Dynamo Open Air
Dynamo Open Air is a festival in the Netherlands that was held every year between 1986 and 2005. It was reborn in 2008 as Dynamo Outdoor and in 2015 as Dynamo Metal Fest.
History
Dynamo Open Air was originally held in 1986 to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Dynamo rock club in Eindhoven. It began with 5,000 people in the Dynamo parking lot. From 1988 to 1992, it was held at a local ice rink with 22,000 capacity. In 1993, the festival was moved to the Eindhoven military airport. In 1994, it became a three-day festival.In 1995, Dynamo Open Air reported 118,000 attendees. To this day, it is still the largest multi-day open air festival ever held in the Netherlands. This caused too much pressure on the Dutch infrastructure, leading to some of the longest recorded traffic jams in the history of the Netherlands. The lines to drive in were so long that people infamously barbecued bratwursts on the highway.
As a result, the municipality forced the festival to limit its capacity to 60,000 in 1996. In 1998, the festival site and the airport had to be moved in order to build 6,000 new houses. The festival site is now the Eindhoven residential area of Meerhoven. The festival returned to the ice rink in 1998, with a halved capacity of 30,000. In 1999, it was held at Mierlo, but it was located next to a garbage dump with a noticeable odor, and the parking situation was insufficient. So it moved again in 2000 to the Goffertpark in Nijmegen. However, it was the first DOA held outside the province of North Brabant, and it can only be one day long. So the organisers kept searching for a suitable location.
In 2001, the organisation thought they had found a site where the festival could return on a yearly basis, near the town of Lichtenvoorde. However, the threat of foot-and-mouth disease caused trouble, and Dynamo Open Air had to be cancelled. In 2002 it returned, at the site of the Bospop festival, but 2003 was another year without a Dynamo festival, because it would violate a recently passed law about animal protection during breeding season. For 2004, the festival returned to Nijmegen, at the same location where it took place in 2000. In 2005, the festival used the site of the Dauwpop festival, and the reunited Anthrax headlined the stage.
In an attempt to revitalise the festival, the current organization of the Dynamo youth center decided to change the festival's name from Dynamo Open Air to Dynamo Outdoor. In 2008, the first Dynamo Outdoor festival was held in the centre of Eindhoven, with bands such as Mad Sin, Anathema and Born From Pain performing. The festival was once again held in Eindhoven in the following year, with Destine, Stahlzeit, Asphyx, Textures, The Butcher and Municipal Waste on the bill.
The revival of the festival occurred with a new name as Dynamo Metal Fest, which has taken place every year since 2015. The festival had taken place traditionally on the second or third Saturday in July from 2015 to 2018; for the 2019 edition, it was converted into a two-day festival. After the 2020 edition was cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dynamo Metal Fest was scheduled to return in August 2021, however again cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Dynamo Metal Fest was again held in August 2022.
Live recordings
recorded their Live at Eindhoven EP in 1987 at the last Dynamo Open Air held at its original location before the festival moved to The IJsbaan. In 1995, Nailbomb had their performance recorded at the festival and it was released as Proud to Commit Commercial Suicide the same year it was recorded. It was released by Roadrunner Records In 2005, live footage of the performance was released on DVD and it was called Live at Dynamo. It was also released by Roadrunner Records. In May 1998, guest band Death recorded stock footage of their performance. Three years later, in an effort to raise money to pay for Chuck Schuldiner's cancer treatment, the footage was limitedly released in October 2001 by Nuclear Blast on CD and DVD formats under the name Live In Eindhoven, two months before Schuldiner's ultimate demise.Line-ups and dates
Dynamo Open Air
1986
Cancelled shows : Lääz Rockit1987
Cancelled shows : Agent Steel1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
Cancelled shows: Therapy?, Tool1994
1995
1996
Cancelled shows : Halford1997
1998
Cancelled shows : Fear Factory, Human Waste Project and Limp Bizkit.1999
Cancelled bands : Bolt Thrower, Morbid Angel, Speedealer, Skarhead and Blood for Blood. The three latter bands were replaced by Arch Enemy, Goatsnake, Merauder and E.Town Concrete respectively.2000
Cancelled bands : Entombed2001
Festival cancelled due to the threat of foot and mouth disease.The announced bands were: After Forever, Amen, Backfire!, Behemoth, Brightside, Catastrophic, Cradle of Filth, Destiny's End, Destroÿer 666, Discipline, Disturbed, Dreadlock Pussy, Dropkick Murphys, Dying Fetus, Exhumed, Hed PE, Ignite, In Extremo, Krisiun, Length of Time, Liar, Lost Horizon, Macabre, Merauder, M.O.D., Motörhead, Mudvayne, Napalm Death, Nasum, Nevermore, Opeth, Pain of Salvation, Papa Roach, Savatage, Saxon, Severe Torture, Shelter, Slipknot, Soulfly, Spineshank, Static-X, Symphony X, Terra Firma, Tool, The Union Underground, Vader, Wicked Mystic, Within Temptation.
Tool scheduled a headlining show at 013 in Tilburg on the day they were supposed to play, while Slipknot and few other bands played a "mini-festival" at Maaspoort in Den Bosch on May 25. Soulfly played more club shows in the Netherlands.