`Še pomnite tovariši? (koncertne zgodbe iz odprašenih arhivov)` – U.D.O. in Ljubljana (2004)

Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik

Location: Ljubljana / VPK Mediapark / Slovenia
Concert date: May 24, 2004
Attendance: 200
Ticket price: 4,500.00 SIT

It was seven-thirty in the evening and people were still paying more attention to beer and other alcoholic products outside the hall than to whatever was going on inside. A little after eight, Majesty kicked off. The hall was sadly hollowed out, and Majesty started their show in front of roughly 24, maybe 31 onlookers, four of whom were even wildly flailing about in the front row. Majesty are a modest band, no doubt about it, since they were quick to settle for that kind of crowd response. But these guys did assure us from the stage that they play “true” metal. And what’s that supposed to be, by their book? A 100% Manowar impersonation, maybe? With a bit more melody, of course, mostly thanks to more frequent three-part harmonies and more formulaic guitar solos that dutifully follow worn-out scales. Extremely predictable guys. More proof that a copy, no matter how technically well-versed the musicians are, and Majesty undoubtedly are, just can’t convince. Because merely moving inside the boundaries that Manowar defined with their recognizable style isn’t enough. It nails you to the rank of some middling, average sadness that quickly sinks into oblivion among the metal crowd. Majesty approached it very decently, gave it everything, and as a support act delivered an enviable, quality sound. A dynamic, tight, polished performance, full of battle-ready metal anthems, on a level, I’m speechless. The guys were thrilled by the growing audience during their set and the ever louder response, so after the show the drummer even handed out three drumsticks to the crowd. I got similar impressions from the Swiss band Crystal Ball, who “yodeled” onto the stage after Majesty, to the sounds of pre-recorded authentic Alpine yodeling. Not long ago the band’s original guitarist left, so one of the two guitarists took over the keyboards as well. He filled the gap nicely, and the band lacked or suffered nothing in sound or quality of performance. These youngsters combine hard rock moves from the seventies, especially thanks to the characteristic “Hammond-ish” keyboard lines. On top of that they add, of course, classic metal riffs, expressive enough, the kind that get memorized in the average brain processor of modern man of the genus Homo in no time, but chewed over a hundred times. As a result, Crystal Ball sometimes sounded like an approximation of Pretty Maids, a bit later like Pink Cream 69, and often there was a whiff of authentic glam metal makeup-and-hairspray moves. In general, a shocking genre jump came when the keyboardist grabbed the rhythm guitar, because the track Lay Dawn The Law (I even remembered the name during the show, since the singer repeated it at least five times before the song) was based on galloping through a simple classic “open” riff, which meant that Crystal Ball tried for a moment to jump into the skin of good old Accept or even Judas Priest. And the song title is exactly the same as the one from the U.D.O. debut called “Animal House” (1987). Oh well. Very boring. But the crowd was very decent, and so was the band itself, who of course went all in, served up equally quality sound, and seemed to effectively warm up a handful of hot-blooded fans, while the rest of us, “seasoned veterans of everything”, politely watched the action from the sidelines at a cautious distance. The warm-up before U.D.O. did the job; Crystal Ball won plenty of sympathy overall, since the singer addressed the audience in Slovenian too. And not just with “Hvala”, he had learned some harder, more elaborate sentences, which he pronounced really nicely for a native German. Well, of course he had the Slovenian lines written on a slip of paper. The gig at VPK hall here was the last date of the Thunderball World Tour for both Crystal Ball and Majesty.

The clock had more or less struck ten when the sound of a pre-recorded James Bond intro rang out and U.D.O. waddled out in front of the crowd, of course immediately hammering out a white-hot Thunderball and The Bullet And The Bomb from their current studio album “Thunderball” (2004). The sturdy bandleader Udo Dirkschneider, a lovable old uncle, an untamed metal heart, a true metal guru and legend who filled stages around the world in the eighties with the infamous Accept, has with U.D.O. taken over the full legitimate legacy of those giants. The hall radiated a somewhat more noticeable emptiness compared to the Grave Digger show this January. By “my humble eye” the crowd was somewhere between 249 and 308 people. Next to me stood four “horny” lads who had cabbed it a full nine hours from Split to see U.D.O. The low turnout is obviously down to a weaker media campaign in Slovenia as far as the band’s presence on the metal scene goes, because AFM Records has no distribution in Slovenia at all. Personally, for the first time in my life I came to a concert to hear a band whose current studio album I hadn’t even heard beforehand. Well, supposedly postage prices from abroad are going to drop drastically now that Slovenia has joined the EU (that’s what the media promise), by as much as 70%. So in the future we’ll be able to order the music we want for the same price, nicely over the internet, and at least actually receive the order within a foreseeable time. For those, of course, for whom baking CDs and “downloading” mean nothing.

Oh boy, oh dear, oh my! I’ve wandered off the path again. After Udo took off the shiny “Thunderball” coat and returned to the stage in army gear, the hall roared louder for the first time, as U.D.O. went on to burn through an excellent Accept classic called Metal Heart (“Metal Heart”, 1985). The first part of the show was a mix (Accept and U.D.O. stuff).

“All right! Thank you! This is a track from our Solid album, called Independence Day!” old uncle Udo addressed the audience properly for the first time. One of my personal favorite U.D.O. songs calmed the overheated heads in the front rows a little, but with its mid-tempo pace and melancholic, fantastically crafted epic chorus it lifted the atmosphere to an even higher level. Above all, in this song I always wait for the moment when Udo reaches the part of the verse that he tastefully punctuates with a sharp “R-r-r-r-obotic r-r-age…”. What a fire flared up in the hall, what a racket! It wasn’t just my pants that were shaking, but everything inside them too, including all my vital organs. What a pounding, what a primal sound of metal. Only the greatest can conjure up something like this live. What a metal drug!

Igor Gianola and the legendary Stefan Kaufmann are sworn to tradition, so they use classic Gibson electric guitars. Gianola plays an LP and a Flyin’ V, while Kaufmann plays Explorers exclusively. Only during the semi-acoustic intro to the orgasmic Accept beauty Neon Nights did Kaufmann also use a Fender Stratocaster. The sound? What magic! That’s it. Self-confidence, religion, honesty to themselves, to their will, to their vision. There’s no way anything could break them. The band attacked Slovenia from every position, with every bit of fire they had. No mistakes, on an outstanding level the whole time, devoted throughout to the music, the crowd and themselves. Blietzkrieg on Slovenia!

The first part ended with a drum solo. Before that I have to highlight the performance of Blind Eyes (“Thunderball”, 2004). Even though I don’t have the new album yet, U.D.O. conjured up an extraordinary mood with this slightly quieter song, mostly because Fitty’s Rickenbacker bass line pulsed through it with incredible intensity. The excellent contrast between the rhythm line and Udo’s unique vocal siren shone in full, while the jangle of both guitars was deliberately pushed into the background.

After the drum solo, U.D.O. came back and, with the exception of Metal Eater (“Timebomb”, 1991), strung together nothing but Accept classics through the second part of their show. The crowd went nuts for Son Of A Bitch (“Breaker”, 1983), Restless And Wild (“Restless And Wild”, 1982), Up To The Limit (“Metal Heart”, 1985), and among all of them one of the most beautiful Accept masterpieces stood out, Neon Nights (“Restless And Wild”, 1982). People were visibly happy (which didn’t mean they were satisfied yet), and went absolutely berserk especially through the whole Accept legacy, backing the band in unison on the choruses. U.D.O. generously and selflessly gave that energy right back to the people.

Udo isn’t just an exceptionally charismatic personality without whom the modern metal scene is hard to imagine, he also gives the impression of a good-hearted old uncle who isn’t particularly talkative on stage, but the sheer energy the man radiates and his stage presence say much more about him. Udo kept shaking hands with the fans in the front rows, ran across the stage from one band member to another, and kept firing them up like the seasoned master he is. U.D.O. came across as much more down-to-earth, even closer to the people (Primal Fear conjured up similarly genuine and positive feelings at last year’s Rock Otočec), than, say, Grave Digger in the same hall in January, where you could feel they kept at least a slight breeze of distance from the audience, even though I’m tipping my hat to the Grave Digger show right now too. What I mean is that U.D.O. play no hide-and-seek games with the audience whatsoever. Even in front of a smaller crowd, they came out with everything they had.

Igor was also given five minutes to really let loose with his immersive, phenomenal guitar noodling, where he paid special attention to his squealing wah-wah work. The guy played incredibly relaxed and really soloed his heart out at the show, since he’s practically in charge of playing almost all the solos in the band. Stefan got his moment in the spotlight in that department only during Holy.

The third part of the regular portion of the U.D.O. show was again made up of a mix of Accept and U.D.O. tracks. It opened with Man And Machine (“Man And Machine”, 2002), with a cyber-clad Udo at the center of attention. I was lucky to be standing to the left of the legendary singer in the front row, so I could observe the details of Udo’s outfit. The designers got very crafty with the robot costume. They used a plastic “Revell” spaceship model kit. Everyone who glues plastic model kits knows that the parts of the kit are held on a frame. Those frames were, of course, ingeniously cut out by the “thrifty” Germans, the designers of Udo’s outfit, and glued in various combinations onto the costume Udo wore. So the man really looked on stage like a cross between a robot and a human, with electronic circuits, chips and tubes of all sorts of “?”s hanging off him. Right after that Udo carried on with his show dressed up as the aforementioned deserter soldier and kept on shining with undiminished intensity through his ear-piercing screaming. The band then set off another Accept detonator, Balls To The Wall, right at the tail end of the set list of the regular part of the show.

Through the last song U.D.O. were so convincing and created such magic in the hall that after they finished and had already left the stage, the “ooooh-oooh-i”s kept echoing through the hall for a long time. Balls To The Wall was a fantastic rendition of the version from the U.D.O. live album “Nailed To Metal” (2003). It had everything a metal fanatic could possibly wish for. First and foremost, an extremely arrogant, rebellious lyric wrapped in a brilliantly simple basic riff, of course with the energetic “on three-four” chorus that effectively crushed balls and so subjugated the audience. The exit was especially fantastic, the ending itself incredibly explosive.

Besides the fanatical approach and attitude of the band itself, the extremely relaxed mood in the hall was also helped along by the U.D.O. tour manager, who right before the band’s show asked the yellow-glowing bouncers to clear out of the front row, so that during the concert only two remained in visibly disruptive spots. One at the far left and the other at the far right, just like at the shows at Planet Music in Vienna, for example. However, these “security guys” (and there were more than two of them) brutally intervened in the general party a few times during the show and tried to choke it out, frustratingly. They weren’t picky about the means. Of course, some guy did go too far when he poured his beer over the sound desk, but that was no reason to drag him across the floor of the entire hall and nearly knock down half of everyone else in the process. A more serious case of “swinish” behavior by the security staff happened right in the front row near the middle. Some kid was shoving around next to me (next to me again, grrr…). This time it all looked completely innocent. And just look! A yellow-shirt suddenly came out of nowhere and grabbed the kid. Shocked, he of course reacted defensively and swung at him. And for the “security guy” that act by his victim was a legitimate pretext to justify physically removing the poor guy from the hall. Needless to say, the “security guy” wasn’t picky about his methods or the blows he dealt the poor wretch, including to the head. If these so-called “security guys” had ever been to a Mötorhead show, they’d probably try to throw out the entire audience, because they haven’t got the faintest idea what real hell is.

It’s normal and nothing special that we all shove each other at gigs like this. Who’s going to stand still, we’re not the audience of a weeping Pavarotti, applauding insincerely from little chairs. Insincerely because at operas and jazz concerts, 70% of the people you meet are just there to be seen, and mentally they don’t keep up with the music or the artists at all. But what matters is that they paid for their tickets. And the yellow rustling uniformed guys who came to the front row to collect their pay can’t explain things any other way either, since the magic of music is a thoroughly alien concept to them. That’s just how it is, musical culture in Slovenia is at an extremely low level. But with the kind of enthusiasm that this year’s rock-flavored concert scene here offers, we can hope that this culture will rise to the level of the Western European countries too.

Back to the show. The crowd was in ecstasy, the hall hypnotically sang the “oooh-oooh-e”s from Balls To The Wall, which were still ringing in our ears. Even after Kaufmann came back on stage and started playing the intro to Holy (“Holy”, 1999), the audience didn’t pay much attention and didn’t let itself be disturbed in its singing. Well, when Udo appeared on stage with the rest of the band, the crowd also woke up from its hypnotic state. For the occasion Udo was dressed as a priest in sunglasses. Hell yeah, awesome! At first I thought it was Nosferatu on stage, played by Klaus Kinski. “Holy” is generally my favorite U.D.O. album and I fell into such a delirium that I even tried to imitate Udo’s vocals in the “raise your hands” verse. In a moment I was left without a voice. The heat kept climbing, and U.D.O. shifted “up a gear” with the Accept classics I’m A Rebel (“I’m A Rebel”, 1980) and the noisiest, most, ahem, I won’t say insane, in short a song of pure superlatives, a lesson in true metal aggression, noise and unstoppable rage, the fastest song on the set list, Fast As A Shark (“Restless And Wild”, 1982). U.D.O. said goodbye for the second time, but the crowd held on and got a second encore. The band stuck with that same Accept record and started the second encore with the mid-tempo, obscure but epic Princess Of The Dawn, which U.D.O. played in the version found on their live record “Nailed To Metal” (2003). In a word, superb! The surprise at the end was undoubtedly the inclusion of the song Burning, which U.D.O. hadn’t been putting into the set list at the March and April shows of their Thunderball World Tour. Udo asks the crowd: “Do you want us to play another one?” The answer was a thunderous “Yeah!!!”, whereupon Udo waves his hand, as if to say: “You’re impossible, haven’t you had enough yet?” and continues: “All right Ljubljana! Are you ready to rock? Are you ready to roll?” and so another Accept classic echoed out into the night, rounding off this phenomenal, unforgettable event of reviving the Accept magic, which lasted a good two hours. People completely lost it. That the Slovenian metal crowd knows no limits is proven by the few hefty scratches I got during the show as a souvenir. A couple of times my hip nearly cracked because maniacs from behind kept crashing into the front row. My neck was all cut up because some lunatic stretched over me after the show hoping to snag a pick, not to mention my battered elbow. Surviving a metal gig in Slovenia is apparently getting harder every year for me. You travel almost halfway around the world and expose yourself to all sorts of wild situations, everything keeps running without a hitch, and then some “bullshit” like this happens to you at a show in Slovenia. During the Grave Digger show, for instance, some jerk in the parking lot in front of the hall ripped the front license plate off my car. This time, though, I went home with a whole heap of scrapes.

U.D.O. didn’t hide their satisfaction with the crowd’s response, thanked everyone sincerely and promised to come back again. The band sounds stronger than ever. As I’ve already written in one of my reviews, and it’s no big news anymore, U.D.O. have not only inherited the unique Accept style but, with their very existence and brilliance, built on it in every way. With the integration of Stefan Kaufmann into the band on the album “Solid” (1997) (he played drums for Accept throughout the eighties, while with U.D.O. he’s now a guitarist), U.D.O. got a solid Dirkschneider/Kaufmann tandem that works perfectly for writing both the music and the lyrics. If Gianola is the band’s master of soloing, Kaufmann is the master of laying down phenomenal classic metal riffs that make you want to bang your head clean off. So U.D.O., who had constant lineup stability problems from “Holy” (1999) onward, are now coherent, and the current lineup truly sounds unbeatable, both on stage and in composing the material itself.

And lastly, allow me to sensationalize this little “report” a bit more! A closing rhetorical question comes up. If Majesty were bragging that they play “true metal”, then what are U.D.O.? Maybe “real metal” or even “correct metal”? Personally I’m very allergic to the use of the word “true” in a musical genre sense. For every single music lover, “true” is exactly what attracts and inspires them most in music at a given moment. And only each person alone, and only for themselves, can judge what’s “true”. I’ve got a trunkful of self-crowned “kings of metal”! Is that what’s left of Manowar, evaporated, dressed in ridiculous pelts of Pleistocene goats? Hm, well, I won’t say otherwise, but on the other hand Majesty are certainly very ambitious. They adorned themselves with the words “true metal” in front of a “headliner” like U.D.O., and that’s certainly no small thing.

Setlist

Majesty:
01. Reign In Glory
02. Hail To Majesty
03. Into The Stadiums
04. Heavy Metal Battlecry
05. Sword & Sorcery
06. Keep It True
07. Metal To The Metalheads

Crystal Ball:
01. Hellvetia
02. Forever And Eternally
03. Lay Down The Law
04. My Life
05. Opposites Attract
06. Savage Mind
07. Soulmate
08. Dance With The Devil
09. Private Visitor

U.D.O.:
01. Thunderball
02. The Bullet And The Bomb
03. Metal Heart
04. Independence Day
05. Pull The Trigger
06. Living For Tonite
07. Love Child
08. Blind Eyes
09. Drum solo
10. Metal Eater
11. Neon Nights
12. Son Of A Bitch
13. Restless And Wild
14. Guitar solo
15. Midnight Highway
16. Up To The Limit
17. Man And Machine
18. Animal House
19. Balls To The Wall
—first encore—
20. Holy
21. I’m A Rebel
22. Fast As A Shark
—second encore—
23. Princess Of The Dawn
24. Burning

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