Exodus, Candlemass and Laaz Rockit to name a few. For a period of five years the festival stayed at the skating-rink with the exception of 1990. Reconstruction of the skating-rink forced us to move 200 metres down the street, right next door. DOA was the place to be to see all the underground bands that were overlooked or simply not recognised by others, at least not until much later. Okay, so we introduced you to Extreme too.
Nobody is perfect.
When DOA started in 1986 it was the only festival of it's kind. No other festival would even think about a line-up that consisted of heavy bands only. Of course there was Monsters Of Rock but underground acts had little or no chance of getting on their bill. In fact, the Aardschokdag festival was the only somehow similar event but that was an indoor event and it was not held on a regular basis. However, more and more festivals similar to DOA started to appear all over Europe so in order to be different and stand out from the rest we decided to try a new formula.