METAL  NEWS  2001

This years Bobfest was a big success!
As usual though we had to face a lot of resistance. Some christians even started a prayerchain against Bobfest!! They sent out e-mails to hundreds of churches in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland where they urged people to pray against Bobfest. Another bad thing that happened was that two of the mainbands this year; Extol and Veni Domine had to back out from the festival due to strange infections. Fredrik from Veni Domine got an infection in his throat so he couldn't sing and Tor-Magne from Extol all of a sudden got a strange infection in the arm so he couldn't play guitar, so they had to cancel their gig just 10 days before Bobfest! So the devil surely was nervous and scared for what God would do on Bobfest so he tried all his filthy tricks to try to destroy it. But Satan is a loser and Jesus has the power! <Matthew 28:18> So our enemy couldn't stop us, cause God that is in us is bigger than he who is in the world. <1 John 4:4, 5:4>

So we succeded to find some good replacements bands in Wisdom Call and Dime'n'Dough. On Thirsday night, almost all organizers as well as Pastor Bob, Disciple and Arlene their manager, was congregated at Daniel's house and spent some great time in prayer and worship and put the whole festival in God's mighty hands. We have also tried to make prayer our first priority the whole festival and started every day during the festival in prayer. And we have really felt that God has been with us and helped us in a wonderful way. Almost everything has gone very smooth this year. This year we also had doubled the festival team, which has helped us to be much more effective and kept us from burning out.

Friday came and people started to show up. To our great joy there were more than 50 more attendencies than last year to the conference. Another great thing was that more people outside Sweden came and joined us this year. There were people from Poland, Netherlands, England, USA, South Africa, Finland, Norway and more… Great to see that so many want to travel this far to be at Bobfest!

This year we have also get very good PR from secular media! The localradio in Linköping has interviewed Olov & Daniel (two of the organizers) as well as Disciple and has also played tunes with Extol, Hallowed, Disciple and more Bobfest bands on radio. They have also given away Hallowed cds to wellneeded listeners. The local newspaper Östgötakorrespondenten, has also written multiple big articles about Bobfest with interviews with Daniel & Olov as well as Pastor Bob. They also had a journalist at Bobfest that reviewed the festival. And the best thing is that TV was there! Yes! The youth program Vera from Swedish National Television was there, interviewing Christian and Marie (two of the organizers) as well as Bobfest attendencies and Pastor Bob. The very cool thing with this is that the people from Vera did this reportage because they wanted to break down misconceptions that people have about christians and show that christian people are no wimps but can rock hard! AMEN, this is so amazing that they had this attitude and it's really a work of GOD.

Friday started off with a service at Ryttargårdskyrkan with a sermon from Heavy Metal Pastor Bob Beeman. As usual he had a lot of great things to say. It's so wonderful to see Pastor Bob so alert and full of energy. As many of you know he has been very ill and almost dead but due to God's grace and many prayers he is now feeling better than he has for the last 10 years! After the service everyone went on to the secular concert place called Skylten to enjoy the first concert. First band playing was Pantokrator. I have never seen them live before but they were very good. Tight heavy and melodic death metal. Extremely good! The best band on the whole festival. Next band was the punkers in Tekla Knös. As usual they played an energetic set that the audience enjoyed. Disciple ended the evening with a great gig. Musically they are really not my thing since they play metalcore but they are a good liveband and very Christ centered. Disciple also played the Stryper cover More Than A Man, which was freaking awesome. People were jumping and headbanging and really enjoying themselves. Definately one of the highlights at Bobfest! But the best of all happened at the end of the concert when Kevin Young held a mini sermon. When he did an altarcall many people raised their hands and made a decision to follow Jesus, some for the first time and others that has fallen away but now resubmitted their lives to Christ! Amen, this is what I'm living for and also the mainreason for this festival, to see people changed by Christ!

After the concert there were problems to get into the sleepingplace at Skytteholmsskolan. The entrance card that had worked very well all day suddenly stopped working! But we called for Securitas and they opened for us so everyone could get into the warmth again and get some hours of wellneeded sleep.

Saturday started as usual with prayer. After a short openingmeeting there were time for seminars, something we hadn't had earlier years. We had 3 seminars with Keving Young from Disciple, Peter Espevoll from Extol and Christian Liljegren from Narnia. Kevin talked about "what it takes and means to be a ministry band", Peter about "how to communicate the Gospel" and Christian about the "music industry". All the seminars were very interesting and encouraging. Then after the lunchbreak it was time for the main service with Pastor Bob. Bobs teachings were very interesting and encourageing. The meeting ended with a communion.

Then it was time for the mainconcert where we had 6 bands playing. First band out was Jacks of All Trades, they play rapcore so their music wasn't my thing so I didn't hear much of their gig. Their finnish metalbrothers in Hallowed followed next. They were much better in my ears, plenty of talent but a bit uneven musically (they need to incorporate more catchy melodies). Some tunes were really good and some were not. Dime'n'Dough followed them. Their music was not enough metal for me to like them so I spent some time hanging around with friends instead. Then it was time for our surprise band Pergamon! They were very good, nice melodic death with black vocals, with a clear christian message. Without a doubt another of the festivals highlights. Vaakevandring from Norway then entered the stage and played their beautiful atmospheric black metal version of the prayer Our Father. An awesome tune! Black Metal Praise all the way. They did a good gig but at times the tempo was too slow. Last band out was Wisdom Call, which is Christian Liljegren, the Narnia singer's soloband and this was also the releasegig for their brand new cd. Their gig contained lots of nice guitar solos and real pure 80s Metal. Something I can never get enough of. J A good gig and and a great ending of the concert evening. Totally there were like 300 people on each of the concerts and about 200 at the whole conference. After the Saturday concert was over we got an unpleasant surprise. Someone had destroyed the wash basin at the toilet so there were lots of water on the floor. But some days later Daniel found a good christian friend that repaired it for us in 5 minutes for just $10.

But the festival wasn't ended yet. After cleaning up at the concert place and 2 hours sleep it was time to get up again to the last service at Ryttargårdskyrkan. This were Ryttargårdskyrkans ordinary service but we got like 15 minutes to talk about Bobfest. Olov and Marie from the Bobfest team and Pastor Bob talked about the Bobfest weekend and what it was all about. The people at Ryttargårdskyrkan has overall been very helpful and it has been great to have their support behind the festival.

The great thing with this year's festival is that everything (with a few exceptions) went very smooth. I want to say a big thank you for all that participated on the festival, especially those that travelled a long way to get here, and also a big thank you to my great friends at the Bobfest team (you all did a great work!), I also wanna thank everyone that has prayed for the festival (your prayersupport are invaluable and has meant more than words can say), but most of all I wanna thank JESUS who has made this a reality. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

So we had a great time this year with plenty of good Metal bands playing. But most important is that many was blessed and changed by Christ. If you want to enjoy Europes biggest Christian Metal Festival feel free to come and join us next year at the end of March. You won't be dissapointed. http://come.to/bobfest

In His Service
Johannes Jonsson
Bobfest 2001