Catching Rival Sons after watching Uriah Heep as the band before them on the Helvíti stage, we were faced with an interesting clash. In Uriah Heep, we saw a band from the very end of the Sixties trying their best to push music forward into new directions, whereas with Rival Sons we saw a band from the very end of the aughts trying their best to push music backwards, disregarding anything that’s come out after the late Sixties to early Seventies.

“Aw yeah, Copenhell! How are y’all doing out there? I see a lot of black t-shirts!”
- Jay Buchanan (vocals)

Rival Sons did bring a good deal of energy to the stage though, definitely worthy of a spot on the main stage. While the two string benders took an easy approach, vocalist Jay Buchanan’s bare feet were running all over the entire time of the show. The biggest take away however was drummer Mike Miley, who was an absolute beast behind his instrument, and definitely the most fun one to look at through the show.
They also held the conservative style nicely consistently, which is something, especially as they served up a good mix of songs from their 15 year long career.
All this was met by cheers and applause from an otherwise calm and collected crowd. On this point, Hades might have been an overwhelming choice, as there weren't all that many hanging out to see the band, and had this been on, say, Pandæmonium, the same amount of people would have looked quite a bit more impressive.

In the same manner, I felt that every part of the band was in itself good - as mentioned, their way of sticking to their stylistical guns was consistent, Buchanan’s pipes were impressive and perfectly fit the rest of the presentation, and maybe anywhere else than Copenhell, Denmark’s primary metal festival, this presentation would have come off as much more impressive, but for me, this just didn’t do, well, anything at all, really. It wasn’t bad in any way, just not interesting to me.