Location: Pula / Croatia
Concert date: August 29, 2008
Attendance: 10,000
Ticket price: 60.00 HRK (approx. €8.50)
Showing up in Pula on the second-to-last day of August 2008, at the 14th annual Twin Horn Beach Party Bikers festival to be exact, was never part of my plan. I’d barely pulled myself together after a wild night with the guys from Lady’s First following the gig in Podljubelj (RockLine report HERE), and already a new day of adventure was knocking. Who am I kidding, I could hardly wait to get back behind the wheel!
Thanks to a call back from the Heat camp, who answered the request I’d sent just two days before the Axxis show, I was speeding off to Istria again after a long while. The venue was tucked away in the middle of a wooded island, which, given how close it is to the city of Pula, worked as a great noise barrier, a sort of buffer for swallowing excess decibels. A perfect setting for this kind of event, also thanks to all the shady spots it offers.
Axxis, a German symphonic hard rock band that these days often brushes up against power metal, have been around for a solid 19 years. So it’ll soon be 20 years since they played the Hala Tivoli in Ljubljana (Slovenia) way back in 1989. That was at the end of September, with Axxis opening for Black Sabbath on the “Headless Cross” tour. Well, over those 19 years Axxis have changed massively in style and gone through a colorful evolution of their sound. In the beginning they were blasting out the sleaze/glam hard rock that was all the rage back then, and today they only remind us of it when they pull out the old hits, while their current sound is built on bombast and drama, thanks to the orchestral arrangements they love to fold into their riff structures.
FALLEN ANGELS:
Fallen Angels, from Bjelovar in Croatia, were a great pick to warm things up before Axxis. They’re a cover band, and bands like that are usually the most welcome at biker festivals. The guys have been together for a good six years and decided to entertain the crowd with an interesting mix of songs from big international acts like Guns N’ Roses, Bon Jovi (the old classics) and (yes, you read that right) The Cult (!!!). On top of that they threw in the Whitesnake hit Fool For Your Lovin’ and spiced the whole thing up with the Ramones hit Pet Sematary.
The vocalist is phenomenal! He’s got a great range that’s incredibly flexible, fitting the variety of the repertoire they played. The first three quarters of the show flew by, thanks to the commitment and conviction of the material, delivered by the trio of Dany Daniels (guitar, backing vocals), TommyGun (vocals, bass) and Igor (drums). The charismatic vocals worked as a great sonic filler on the Bon Jovi and Guns’ N Roses material, and Whitesnake went down really well too. The vocalist is so good and convincing that you honestly couldn’t miss the keyboards, extra backing vocals or any of the other polish that would help bring a cover closer to the original sound. Fallen Angels do have a keyboard player, but for reasons unknown to me he wasn’t on stage in Pula this time. The guys of course allowed themselves a few “offenses,” which are perfectly fine at parties like this. Mostly in the guitar solos, and a few drum fills weren’t exactly tight either. By far the best of the lot was the The Cult repertoire, which in sound and vocals was a cut above everything else we heard. The guys stressed that they share solid stage chemistry. They’ve got an explosive live presence, and singer-bassist TommyGun in particular is a locomotive on stage, pulling the whole band along. Sadly, in the last quarter the atmosphere and dynamics fizzled a bit, because the choice of covers got less impressive and started to get boring. The band also slipped up when they took on Aces Of Spades (orig. Motorhead) right at the end of the set. Rock and metal bands shouldn’t do that, they automatically make fools of themselves, because every version they come up with is automatically too melodic, which instantly castrates the essence of the song. The only interesting take on a Motorhead classic is the one by country goofballs Heyseed Dixie, and that kind of Motorhead experiment might be interesting from (precisely the most “impossible”) acts like Depeche Mode or Laibach. Fallen Angels would have done much better closing with some even completely worn-out Born To Be Wild (Steppenwolf).
All in all, Fallen Angels are an incredibly rewarding pick for events like this, and they’re always a fit for biker gigs in Slovenia too. Great show!
AXXIS:
The legends from Dortmund, Germany, were a pretty nice surprise to find on a biker festival bill. A seriously bold move. But there was nothing to fear this time. The crowd dutifully filled the asphalt plateau in front of the stage, and a good 1,300 people or so caught the show. Plenty of the revelers came from Slovenia, and German tourists who just happened to be on vacation in Istria at the time took the chance to see their countrymen too.
Axxis released a new studio album last fall, “Doom Of Destiny”. They didn’t force the album on their set list, though, as you might have expected, with just three songs from it in a total of 16 numbers. The guys have a few late-summer festival dates “booked” in September to keep the Axxis name out there on the circuit, and meeting the band before the show confirmed the feeling that they’re incredibly charged with positive energy, relaxed, and really enjoying being back on tour together. You could tell the guys like exploring “exotic” countries where they haven’t played before. This time they didn’t dig too deep into their budget and hit the road without additional female backing vocalists, with just the basic gear (instruments). Still, a bit of that money slipped out of their pockets anyway, thanks to the hired gun Dirk Brand, who’s temporarily saving the band on drums at live shows until Axxis find a permanent replacement for the “runaway” Andre Hilgers, who now plays with the German band Rage.
It was well past eleven at night when we finally heard the opening Voices Of Destiny, which flowed logically into Doom Of Destiny (Arabia) from the band’s current studio album of the same name. The guys have serious routine and experience, so from the first moment to the last they served up tremendous confidence and stage stubbornness, weaving between total focus and cheeky bits of stage play that fired up the people below the stage. They put together a set list that dutifully covered their musical output, with the hits weighted toward the second half. In the first part of the show they pleasantly surprised us with Little War, the only song from their third studio album “The Big Thrill” (1993), and in Bloodangel (“Doom Of Destiny”, 2007) they slipped in a drum solo, giving Brand a chance to stretch out a bit, though that rather uninteresting solo mostly helped the other guys catch their breath. Bernhard Weiss, the only original member of today’s Axxis and the man who keeps the band alive, bassist Rolf Schomaker and the fresh, excellent guitarist Marco Wriedt, who joined before “Doom Of Destiny”, kept the energy sky-high throughout, and the big stage let them really spread out across it. The middle of the regular set was especially interesting, when the band decided to dress up two classics, Fire And Ice (“Kingdom Of The Night”, 1989) and Touch the Rainbow (“Axxis II.”, 1990), in acoustic clothes, even adding a slight Latin rhythm underneath Fire And Ice. That’s when Bernhard called a girl up on stage and put her in the role of backing vocalist, which has become a habit with the new Axxis lately. She didn’t need much persuading and happily banged away on the tambourine as Bernhard told her to. The girl would have happily stayed on stage if Bernie hadn’t diplomatically and kindly sent her off after the end of Touch The Rainbow.
After that the intensity of the show just kept climbing and hit its final “crescendo” with the classic hits Little Look Back and Kingdom Of The Night, which, as expected, got the most energy back from the crowd in released decibels and kinetics. Quite a few people down front showed they knew the verses to most Axxis songs, which proved that they were probably at the festival that day, just like me, only for Axxis.
In the first encore the guys fired off another must-play song that can’t be missing from the repertoire: Living In A World from “Kingdom Of The Night” (1989). The symphonic Angel Of Death (“Time Machine”, 2004) was an interesting choice to close with. Since Axxis didn’t thank the audience afterward and instead merrily marched off stage, it hinted that they had one more ace up their sleeve. The second encore brought them back out, and Weiss told the crowd that Axxis wouldn’t leave the bikers without playing at least one cover first. They went with Nana, Hey, Hey, Kiss Him Goodbye by Steam. Sadly I don’t know why they didn’t play Shadowman (“Back To Kingdom”, 2000) in the encore too, since it was written on the set list.
The quintet (I forgot to mention keyboardist Harry Oellers) went at it in a truly professional way. They played all-out, confidently, and with their stage antics delivered an exceptional amount of dynamics throughout the show! Bernhard Weiss has kept an exceptional voice after all these years. Explosive and expressive in every register. Clean and authoritative, highly melodic with a touch of mild vibrato that adds the signature “Bernie Weiss” flavor to every song, which you can recognize in an instant. Axxis came across as less bombastic and atmospheric than as the opening act on last year’s Helloween tour (RockLine report from the show in Kaufbeuren, Germany HERE) and quite a bit more rocking, raw and direct. They simply adapted their playing to biker standards. The guys convinced us they’re full of energy and hungry to play live. The new guitarist Marco Wriedt brought a great freshness and ease. It’s incredible how well he and singer Bernie play off each other, and the man is also an excellent soloist and an inspired riff-maker! A great choice for a band that’s enjoying a musical renaissance with the “Doom Of Destiny” album. The only thing that gave Axxis a bit of trouble was the sound during the show, as the keyboards were too quiet, and at times the overly loud bass line was distracting.
To wrap up, I’d like to sincerely thank Roko Smajlagić from Heat for the invitation and the warm welcome, and for making sure Axxis visited Pula this year. I’d also like to thank all the bosses of the 14th annual Twin Horn Beach Party festival, who pulled off yet another unforgettable get-together of lovers of good music and, above all, of steel, noisy two-wheeled beauties. And let me mention that this time they also provided a proper stage, big and high, with better stage lighting. See you again next year.
Setlist
1. Doom of Destiny
2. Tales of Glory Island
3. Little War
4. Lady Moon
5. Bloodangel
6. Drum solo
7. Astoria
8. Fire And Ice (acoustic)
9. Touch the Rainbow (acoustic)
10. Wind in the Night
11. My Little Princess
12. Little Look Back
13. Kingdom Of The Night
—encore 1.—
13. Living In A World
14. Angel of Death
—encore 2.—
15. Nana, Hey, Hey, Kiss Him Goodbye
Photo gallery
