Bang Your Head!!! festival (Day Two): The Thrash Metal Gods Close Things Out With a Roar (2011)
Location: Messegelände / Balingen / Germany
Date: Friday, 15.07.2011
And so day two of BYH!!! 2011 rolled around. Let me just hint that we were freezing in our tents at night, with the temperature hitting a measly 6° C above zero.
IVANHOE:
The second day of this year’s Bang Your Head!!! finally got a whiff of prog metal! That was down to Germany’s Ivanhoe, from Bietigheim. Even if the name sounds less familiar, Ivanhoe have been around since 1986. It was a long road to their debut, which only came out in 1992. When they appeared on the scene, they were, much like Vanden Plas in those years, Europe’s answer to the Dream Theater boom across the Atlantic. Their latest studio album, their fifth, is called Lifeline and came out three years ago. The sun greeted the guys, and as a result there were far more people gathered in front of the stage than the day before, when the hometown boys Human Zoo opened the festival in cloudy weather. Ivanhoe are seasoned musicians, and there was never any doubt that a band whose current lineup has been thoroughly reshuffled would deliver a tight, polished and well-interpreted show. The only problem is that the guys aren’t used to big stages. That’s partly down to the unfortunate fact of languishing in an obscure position, from which they can’t break out onto a wider European tour and bring their music to a larger audience. On stage they came across as very stiff, static and downright timid. But since Ivanhoe rack up their winning points mainly through complex, highly coordinated instrumentation, led by a melodic, clean and powerful voice, we’ll absolutely give that quality priority. And on that front Ivanhoe ran through their repertoire very correctly and confidently, starting with the opener Lifeline, the excellent, many-layered and dynamic ballad Angels Holocaust, and the arabesque-laced Cheops, all three from the latest studio album. The band surprised us with Deeper Ground, taken from the debut “Visions And Reality”. In short, for connoisseurs and those who haven’t forgotten the glory days of prog metal’s rise in the nineties, Ivanhoe’s set was an extremely rewarding moment of this year’s BYH!!!
METAL INQUISITOR
Next into battle against the early hour were Metal Inquisitor, a heavy metal outfit from central Germany. Since they started out in 1998 they’ve released three slightly different-sounding albums, the latest, “Unconditional Absolution”, at the end of last year. Their early epic heavy metal with touches of speed and power metal has, on the latest record, given way to cleaner power metal phrasing. Metal Inquisitor attacked the stage without a shred of shyness and quickly showed they’re devoted to the heavy metal faith. The fast tempos and guitar shredding at times recalled speed metal forefathers like Exciter or the somewhat more sophisticated Manilla Road, while other clichéd lines brought power metal veterans Grave Digger to mind. On stage Metal Inquisitor seemed a bit confused and lost, which can probably be blamed on stage fright. Searing interwoven guitar lines, riff twitching and a hint of dark atmosphere are the German band’s main trademarks, and they drew lovers of the traditional heavy metal creed to the front of the stage. A solid morning party, but one that, buried in clichés, can hardly surprise with superlatives.
ASTRAL DOORS:
Those of you who went to the Blind Guardian show in Ljubljana in October 2006 probably remember this band. Astral Doors were the support act back then, presenting their third studio album “Astralism”. Since we last saw each other, the industrious Swedes have lined up two more studio albums, the latest, “Requiem Of Time”, last year. The Swedish metallers are certainly marked by high quality. They have just one cosmetic flaw: they remind you a tad too much of Black Sabbath in their late romantic era, which, besides the two albums with Dio on vocals, is further deepened by the character of the albums that followed with Tony Martin in the lineup. Beyond the massive, heavy-rolling riffs set into mostly cannon-fire crashing of mid-paced booming rhythms, the lion’s share of that feeling comes from singer Nils Patrik Johansson. A great singer, only that at times he’s almost grotesquely similar in his gesturing, in the sequence of verses he picks and of course in the way he sings, sometimes to Martin, sometimes to Dio. Switch your brain off a little and you could easily mistake Astral Doors for a Dio-era Black Sabbath tribute band. And where Dio is close, so is Jorn Lande, if I may be a bit nasty. Then again, Nils was the first one to use the “catwalk” so far at the festival. The band has grown into a confident, compact and chiseled stage unit that does a great job live. There was the catchy Cold War Survivor, then the equally excellent title track from “New Revelation”, built on a power metal chorus, the gloomy Slay The Dragon, the crushing anthemic march Testament of Rock from the new album and, of course, for all fans of elves, immortal heroes and chopping dragons’ heads off, Power And Glory.
TYGERS OF PAN TANG:
Want something old? Of pioneering proportions? A glass beast that crawled in from the days when making music wasn’t as heavily burdened by commercialism as it is today? Pure-blooded, true-to-the-core representatives of the N.W.O.B.H.M. movement, revived after 2000 in a more or less stable lineup, with Robb Weir the only original member left. Without a doubt one of the highlights of the second day of this year’s Bang Your Head!!! They’re not Iron Maiden, they’re not Diamond Head, but they are Tygers Of Pan Tang! The band “burst” onto the stage the way it should be done, with the first track from the 1980 studio debut “Wild Cat”, called Euthanasia. The area in front of the stage was nicely packed, and the Germans clearly haven’t forgotten the elemental sounds that shaped the first wave of metal on the planet and, when they appeared, made it fatally popular. Right after Euthanasia come two “Spellbound” hooks in a row, Take It and Tyger Bay, and then the guys also played the newer Hot Blooded, which carried over and kept all the typical traits of classic Tygers Of Pan Tang. Then came a tantalizing intro that sent the audience high and proud into the air, and Weir stood shoulder to shoulder with Dean Robertson as the two gentlemen sharply cut the lead guitar phrase of the catchy “Spellbound” classic Gangland. A great build-up of mood from song to song. It’s not hard when you’ve got albums in your pocket that boast the classic label, and you’re accompanied in front of the stage by an audience loyal to tradition and basic originality. The guys also surprised us by including the more-than-excellent Rock And Roll Man, left off the debut “Wild Cat” but which found its place on the 1981 live album “Live In Notthingam”. Just as I started wondering where the hell the “Crazy Nights” songs were, the Tygers hit us with Raised On Rock. Jacopo Meille is a vocalist who meets the standards of John Deverill, and Robertson is a guitarist who successfully fills in for John Sykes. Jacopo announces the last song of the day, the crowd closes ranks in front of the stage one last time, and heads in Ballingen “go wild” as the Hellbound riff flashes. Tygers Of Pan Tang plan to release a new studio album next year. When they head out on tour, we’ll meet them again. And at the first opportunity. The band took its Bang Your Head!!! show deadly seriously: at the official merch table you could even buy a commemorative Tygers Of Pan Tang shirt marking only their appearance at this festival.
D-A-D:
Another legendary band, this time of Danish origin, which for years carried the provocative yet attractive name Disneyland After Dark, until a serious lawsuit threat from the film company forced them to change it. Hence D-A-D. On this day of the festival the guys were pure musical candy. A special blend of hard rock with melodic catchiness and punk arrogance, which they like to call “cowpunk”, it doesn’t hide a dash of glam frills. The music strings together a colorful mix of moods, taking in melancholy, cheeky self-mockery and the character of true Wild West desperados. The lucid schemers embodied by the quartet, led by the Binzer brothers and the wacky bassist Stig Pedersen, with nothing but an E and an A string on a bass made of plexiglass, are masters of amusement parks, which is exactly what the vast Bang Your Head festival stage is. By far the most energy released by a band up to that point! Just a quartet, yet they command the place. There’s no doubt about that. The band members’ constant nimble movement, as they practically competed over who could hold the front of the catwalk longer, fired up the crowd for every single minute. The naughty Evil Twin, where Jesper puts down the guitar and warns the audience in German: “Mein bruder spielt gitare!”, right after it Bad Craziness, in which Jesper provocatively fondles a vein on his right arm, and then the newer, tightly wound, pulsating Beautiful Together.
It’s incredible how this modest quartet covers a huge amount of sonic space and uses the sheer expanse of the stage. That comes down to exceptional experience and miles on the road. The band, in great spirits, truly stirred up the crowd from start to finish, and singer Jesper’s use of German helped a lot too. Sure, his German is broken, but in terms of usefulness, that beats brilliant English. There were also Monster Philosophy, Scare Yourself and Girl Nation, then the obligatory, expected Sleeping My Day Away, where Jesper couldn’t get over how well the crowd had the song down. To close, Everything Glows, then the last one, It’s After Dark, and just like that the explosive set was over. Fifty minutes? Felt like none at all. And the sun was already a little past its zenith.
HARDCORE SUPERSTAR
After the Danes, the Swedes Hardcore Superstar stormed the stage, Scandinavian revivers of the sleaze rock creed. This variant of hard rock, hugely present in northern Europe these days, had a real boom with the success of bands like H.E.A.T., Crashdiet and Fatal Smile, but it has to be stressed that it was Hardcore Superstar, with roots in the nineties, who paved the way for the Scandinavian sleaze rock boom a few years back. So it’s no surprise that a month ago they got the honor of headlining the warm-up day of Sweden Rock festival (report here), but it was clear that, with a foreign crowd and an early-afternoon slot, we wouldn’t get another set that intense. Regardless, the Swedes confidently pulled off their allotted 50 minutes and satisfied a nice number of people in front of the stage. With just one guitar, and consequently simply built songs, the Superstars play it up with instantly catchy anthemic choruses, punch and of course explosive showmanship, which together make for a healthy dose of fun. The main figure on stage was, as ever, the recognizably glammed-up frontman Joakim Berg, the engine of the band and the cog that reliably pulled the Swedish machinery toward the end of the set. The Superstars walked through their discography, with a clear focus on the still-current album “Split Your Lip”, represented by Moonshine, Sadistic Girl and Last Call For Alcohol, while the acoustic version of Run To Your Mama got cut from the set because of the short running time. A pleasing set from regulars at Bang Your Head!!!, as expected without any out-of-this-world highlights.
PSYCHOTIC WALTZ
After finishing the European “Power of Metal” club tour with Nevermore and Symphony X, the reunited cult American progressives Psychotic Waltz returned to the stage right at Balingen. After splitting the crowd into two camps with their show in Ljubljana in March, and remaining the target of debate for a while, they could draw a few parallels with this festival set too. The long absence from the music map took its toll, because there wasn’t much of a crowd in front of the stage, very much like in March at Cvetličarna. The quintet’s philosophy is to devote themselves one hundred percent to the music and its stage interpretation, so they can be forgiven a totally unpolished image, which still didn’t go as far as in March, when guitarist Dan Rock and vocalist Buddy Lackey came on dressed in what were practically potato sacks. They opened the roughly hour-long set with Mosquito and began a unique journey through little-known musical dimensions and their trademark psychedelia. Locust, Northern Lights and Haze One flowed into one another, and only the in-between banter kept us hypnotized listeners from unwittingly dropping into melancholy dreams. The slow psychedelic songs were the building blocks of a mysterious atmosphere over Balingen, and only Lackey’s vocal flights into the sky proved that Psychotic Waltz, and the crowd with them, are still down to earth. Gentle touches of acoustics mixed with the menacing sound of the bass, shifting tempos, the occasional attack by both guitars and even a “Jethro Tull-ish” moment in I Remember, which Lackey opened with a flute bit. The fluid delivery, the singular interpretation of what they played and the ease on stage were proof that the original five are bound by mutual chemistry and that maybe… who knows, they could surprise us in the future with another studio album. The Americans closed the set, with a radically changed setlist (a very commendable move!), with Halo of Thorns and, from every angle, completely satisfied the appetites of the few devoted fans in front of the stage.
JEFF SCOTT SOTO:
At five in the afternoon Jeff Scott Soto took the stage with his band. By agreement with Pretty Maids, the two bands swapped their slots, so Pretty Maids played in the hall at a quarter to nine. Jeff Scott Soto didn’t exactly have the best day at the festival. During the opener 21st Century his mic died on him at first, so he “chased” the right-hand guitarist over to keep the left-hand guitarist company on backing vocals, while he himself stepped up to the vacated mic stand on the left and the song finally got a lead vocal. Quite a few minutes passed before they brought Jeff a “spare” wireless mic, so the rest of the first Talisman song, Blissful Garden, finally ran in the standard manner. That very song was the first to show the musical character and “school” Jeff Scott Soto comes from, inspired once upon a time by masters of vocal acrobatics from Freddie Mercury (Queen) to Steve Perry (Journey). Melodic rock. The backing-vocal harmonies of both guitarists and the bassist were cut excellently. However, the unfortunate mishap at the start of the show contributed to a certain lack of ease, which you could feel in Jeff’s communication with the crowd during the set. The crowd didn’t show much interest either, and it seemed like most of the congregation was watching Soto’s set purely out of respect and to show support for the musician. Jeff drew a few cheeky smiles of joy from the audience when he launched into a very inventive “ladder” in which he ran through the famous guitar phrases of Gotthard, Dio, Y&T, Michael Jackson and Gary Moore. A whole bunch of Talisman fans in attendance got their money’s worth too, when Jeff cut a second “ladder” of the home favorites, made up of Break Your Chains, Day By Day, Give Me A Sign, Dangerous, Just Between Us and Mysterious (This Time It’s Serious), and then spiced it up with one more Talisman standard played in full, the song I’II Be Waiting. Jeff didn’t forget his time with the “German Blackmore”, Axel Rudi Pell, either! So the songs Fool Fool In Warrior rang out in shortened versions, one after the other.
SONATA ARCTICA:
The audience had by now been thoroughly reshuffled and was a lot fuller. Up next were the flint-hard Finnish symphonic pop-metal elves Sonata Arctica. Sonata Arctica, which today enjoys unbelievably good support, especially among younger fans who get fired up the moment they hear the word metal, has become a very spoiled band as a result. Then again, in their new position Sonata Arctica don’t go to extremes toward their surroundings the way you can sense with the princesses and the pea. Yes, I’m pointing the finger at you, burnt-out Helloween! Still, you can sense more and more hollowness and routine from the stage with Sonata Arctica these days too. What’s more, the quintet doesn’t even bother to use the vast stage. Everyone except singer Tony stands practically rooted to the spot during the set. Elias Viljanen puts his foot up on the monitor in front of the mic, and that’s about it. Luckily, Tony’s vocal form of the day was better this time than in a few earlier Sonata Arctica shows I’ve caught in 2009, 2010 and February 2011 in Ljubljana, but still. Without the loud and devoted support of the girls in front of the stage, who were probably watching their first metal (?) concert ever, the huge stage would have completely swallowed little Sonata. A predictable set, even without songs from the debut, but the guys made up for it entirely by including the “Silence” tracks Black Sheep, Sing In Silence and Last Drop Falls. To finish, the band covered up its apparent exhaustion with the beloved Don’t Say A Word, which squeezed a serious number of decibels out of the crowd’s throats. But never mind. The crowd got its money’s worth. You have to bear in mind that Sonata Arctica have effectively been touring nonstop since fall 2009, so the guys urgently need a break. Even if it lasts five or six years. On stage the band truly looks worn out and exhausted.
HELLOWEEN
As the afternoon slowly tipped into evening, it was time for Helloween. The German heavy/power metal legends played as part of the current “7 Sinners” tour, whose start we also got to see at Kino Šiška in Ljubljana (report here). Interestingly, despite their popularity on home soil, Helloween have never headlined a day at Balingen, and this time too they played “just” as the warm-up for the evening’s main act.
With their hour-plus comedy show and a heaping dose of onstage clowning, the Pumpkins managed to wrap the gathered crowd around their finger and successfully kept it in front of the stage with a mix of “Keeper Of The Seven Keys” hits and newer material. Stumbling around on stage, healthy teasing of one another and a constant hookup to the positive frequency are an integral part of their show. In all of this, the elders Michael Weikath and Markus Grosskopf dominate the right side of the stage, while the “rookie” Sasche Gerstner (even though he’s been in the band for a solid decade) still has a strictly musical job first and foremost, and gets rewarded with dirty looks from the band’s bosses for any potential slip-up. The relaxed mood on stage instantly carried over to the listeners, who (we) mostly wanted as much music as possible and a lot less of Andy Deris’s chatter. The frontman again overdid it with rambling all over the place and repeating already-told jokes about whiskey and drummer Dani Löble. The unspontaneous flow of the show left a big black stain on the Pumpkins this time, and consequently the crowd’s response was limited too, failing to do justice to the band’s stature on home turf. The bitter aftertaste was nudged toward a friendlier shade by March Of Time, I’m Alive and Dr. Stein, but the predictable setlist, the lack of real feeling and the aforementioned long-windedness were still too hard a nut to crack for a positive verdict on this latest meeting with the Pumpkins.
PRETTY MAIDS:
The poor souls partly overlapped with the Helloween set. Poor souls? Not really. Anyone who knows how Helloween have been behaving on stage lately skipped their set this time without a second thought and treated themselves instead to an hour of sharp, potent, classically conceived hard rock with a generous helping of catchy, melodically compact anthemic tunes. On top of that, from a band you don’t get the chance to see on stage every day. The legendary Danes Pretty Maids. The German crowd was well aware of this Helloween overkill, so the MesseHalle was completely full for Pretty Maids, with 1,500 heads. I barely fought my way to the photo pit in time, since security was only letting small groups of waiting people into the hall, having watched for feedback from colleagues inside and at the exit that enough space had opened up for new visitors.
Pretty Maids tore the Messehalle apart. Hal Patina has been replaced in the band by new bassist Rene Shades, known for his work in singer Mike Tramp’s White Lion backing band. The band trimmed the repertoire of the headline tour from November 2010 and shook it up a bit. Sin-Decade was an exceptionally nice addition to the set, alongside the obligatory Back To Back, Rodeo and Love Games, and, in the encore, Future World and Red Hot And Heavy.
The band was in great spirits. Ronnie Atkins didn’t hide a slight vocal fatigue toward the end, but for a guy of such venerable age you’ve got to cut him some slack. Pretty Maids give off a feeling of extreme ease and general approachability toward the crowd throughout, with a well-honed sense for a fun dose of healthy humor, and of course it doesn’t work without the fantastic Ken Jackson, a master at filling space effectively with just one guitar. Pretty Maids delivered one of the most compact shows of the day, and the hall was literally boiling with the crowd’s relaxed adrenaline rush. Pretty Maids announced a DVD recording on 01.10.2011, when they’ll play the Z7 club in the middle of Pratteln, Switzerland.
SLAYER
Once the most extreme band on the planet, today living legends of the genre. Thrash metal veterans Slayer played as the evening’s headliners as the festival wound down, which was good news for all the die-hard fans, me included, but their presence still didn’t blend with the overall image of Bang Your Head!!!, where headliners in the past have included Twisted Sister, Heaven & Hell, Journey, Blind Guardian, Judas Priest… Let’s hope the organizers manage to get back on the tracks of traditional heavy metal, the event’s longtime trademark, in the coming years.
A taped World Painted Blood intro served as the overture as Slayer marched onto the stage, and the intro logically pulled into the title track of the latest studio album. Songs from “World Painted Blood” (2009) still dig deep into the setlist, as they followed up with Hate Worldwide and Snuff, while, interestingly, there was no room in the set for Beauty Through Order, which they played on last year’s “Big 4” tour. The crush and shoving in the front rows were relentless, just like the hellish tempo of the foursome on stage. Tom Araya in the middle, Kerry King to his right, Dave Lombardo behind the kit, and on the left still Gary Holt. The Exodus man is still filling in for Jeff Hanneman, who, despite the original optimistic forecasts, hasn’t recovered by this festival summer enough to be able to play a full show.
It’s hard to imagine a more credible replacement than Gary Holt. A man with a serious face and a sharpened sense for guitar trickery, he fit into the band superbly, decently filled the hole on the left and even brought some of his own charisma to the band. That showed especially in his reliable delivery of the solos (Spirit in Black, Angel of Death..), where he kind of outshone the proverbially average King. The stage performance was spontaneous and, given the band’s age, satisfying, though it’s clear that today’s Slayer show can’t be compared to the brutal gigs of the eighties. First of all you have to factor in Araya’s immobility, dictated by his spine problems in recent years. Vocally the frontman did well and improved on his form from a year or two ago, when the shouts in War Ensemble and Angel of Death were already at the limit of what he could do. The most consistent and reliable cog in Slayer is thus drummer Lombardo, a master of his craft, who played the technically demanding set without a single slip. Lombardo’s reputation in metal circles is high for a reason.
In the hour-and-a-half set Slayer served us evergreen classics from the eighties one after another, though for rotating the songs they play so little from tour to tour they deserve a solid slap on the wrist. They played Postmortem, the phenomenal Dead Skin Mask, the ever-present Mandatory Suicide and, in the encore, the most recognizable triumphs South of Heaven, Raining Blood and Black Magic fused together, and, for the perfect finish before the traditional fireworks, Angel of Death. A satisfying show from the thrash metal gods, which, hand on heart, because of the constancy of their touring can hardly offer anything new to a regular follower of their concerts.
LORDI:
The MesseHalle had been full for ages, even before Slayer finished their set outside on the main stage. During the fireworks, which mark the end of every year’s festival in Balingen, the view of the hall looked like a heap of corpses. The two days of partying definitely left their mark on the people. And yet the hall was critically short of air. When the flashing and crashing stops outside, it moves inside the hall. On stage Lordi, and the first four songs of the famous horror show of slimy zombie-puppet folklore are literally wrapped in a bulletproof curtain of smoke, through which pyrotechnic detonations flash. A Lordi concert is really theater. There’s not much room for authenticity here. Throughout the show Lordi use a whole bag of backing tracks and pre-recorded lines. From the backing vocals to the host of symphonic arrangements and extra “undercurrent rhythms”, sometimes it’s hard to tell where the line between facade and authenticity lies.
Unbothered by that fact, the crowd enjoyed themselves without limits, and the venue itself confirmed it, along with the high spirits that never let up during Lordi’s set. In order came Babez for Breakfast, Dynamite Tonite, My Heaven Is Your Hell, Bite It Like A Bulldog, Rock Police, Call Off the Wedding, Who’s Your Daddy?, Last Kiss Goodbye, Blood Red Sandman, Hate at First Sight, Bringing Back The Balls To Rock, This Is Heavy Metal, Devil Is A Loser, They Only Come Out At Night, Get Heavy and, in the encore, Hard Rock Hallelujah and Would You Love A Monsterman?.
Practically every song is accompanied by a matching scene, where Mr. Lordi transforms into quite a few different villains during the show, and where a lovely pile of human heads and limbs gets cut, chopped and even eaten. In short, endless fun, tailor-made for everyone who may have been suffering from insomnia that night.
At half past midnight the last note rang out at this year’s BYH!!! festival! Even though this year the festival wasn’t as strong in terms of band names as in past years, it offered an exceptionally colorful genre palette of acts. Bang your Head!!! remains, even after this year’s edition, one of the best-organized festivals in Europe. As it wraps up, our thoughts are already on the next edition, announced for 13.07.2012 and 14.07.2011!
text: Aleš Podbrežnik (Ivanhoe, Astral Doors, Tygers of Pan Tang, D-A-D, Jeff Scott Soto, Sonata Arctica, Pretty Maids, Lordi)
text: Urban Bolta (Metal Inquisitor, Hardcore Superstar, Psychotic Waltz, Helloween, Slayer)
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
