm we found ourselves in the best party mood possible. This was the way to start off the season! Arriving fashionable late during Bass Modulators set, we checked out the main stage. It was a good warm up set, although Rebirth was already on since 3h. With the right mix of common euphoric tracks and some classics, Bass Modulators welcomed people to Rebirth Festival.
Warming up to Bass Modulators, we did our first dances in to crowd and enjoyed the euphoric vibes by the Scantraxx duo. After greeting some friends in the crowd, we decided to get Tokens and step it up a gear. We went to the Rebellion stage, trying to catch the last bit of Phuture Noize’s set, who’s album I finally wanted to hear live – and oh boy I wasn’t disappointed. The energy delivered was unique and reminded me why I love out-of-the box artists like him so much.
After this fist-pumping exercise we felt the need for happier music again. It was time for our favourite Norwegians, Da Tweekaz. The incredibly happy vibes made this set to one of our favourite sets of the day. Not to Tweeka-classics such as their „Heroes“ remix, they also played some Happy/UK Hardcore in their set, which added additional energy. Experimentation in euphoric Hardstyle? More of this please! We also heard their latest Disney remix passing by: Moana and of course their latest track The Calling!
Wanting to see JNXD, the D-Block & S-Te-Fan Oldschool set AND Noisecontrollers, things got a bit hectic for us the following hour. We decided to go for JNXD first, as we didn’t check the Scantraxx stage yet. The young man showed the crowd what a future headliner was made of and we found ourselves staying longer than expected. The sound on the small stage was perfect, the set and energy was awesome and running into more friends didn’t make leaving for Noisecontrollers easier.
Running into a different group of friends at Noisecontrollers, our plan to see D-Block & S-Te-Fan was now postponed as well. Beers and alcohol levels were raised and dances done. We then finally headed for the last 30 minutes of the set of D-Block & S-Te-Fan’s classic set and were absolutely not disappointed. „Shivers“, „The Sound Of The Thunder“, an absolutely packed tent and a crowd that knew every track. What an energy!
After getting more tokens we decided it was time for a snack. The catering of the festival was appropriate for its size, but nothing I haven’t seen before. Our next stop: Energyzed’s last set so far & Mark With A K! The crazy freestyle maniac took over the Relish stage and made the crowd go nuts! Starting with Fear of The Dark and Luminite’s Macarena edit, Mark With A K released some true power! Quite hard actually. By dropping his well-known freestyle tracks, in a very fast mix, the energy and vibe during the set was amazing. That’s how you spin a perfect set.
At the same time Devin Wild raised the spirits again and the small tent was now packed. Dancing tune after tune and singing along to his new track „Breakthrough“, we felt the alcohol slowly creep up on us. Time for some rougher beats by Jack of Sound, Crypsis Live and finally our boy: Warface!
Jack of Sound was about to finish his set. We heard his latest collab with N-Vitral and another Schranz similar track. Holy shit, we loved it! This rather scratchy and dirty basslines are amazing and create the perfect drive and energy. Crypsis live was great as well. A flawless mix, spiced up with some edits and a raising BPM, his phat kicks were shattering through the tent.
Next up Warface. We can just say: This was one of his best sets ever! Starting with E-Force’s FTP remix he stated clear where his set was going. With each track the BPM did rise, as well as getting rougher and rougher. After a preview of his new solo track and his new collab with Sub Zero Project he dropped Catalyst, followed by Mutilate & Destroy and Baddest! This was absolutely CRAZY! Furthermore, he mixed very fast, almost similar to his live sets! Ending the set with Show Me Your Warface 2.0 and Watch Your Back he truly unleashed war upon the crowd. Best set of the whole weekend!
Left front at Atmozfears vs. Sub Zero Project! The combination was perfect and the boys did nothing less but cause a small earthquake at the main stage. Energetic, melodic, rough. But it wouldn’t prepare me for what was up next: War Force. This was hands-down the best set of the day for me. The thirty minutes the two rawstyle heavyweights were playing went by way too fast. The crowd was raging, dancing, singing, cheering and I was surprised the tent was still standing after the set.
Warface and E-Force as War Force was definitely a highlight at Rebirth Festival! The tent was packed, the people were ready and War Force absolutely wrecked the place! Playing at 155 till 160 BPM in the beginning tracks like Torture, Reloaded and Triumph as well as Devastation were pumping through the speakers. After 20 minutes, they went faster and switched to hardcore or at least hardstyle pitched to hardcore! Just insane! If you never attend a War Force set, put this on your “must see” list!
For Frequencerz this meant playing a bit rougher than usual, which left us somewhat unimpressed The set sounded a tad awkward at some points and just after about 20 minutes into the set we felt like things were back to normal again. Although they dropped Delete’s Formula VIP edit it couldn’t keep up with War Force’s drive and energy. The rest of the set was great but being kind of weirded out by its beginning, we had expected more. It was more of a time table issue rather than their fault in my opinion, as it made no sense to us why the medium-rare Frequencerz played after, and not before War Force.
After their phenomenal album, we were admittedly hyped for Minus Militia. Seeing the four guys tear apart what was left of Day 1 of Rebirth was our last highlight of the day. Could it get any better? Yes, by hearing our favourite track from the album, „Neighborhood Crime“ – We gathered our last energy for the day and enjoyed the show. Discussing the day & freezing our butts off during the ridiculously long walk to the parking lot, everyone in the crew agreed that this had been a perfect season kick-off! What a day!
This was Rebirth Festival’s Day 1! It was an amazing day and definitely fulfilled all our expectations. Rebirth Festival took itself to a next level with an incredible line up, an amazing show and a quality festival!