Rebirth Festival 2016 – The Wildest Adventure
April finally arrived but if you think that’s when our goosebumbs started awaiting the Outdoor Festival season you’re wrong. We’ve been looking forward to the kick-off of the Outdoor season for months. Rebirth Festival, located in Haaren, a small town on the Dutch province North-Brabant, was the place where it was all going to begin for us. The trailer, the anthem by Frontliner and the theme, it helped us getting really excited. So, on the 9th April it was time to go on ‘The Wildest Adventure’. Check out our experience of Rebirth Festival Day 1 below!
Rebirth Festival is one of those Festivals that keeps taking things to the next level compared to what it was like the year before. The terrain proved to be clearly a lot bigger than last year & secondly the theme ‘’The Wildest Adventure’’ was nicely applied to the design of the stages as well as in the environment. The organization actually organized a treasure hunt with which visitors were able to win tokens to be used for food & drinks. Speaking of visitors; over 10.000 people had travelled from all over the world: Australia, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Poland, France & Germany.
Rebirth Festival is a worthy kick-off of the Festival Season, for which Freestyle, Classics, Hardstyle & Raw Hardstyle are each represented by an own area, a very big tent. We decided to start our day with the sounds of youngster The Shade, who had the honor to open the Rebellion stage, has performed at Intents Festival last year & this year will be playing at Defqon.1. It was only the second time we’ve seen him live but his set sounded quite promising.
We had to hurry not to miss the first tune but of course we headed to the Rebirth Mainstage to check out the talented Cyber! His melodies are unable to resist & quickly he had the whole crowd singing & jumping. With a generous amount of reverse bass & his popular tracks like ‘I Love You’ and his remix for Coone’s ‘Universal Language’ we had officially started with our adventure at Rebirth Festival.
Knowing that Audiotricz were up next we decided to wait and see what the intro of this years edition looked like & if the duo could impress us. Audiotricz are a duo that’s always smiling while on stage which is really infectious, besides that they played their Freaqshow anthem and the awesome Runaway bootleg from Focuz.
Eager to see all the stages we walked slowly to the Freestyle tent, slowly because the weather was absolutely beautiful. The Rebirth Festival sunglasses came in handy there. The Freestyle area aka ‘Relish’ was getting crowded already which definitely had something to do with Pat B on the decks! Who says Pat B, says ‘Reverze Flashback’ and that was exactly the sounds he started his set with which caused the crowd to go nuts. We must say though that the sound at this area was too loud, even with earplugs the bass was banging very hard, which was a pity because it didn’t fully bring out the music like it should have.
Reactivate was the name of the Hardstyle Classics stage & that was definitely an area we didn’t want to miss. It was so full we believe it would be a good idea for the organization to use a bigger tent next year. The trend that people feel nostalgic was clearly visible, that actually also applied to artists because Da Tweekaz & Pat B were also dancing in the crowd. We watched the whole set of DBSTF at this area and absolutely loved it. Hearing ‘Music Made Addict’ and ‘After MF’ gives us an instant smile & goose-bumbs every single time!
Da Tweekaz LIVE was one of our highlights of the day! On the Rebirth Mainstage the Norwegian duo absolutely smashed it! Mashing up loads of Tweekay15/16 tracks and creating a fun atmosphere by throwing rubber ducks in the crowd the guys left a lasting impression. Believe us when we say you should keep a close eye on #Tweekay16!
Yes, DBSTF actually performed twice on the same day & proved on the mainstage once again that they still love playing Hardstyle. ‘Sound of The Thunder’ and ‘Worlds Collide’ (Rebirth anthem 2014) were obviously received extremely well by the crowd.
The melodyman aka Frontliner who had made the anthem ‘The Wildest Adventure’ had an amazing intro & created a great feeling of unity within the crowd. Frontliner treated on a very characteristic set with loads of TSOF tracks.
Meanwhile we decided to check out the Rebellion area one more time and it was completely packed! It was possible to see Adaro throwing down massive kicks, exactly what the crowd wanted!
Lastly we went back to the Mainstage in order to see NSCLT playing and they did well. Amongst others ‘Fly with me’ and their Outlands anthem were included in their set.
Unfortunately we were unable to catch some of the later sets but we’re sure they were able to close it with a blast!
Conclusion
Rebirth Festival is exactly what we were looking for to start our Festival Season. The various area’s cater different target-groups within the harder styles. The design of the mainstage was awesome with a skull, treasure chest, compass etc. There were some points of improvement though which we already mentioned. If you love the harder styles & want to start your Festival Season there’s only one option: RE-BIRTH! So see you next year!
© Festivalling.com
Reporter: Alexander Bouten