Author: Urban Bolta
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Messegelande / Balingen / Germany
Concert date: 15.07.2010
Attendance: 14000
Ticket price: 85€ (two-day ticket)
The wild warm-up night with Saxon, Demon and Blitzkrieg is behind us, a real feast for every fan of the classic metal sound that the N.W.O.B.H.M. gave to the world of music. And so the first day of the 15th Bang Your Head!!! festival arrived. I was deep in a fight to catch my breath under an ice-cold shower at the VIP campsite right next to the festival grounds when, at 10:00 sharp, the alternative guys The New Black started raising a ruckus on the festival stage. These Germans somehow mixed up elements of metal and combined them with the twisted, fashionably trendy groove sound tagged “alternative”, and like guinea pigs they proved that the festival stage is ready for any challenge. With the fast-moving, melodically catchy Everlasting, then Welcome To Point Black, More Than A Man and Ballad Of Broken Angels, the guys successfully played the part of the band that opens a festival. From what I heard, the playing was confident, backed by quality sound and led by a manly, mid-range alternative voice that would easily fit in “grunge” waters too. All the best to the band, but I still think bands within such genre limits don’t belong at a festival of the Bang Your Head!!! caliber. Their music is simply meant for teenage girls who go for the MTV-style menu of Euro festivals like Nova Rock or FreQuency.
| ENFORCER: 10:50 – 11:30 |
Things got seriously ripe and serious when the young old-school N.W.O.B.H.M. revivalists Enforcer from Sweden hit the stage. Only at that moment did the Bang Your Head!!! festival truly wake up to its mission. The young Swedish metal upstarts released their second studio album, “Diamonds”, this May. Metal Vice, which opens with an old-school “prelude” in the vein of Doctor Doctor by classic U.F.O., immediately showed what kind of dough Enforcer are kneaded from. That Scandinavia is a Mecca of fantastic musicians who have no shortage of talent and the urge to prove themselves is nothing new. And Enforcer are yet another unique addition to the metal world. They revive the mission of the old-school British bands of the first half of the eighties. In other words, something we had briefly forgotten about amid the overabundant flood of extreme bands in metal in 2010. And that’s a good thing, and a very welcome one.
Tight playing, riffs decorated with harmonies in thirds, plenty of riff-twitching, active playing and running around the stage, shoulder-to-shoulder headbanging inherited from Judas Priest and, of course, spandex everywhere, pulled firmly tight over the crotch! Even the haircuts were cut in proper retro-veteran metal style. A brilliant tightness and, for such young years in the game, a confident command of the huge stage brought the first of all the lovely surprises still hiding in the event right at the start of the festival!
GRAND MAGUS 11:40 – 12:30
Next up, representatives of the Scandinavian metal school took the stage, the Swedes Grand Magus. Their approach is the total opposite of the lively character of their predecessors on stage, since the trio from Stockholm bets on the depressive magic of stoner metal. Grand Magus played representative songs from their last three albums, while the older material from their first two studio releases has clearly been cut from their live repertoire in 2010. The opener Kingslayer served up a double bass pedal and consequently a faster rhythm, moving away from the notion of traditional doom metal, or comparisons with their famous countrymen Candlemass. The Grand Magus formula is simple, since having just one guitar doesn’t leave much room to maneuver, yet they skillfully fill out the whole sound picture. Heavy metal riffs with a touch of bluesy melody are seasoned with a mid-tempo rhythm section, and the vocals of the band leader, who wore a Rainbow shirt at the show, Janne “JB” Christofferssn, fit in perfectly, his tone of voice simply made for the melancholic sound of Grand Magus. Occasional hard rock riffs and backing vocals (for example in the song Hammer Of The North) that for a moment, unusually for the genre, even pull toward harmonic melody are the traits that set the Swedes apart from the generic sound of some other stoner metal acts. The Swedes charged through their repertoire without any banter between songs and wrapped up the set with the rush of The Shadow Knows, at which point the time allotted to them ran out (too) quickly. Grand Magus showed themselves in a good light, since with a quality performance they surely drew the attention of all fans of dirty heavy metal.
| FORBIDDEN: 12:40 – 13:30 |
The varied lineup continued with the Bay Area thrash metal veterans Forbidden. They first played here two years ago. That is, in 2008, the year of their reunion. During the period of rebirth for these thrash metal greats, the seeds of a fifth studio album were planted, and the band went through yet another lineup change: Glenn Alvelais was replaced by guitarist Steve Smyth, who came to Forbidden from Nevermore and also worked with yet another titan of the Bay Area scene, Testament.
If you’ve got albums like “Forbidden Evil” and “Twisted Into Form” in your pocket, you don’t hold back on ammo, right? The quintet, who sweated buckets in the unbearable midday heat, kicked off with Infinite (“Twisted Into Form”) and stayed with that album for the first three songs. Is there anything nicer than watching the fanatical work of both guitarists, Locicero and Smyth, racing along the fretboard at supernatural speed, with the whole thing smoking from the entire array of battered tonalities and the most mind-blowing soloing combinations? If there’s anywhere we can truly revel in everything about Forbidden, it’s definitely the guitar solos (“Good morning!” to the Heathen and Testament fans). Russ Anderson, who probably suffered the most from the sun of anyone in the band, didn’t do a single “cat walk” this time, and instead mostly swayed in the shade for 50 minutes on the main stage, covered in sunglasses. A “redhead” as he is, he surely knows it’s not good for him to expose himself to the sun’s rays in the middle of the day. Russ sang with confidence, not as ferociously as you’d expect, but entirely satisfactorily.
People were properly banging their heads, though there were fewer thrashers in front of the stage. This year BYH!!! didn’t offer as good a thrash metal harvest as last year. Forbidden certainly didn’t skip a tribute to Ronnie James Dio. They tackled the phenomenal Black Sabbath classic Children Of The Sea. Smyth and Locicero swapped guitars beforehand and coaxed a detonating, crushing sound out of them in the riff, which brought the sonic signature of “riff master” Iommi to life in the best possible way. Forbidden closed their set in high style with Chalice Of Blood, which triggered the most noise back from the crowd. Anderson mentioned in one of the breaks that the band had just signed a deal for their fifth studio album with Nuclear Blast Records, and Forbidden also presented a brand-new song, Adapt Or Die, which from what I heard undoubtedly earned its place in the repertoire. That song is also a very promising preview of the new album, which, if it develops in the direction of Adapt Or Die, will surely be one of the highlights among thrash metal releases.
| SABATON: 13.40 – 14.30 |
“Sabaton in every village” could be the slogan for the Swedish “steelmakers” from 2005 to this day! These power metallers, who seek popularity among metalheads through war-themed songs, are incredibly successful at a time when the world is anything but friendly to power metal! Sabaton formed right at the turn of the millennium! That’s just the right time to have tasted the cherry on top of the whipped cream of the fruit bowl called the “power metal revival”. Their defiance has definitely paid off. There’s no need to waste words on the popularization of their music within metal circles. Just remember the last tour, when Sabaton opened for HammerFall and, with their confidence, always dangerously challenged them (in their assigned role as the support act).
By then the band had gathered by far the most followers in front of the stage, who were going nuts in the heat with the band. Sabaton used the big stage in every respect. The sextet, in which by far the most stage kinetics comes from singer Joakim Broden, a little human tank judging by his gear and the hilariously fun combination of Top Gun Ray-Ban glasses and an Indian mohawk, also hauled real pyrotechnic effects onto the stage.
Through the anthemic tunes of Cliffs Of Gallipoli, Primo Victoria and Screaming Eagles, the guys carried their devoted fans on wings, and those fans later created by far the longest line at the festival on the first day, feverishly waiting for the band’s autographs. Also worth mentioning is the football Joakim played with the fans using an inflatable ball. Creatively probably the least interesting band of the festival (interestingly, that goes for the day’s headliners HammerFall too, judging by the mileage they’ve racked up), but however you look at it, the energy was positive and the show was great fun and a joy, where the guys from Falun once again reaped plenty of sympathy from the crowd. And from fans of all ages. From real metal “newbies” to those graying-with-maturity elders, or metal gurus. Sabaton crowned an intense and more than successful show in Balingen with the expected anthem Metal Machine / Metal Crüe!
| LOUDNESS: 14.40 – 15.30 |
If anyone had told me that in this life I’d see Loudness with my own eyes and at the same time taste them with my ears, I’d have taken them for a complete nutcase. And it’s incredible how the world turns. Loudness were in the end the band that made this year’s Bang Your Head!!! festival so much more appealing to me. A whole handful of festival gigs in Europe for Loudness, and the first of them was played right in Balingen.
Loudness today are actually in the lineup that recorded all the major albums of the eighties. Except for the drummer’s spot. In that slot, Akira Takasaki (guitar), Minoru Niihara (vocals) and Masayoshi Namashita (bass) called up Masayuki Suzuki after their original drummer Munetaka Higuchi died of liver cirrhosis last year.
Even though the density of hair per square centimeter of scalp is too low now to allow the big teased-up hairdos with which our Loudness boys vehemently knocked girls off their feet in the eighties, and the “gym jogging meets baseball outfit” (that goes for Yamashita and Takasaki) replaced the former spandex, makeup and all that chain-laden kitsch, Loudness came to Balingen to prove that their potency and noise haven’t left them! Loudness!!! Niihara, who put on just jeans and a hat, kept his exceptional range. Guttural high vocals! Like in the best of times! And in Balingen he didn’t fail on a single point.
And? Loudness couldn’t have served up a better move. They played practically the whole material from their eighties albums with Niihara on vocals. That is, their golden and most prolific period, by far the most revered among those in the know. A melodic hard rock school that at times, with its revamped riff stance, shamelessly dips into the achievements of the traditional heavy metal school, conjured up Loudness as one of the finest performances of the festival’s first day through the one-of-a-kind classics Crazy Nights, Crazy Doctor, Esper, Heavy Chains, Let It Go, S.D.I. and of course the closing “bomb” Loudness from the debut studio album “The Birthday Eve” (1981).
And the stage presence? Takasaki is wildly insane! Even though he’s a fairly static guitarist who rarely takes a step or two from his spot, his fingers go berserk on the guitar. He uses only three fingers, and solos with them at incredible speed and precision while keeping superb control of what he’s doing. Case in point: the white-hot instrumental middle section of S.D.I., where Takasaki puts on a proper little school of brilliant tricks in the category of coaxing out the most wildly unimagined guitar acrobatics. A true little guitar wizard, who tops the richly spiced solos with a masterful use of tremolo! Loudness remain a name worth all the sin. They also slipped in the only “Mike Vescera era” song, In The Mirror. Guys approaching Abraham’s years thus lined up a real paradise for all those old-school nostalgics, who of course are never in short supply at the BYH!!! festival. Hats off! A school of Japanese perfection, which clearly can’t fail or rust in its indestructible construction! If only they could find the time and money for their own European tour! One more thing. Niihara didn’t hide an injury to his right leg while moving around the stage. I don’t know whether it’s permanent damage or not, let’s hope the singer is back in perfect order as soon as possible.
ANVIL 15:45 – 16:40
Ready for a dose of good old metal from when this kind of music was still in its infancy? Here come Anvil! Anvil’s show was one of the more interesting offerings of this year’s Bang Your Head!!! festival. The Canadian trio played early in the afternoon, roughly in the middle of the overall lineup, but had the history of metal’s development gone differently, Anvil could easily have played last, as the day’s headliners, a spot that would have gone, say, to Slayer if the festival had hosted them. This very theme, of how the tide of history unfairly washed Anvil up somewhere at the very edge of metal’s family tree, is the subject of the documentary “Anvil! The Story of Anvil”, released a good year ago, which (at least for a while) made the Canadians relevant again on a somewhat bigger scene. I’m convinced that the touching story of this once highly influential band moves every viewer, so every attendee who had already seen the documentary surely headed to the front of the stage at the appointed hour to show their support.
The Canadian trio consists of two original members, vocalist/guitarist Steve “Lips” Kudlow and drummer Robb “Geza” Reiner, both active since 1978, and the lineup is completed by the grim-looking bassist Glenn Gyorffy, who has been around for a decade and a half. The show revolves around Lips, the central figure of the Anvil story. The cheerful, smiling guitarist handles keeping in touch with the crowd and the banter, and he remains the target of all eyes even during the songs themselves, since constant soloing is an integral and recognizable part of their music. The man shows off his fast fingers the whole time, which makes the show attractive but at the same time loses some punch, even though punch is exactly the point of Anvil’s essence and their trademark. Most of the set dates from the first half of the eighties, and those present were treated to Winged Assassins, 666 and Mothro, among others, indispensable classics where a speed metal tempo meets the juicy riffs of dirty rock’n’roll. A departure from the standard sound was the song Thumb Hang from a newer record, which Lips dedicated in his intro to the immortal Dio, since Black Sabbath’s “Heaven & Hell” (1980) was supposedly the main inspiration for that heavy slab with its distinctly slow, doomy melody. After they played their most recognizable song, Metal On Metal, it was clear that the interesting encounter with one of the first acts in the history of metal from across the pond was over.
JON OLIVA’S PAIN 16:55 – 17:55
After the primal Anvil rush, it was time for melody. After last year’s visit to BYH!!! on the warm-up evening, this time the master of fusing melodic touches with heavy metal, Jon Oliva, was a guest on the main stage. The former Savatage leader released the band’s fourth studio album “F estival” at the start of the year, and this summer he’s presenting it live at a few European shows. As far as he includes it in the repertoire at all, that is: we know that at Jon Oliva’s Pain concerts the main role has gone to Savatage classics ever since the band formed. It was no different this time.
The get-together was opened by Lies, the opener of the aforementioned current album “Festival”, and the follow-up with the “Handful of Rain” classic Chance reaped the first wave of delight from the Savatage fans, who always make up the vast majority of the crowd at Oliva’s shows. Jon is in good vocal form, and his sharp shrieks straight from the throat can still raise the hairs on your neck in Sirens! Oliva spends most of the time sprawled in a chair next to the piano in the middle of the stage, and in moments when he wasn’t coaxing sounds out of its middle, he occasionally strolled to the edge of the stage. Only then could you notice the mighty (to put it mildly) figure of his body, which has been spreading in all directions since the tragic death of his brother Criss Oliva in 1993 and which seems to have no end. Just like Grand Magus in the morning, Jon also wore a shirt in memory of Dio, with whom he was on friendly terms and collaborated for many years. Believe was played as a dedication to Dio, so the Dio classic Rainbow in the Dark was a surprise, though, frankly, only in the hour of stage time that fell to the five on stage. There was little time in the repertoire for the band’s own work: besides the opening song, only Death Rides a Black Horse and Festival made it onto the menu. The bottom line under the show points to familiar conclusions: the unique chemistry of Savatage tunes always meets a warm reception, which Jon Oliva with his charismatic voice only charges up with even more energy, while the other four, despite a professional approach and a performance worthy of a big stage, are left with nothing but crumbs.
So once again we can ask: when the hell will we get a Savatage reunion?
DORO 18:10 – 19:20
Doro Pesch is probably the best-known woman in the world of metal, where she has been present for almost three decades. She certainly doesn’t lack toughness. She started her career with the German heavy metallers Warlock, and at the end of the eighties went solo, and she’s still reaping the successes. Over the years Doro has won fans over to her side, and their proverbial loyalty proved to be one of the key factors at this festival, as the faithful Germans backed their idol in great numbers. In general, German crowds are known for unconditionally following home acts at similar events, so the crush at the grounds, which could be compared to the one during the headliners HamerFall a few hours later, is far from a surprise.
Her Excellency, as Warlock fans would call Doro, remains a live experience that every heavy metal gourmet will enjoy. Exceptional stage presence, a charismatic personality and, last but not least, her looks are the magnets Doro counts on. She’s well aware of her femininity, so she very much likes to show that attribute off and make German metalheads with “Bundesliga” haircuts and tons of studs on their shoulders drool. Dressed in tight leather, Doro posed the whole time at the end of the “cat walk”, just a meter from the crowd, and during the instrumental parts she ran over to members of the crew and posed with them too. Doro just knows how, and she’s the champion at it. The backbone of the show was, as expected, a wreath of evergreen Warlock hits, to which she added her own Running From the Devil, Burn It Up and Always Live To Win, to name just the most famous. The heavy metal queen herself joined the caravan of Dio imitators with the played Egypt (The Chains Are On), though she deserves more praise for the choice than for the performance itself! Worth singling out is drummer Johnny Dee, who pounds his artillery with military precision and neatly switches between single and double bass pedal, bringing more kinetics to the songs. Despite all the praise, what stings is the practically identical setlist as at last year’s Wacken Rocks South festival (report here), the endless stretching of the chorus of the Warlock classic All We Are, and at times the downright excessive flattering of the crowd during the banter.
KROKUS 19:40 – 20:50
Meanwhile the indoor shows had already started, which is new on the menu of this year’s Bang You Head. Both nights featured three bands each in the hall, so the lineup was quantitatively better than ever. The first to play indoors were the Swedish death/thrash metallers Darkane, but I decided without a shred of hesitation to stay in front of the main stage, where Krokus played, the fathers of Swiss hard rock and one of the main reasons I visited the German festival. Krokus spent their golden years in the first half of the eighties, and today they’re trying their hardest to regain popularity, but then hard rock has been in decline for quite a while. They recently put out the fresh album Hoodoo, and with that above-average record in their pocket they’re now touring Europe.
The veterans showed that you don’t mess with them! They were among the few representatives of the more traditional hard rock lineage at the festival, so the obligation to follow the show from first breath to last was all the greater. The opener Long Sticks Goes Boom immediately showed what kind of road we’d be sweating down for the next hour and a bit. Tight, punchy AC/DC-style riffs with the occasional “slide” technique from the guitar duo Von Arb – Kohler, with a touch less bluesy naughtiness and a flirt with a rougher, heavy metal sound, have been constants of Krokus’s music-making ever since the start of their musical journey in the late seventies. Besides their own songs from all the band’s creative periods, the Swiss played a nice number of covers, starting with American Woman, through the eternal classic Born To Be Wild, to the grand finale with the Rainbow standard Long Live Rock’n’Roll. Understandably, those songs were received the loudest, and Krokus can in general boast good support on German soil, which is practically a tradition for Swiss bands in Germany. The energy of the show rested on the already rather gray-haired vocalist Marc Storace, who diligently made use of the “cat walk”, the aforementioned guitar pair Von Arb & Kohler fired off arrows of contagious riffing, and the tight performance was the job of the old cats in the rhythm section, bassist Chris Von Rohr and drummer Freddie Steady. who commanded from the back and reliably steered the ship into a harbor draped in thousands of silver confetti pieces.
| ARTILLERY: 20.50 – 22.00 |
Artillery are thrash metal legends. They actually brewed it together back when it was barely showing the first outlines. Deep in the eighties. Riff-oriented, with fast changes of several tempos within one song! Technically surely no easy bite! In their career they put out some excellent albums, but somehow didn’t manage to break through among the more prominent names of the scene at the time. Longer breaks followed, until the legendary Danes got back together and in 2009 released the excellent studio album “When Death Comes”, by the way only their sixth overall. The guys presented a lot of it at the Balingen show, just like in September 2009 when they visited Ljubljana. Pleasant-looking gentlemen who give the impression that nothing could pull them out of their armchairs during an afternoon read of the daily paper carry completely different character traits inside. Peter Thorslund, with the gaze of a friendly uncle, bears an incredible resemblance to No Means No drummer John Wright.
The boxy floor plan of the Volksbank hall dispelled all fears that we might get a distorted sound picture. No. Artillery presented their music with excellent sound support, where every single element of their venomously furious thrash metal content could be heard clearly. The core of the band consists of three original riders, namely the brothers Morten (bass) and Michael Stützer (guitar) and Carsten Nielsen (drums), plus longtime member and guitarist Peter Thorslund and newcomer on vocals Nico Adamsen. The latter was of course the biggest mystery on stage. With his chameleon-like character, coaxing out melodic and clean passages as well as delivering aggressively extreme forms of guttural roaring that demanded a lot of breath and facial contortions (especially puffing out his cheeks), through a dizzying chase of (even) the highest sequences, young Nico more than justified his position as Artillery’s frontman.
He built up his charismatic figure with a military helmet and glasses, which would put him among the most zealous of Sodom’s followers, and he confidently led the band’s performance through a good hour of the available time. The band, which besides the new songs Rise Above it All, When Death Comes, Upon My Cross I Crawl, The End and 10.000 Devils didn’t forget to fire off a few classic marches (among them By Inheritance, Terror Squad, Khomaniac, The Almighty), decided to dedicate a very interesting Black Sabbath cover to Ronnie. Namely, Computer God (“Dehumanizer”, 1992) ended up in the repertoire. But I have to remark that this move wasn’t the smartest, since it cut the show in two. Up to that song, the band’s assault was nearly flawless in unleashing extreme energy! The Sabbath classic inadvertently calmed the situation down, and the band then ran short of minutes to carry the end of the show through an energy flux that would reach the explosive, highly vibrant level of uncompromising punch from the opening part of the set. The band is exceptionally tight and during the show you never felt they hit a wrong note or fell out of step in the rhythmic base of their stage message. Artillery are thus a unit you absolutely must see in 2010 whenever they’re anywhere near your neck of the woods.
| HAMMERFALL: 21.20 – 23.00 |
The Lord works in mysterious ways! Or so they say. Still, some moves are reminiscent of that opening saying. HammerFall, the main headliners of the Bang Your Head!!! festival. Nice one. So where do the doubts come from now? HammerFall are constantly on tour and active in releasing studio albums, so Europe’s concert stages are always full of them, as are CD players. Apparently it turned out that this summer there was no suitable big band that started their career, say, at the turn from the seventies to the eighties and was looking for gigs at Europe’s summer festivals. A band the size of Iron Maiden is just too big for Bang Your Head-u!!!. “No” to Motorhead too, “no” to Accept too and (thankfully) “no” to Manowar (if I may be a bit wicked, Sabaton were already the top of the heap, heh heh…)! Anyway, the decision was made and HammerFall rolled onto the stage at exactly the appointed hour.
They kicked off the show in the sign of the new studio release, or rather I’d say the current studio release, “No Sacrifice, No Victory” (2009), with which we welcomed them last April in Maribor, Slovenia, too. HammerFall are a quintet of excellent musicians, seasoned foxes. Lately they’ve been strengthened by an out-of-the-ordinary guitar virtuoso, Pontus Norgren, who previously played with The Poodles and in his career also served as guitar tech for Y. J. Malmsteen, among other things. The original “Glory To The Brave” bassist, the tiny Fredrik Larsson, returned to the lineup. Give these guys a big stage and you can be sure you’ll get more than an ample portion of the HammerFall song roulette into your fresh “mug”, one you won’t recover from for a good while. Let “power metal” rule the stage, then!
The first riders of the “Euro power metal revival” surprised soon after the start of the show, when after a long, long time they brought back into the setlist the opening track of their debut studio album “Glory To The Brave” (1996), The Dragon Lies Bleeding. The performance of that song was also one of the most interesting moments of their show. HammerFall always shine with exceptional stage play, in terms of the quintet’s movement itself, taking up positions on stage, using the stage space. The bigger it is, the better HammerFall spread out on it. That’s how the guys know how to keep the crowd in check, so the crowd gets even more into joining in. Cans wildly headbanged on stage during the instrumental passages, Dronjak and Norgren stood sideways shoulder to shoulder several times as they played harmonies in thirds, and Larsson didn’t miss out on that either. On stage HammerFall also had an additional “improvised” stage, on which they freely ran to Johansson’s drums and back, and of course they used their stage activity also by having the guitarists run several times all the way to the far left and right edges of the festival stage.
Cans is an excellent frontman who knows exactly what to say in the breaks to keep the crowd with him. His banter isn’t pretentious or stagey, it always has the right amount of humor and interesting info. Among it this time was the fact that HammerFall already played the Bang Your Head!!! festival in 1997. Back then it was still held in a hall in the city of Tübingen. At the time, the promising “greenhorns” HammerFall opened the festival itself (the main headliners of the evening, among seven acts, were then the Germans Gamma Ray).
HammerFall gathered between 8,500 and 9,000 people in front of the stage, and the fan pit area generated by far the most devotion to the band during the show. The Swedes of course also thought of a generous dose of pyrotechnic effects, which included both fire play (detonations) and the crackling of rocket sparks, and the stage was wrapped in a proper smoke curtain several times during the show. The band’s performance deserves the highest marks. Both for the sound characteristics and for the high spirits the guys brought to life. Only Joacim had some unpleasant trouble with his portable mic, right at the start during Punish And Enslave. The worry that a band as experienced as HammerFall wouldn’t be up to a big stage turned out to be sheer nonsense. In the second encore the guys also played the Rainbow song Man On The Silver Mountain, and joining the band on stage as a special guest for the occasion was none other than Dark Tranquillity singer Mikael Stanne. And not without reason. He was, after all, the original HammerFall singer. This way Stanne got to warm up his vocal cords with his sharp, lower-pitched voice before the Dark Tranquillity show, which followed right after HammerFall’s concert in the Volksbank Messe hall.
DARK TRANQUILLITY 23:00 – 00:30 (indoor)
Not even ten minutes had passed since vocalist Mikael Stanne’s surprising jump onto the main stage when the Swedes Dark Tranquillity, with At the Point of Ignition, already set off on an hour-and-a-half journey through their studio discography, with an emphasis on the album “We Are the Void” released in February. The only truly still-active representatives of the famous Gothenburg school of melodic death metal, which put Gothenburg on the world metal map, they flung their catchy songs like a gauntlet at a crowd hungry for a party and favoring more aggressive rhythms. Dark Tranquillity found their recognizability in the keyboard accompaniment of Martin Brändström, whose presence throughout a song can be very appealing to all lovers of hunting for melody in more extreme metal genres, and whose melodies often even play the lead role in song intros and outros. Recommended also for those who usually avoid melodeath sounds! The band came across excellently on the indoor stage, since without a doubt the energy of a band used to club shows would have evaporated into the air among the stars on the main stage, and the cherry on top of the whipped cream was the sound from the mixing desk, which took good care of the symbiosis between keyboards and guitar that is so important in the world of melodic genres. Charismatic Stanne once again proved his versatility, with transitions from a deep growl to clean vocal lines causing him not the slightest trouble. The fans certainly got their money’s worth, although, frankly, given the Swedes’ reputation I expected a bigger crowd in front of the stage. The reason lies in the fact that Bang You Head!!! is primarily aimed at heavy metal devotees, so in the whole lineup Dark Tranquillity ended up at the very top of extremity and consequently drew less interest from the crowd than they would at some other festival.
| text: Urban Bolta (Grand Magus, Anvil, Jon Oliva’s Pain, Doro, Krokus, Dark Tranquillity) |
| text: Aleš Podbrežnik (intro, Enforcer, Forbidden, Sabaton, Loudness, Artillery, HammerFall) |
| photos: Aleš Podbrežnik |
Setlist
10:00 – 10:40 THE NEW BLACK 10:50 — 11:30 ENFORCER 11:40 — 12:30 GRAND MAGUS 12:40 — 13:30 FORBIDDEN 13:40 — 14:30 SABATON 14:40 — 15:30 LOUDNESS 15:45 — 16:40 ANVIL 16:55 — 17:55 JON OLIVA’S PAIN 18:10 — 19:20 DORO 19:20 – 20:20 DARKANE (indoor) 19:40 — 20:50 KROKUS 20:50 — 22:00 ARTILLERY (indoor) 21:20 — 23:00 HAMMERFALL 23:00 — 00:30 DARK TRANQUILLITY (indoor) ENFORCER setlist: 1. Midnight Vice 2. Mistress from Hell 3. On The Loose 4. Katana 5. Roll The Dice 6. Diamonds 7. Scream of the Savage 8. Walk With Me 9. Take Me to Hell 10. Evil Attacker GRAND MAGUS setlist: 1. Kingslayer 2. Like The Oar Strikes The Water 3. Silver Into Steel 4. At Midnight They’ll Get Wise 5. Wolf’s Return 6. I, The Jury 7. Hammer Of The North 8. Iron Will 9. The Shadow Knows FORBIDDEN setlist: 1. Infinite 2. R.I.P. 3. Step By Step 4. Through The Eyes of Glass 5. Adapt or Die 6. Children of the Sea 7. Chalice Of Blood SABATON setlist: 1. Ghost Division 2. Panzer Battalion 3. Coat of Arms 4. Saboteurs 5. Cliffs Of Gallipoli 6. The Price Of A Mile 7. Screaming Eagles —encore— 8. The Art Of War 9. Primo Victoria 10. Metal Machine / Metal Crüe LOUDNESS setlist: 1. Crazy Nights 2. Crazy Doctor 3. Esper 4. Heavy Chains 5. In the Mirror 6. Let It Go 7. S.D.I. 8. Loudness ANVIL setlist: 1. March of the Crabs 2. 666 3. School Love 4. Winged Assassins 5. This Is Thirteen 6. Mothra 7. Heaven And Hell / Thumb Hang 8. White Rhino 9.. Metal on Metal JON OLIVA’S PAIN setlist: 1. Lies 2. Chance 3. Jesus Saves 4. Sirens 5. The Dungeons Are Calling 6. Death Rides a Black Horse 7. Edge of Thorns 8. Gutter Ballet 9. Believe 10. Festival 11. Rainbow in the Dark 12. Hall of the Mountain King DORO setlist: 1. You’re My Family 2. I Rule the Ruins 3. Earthshaker Rock 4. Running From the Devil 5. Burning The Witches 6. Egypt (The Chains Are On) 7. Für Immer 8. Burn It Up 9. Celebrate 10. Metal Racer 11. Always Live To Win 12. Breaking The Law 13. All We Are KROKUS setlist: 1. Long Stick Goes Boom 2. American Woman 3. Rock’n’Roll Handshake 4. Tokyo Nights 5. Fire 6. Burning Bones 7. Screaming In The Night 8. Easy Rocker 9. Bedside Radio 10. Heatstrokes —encore— 11. Hoodoo Woman 12. Born To Be Wild 13. Long Live Rock’n’Roll HAMMERFALL setlist: 1. Punish And Enslave 2. The Dragon Lies Bleeding 3. Crimson Thunder 4. Hallowed Be My Name 5. Renegade 6. Last Man Standing 7. Blood Bound 8. Heeding The Call 9. Rebel Inside 10. Any Means Necessary 11. Stronger Than All 12. Riders Of The Storm —encore I.— 13. Secrets 14. Let The Hammer Fall —encore II.— 15. Man On The Silver Mountain 16. Hearts On Fire DARK TRANQUILLITY setlist: 1. At The Point Of Ignition 2. The Fatalist 3. Focus Shift 4. The Wonders At Your Feet 5. Final Resistance 6. Misery’s Crown 7. Punish My Heaven 8. Iridium 9. Shadow In Our Blood 10. The Lesser Faith 11. Dream Oblivion 12. Lethe 13. Lost To Apathy 14. ThereIn 15. The Grandest Accusation 16. Terminus (Where Death Is Most Alive)
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