Author: Rok Klemše
Photos: Nina Grad
Venue: Vojenska pevnost Josefov, Jaromer, Czech Republic
Date: August 10, 2012
Attendance: 22,000
Thursday got off to such a great start with thrashers Toxic Holocaust that I decided to kick off Friday with thrash too. And if any new-school thrash band knows how thrash should sound in the 21st century, it’s California’s Warbringer. The guys greeted us with Living Weapon, the opener from their latest record Worlds Torn Asunder, and war broke out in front of the stage that very second. And not some trench-warfare, tactics-and-strategy kind of war, but all-out total war, meant to wipe out and mow down everything in its path. From first song to last, Warbringer sprayed the crowd with machine-gun fire and bombs, while helicopters drenched Josefov in napalm like the opening of Apocalypse Now! And Warbringer acted like they couldn’t care less about the casualties: guitarists John Laux and Adam Carroll just swapped magazines and stormed off into another assault of songs from all three albums. Hell had opened up, and its legions were commanded by a rabid John Kevill. What a frontman! Incredibly charismatic, with great stage presence, good banter between songs, pure thrasher energy that Paul Baloff surely put in his cradle, and most importantly, perfectly sick, venomous and aggressive thrash vocals. On stage, Kevill comes across like the metal version of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman from Kubrick’s cult classic Full Metal Jacket! Real thrash crushers like Total War and the closing bombing run Combat Shock prove that Warbringer are without a doubt one of the best (if not the best) of the new thrash metal bands that have sprung up like mushrooms in the last few years, but the Bringers of War leave all the competition behind in the exhaust of their tank and the shockwave of their blast.
After such a good show my interest in the next band dropped. I needed to catch my breath, even though on the neighboring stage Finnish melodic death metallers Norther were getting ready for their farewell show. A good month ago the guys announced they were calling it quits, and they picked Brutal Assault for their last gig. There’s nothing to fault in a competently played set, but Norther’s decision to retire is the right one, since they never reinvented the wheel in melodic death metal, let alone discovered hot water.
Things took a turn for the better (or the worse, hehe) with New York death metal veterans Incantation. Right before the summer festival season they had an accident, when drummer Kyle Severn broke his leg, so they cancelled their Metalcamp show, but luckily Brutal Assault was spared. Hired gun Sam Inzerra took the drum seat (in more than twenty years of existence Incantation have gone through almost forty members anyway!), while the band’s grey eminence remains Beelzebub in person, John McEntee. McEntee and crew delivered a good hour of blasphemous death metal, backed by good sound, brutal, hellish vocals and a good choice of songs (Anoint the Chosen, Devoured Death, Absolved in Blood!). The vocals thundered like a hundred devils, Inzerra convinced with good drumming and razor-sharp blast beats, and the slow, doomy riffs came off great too, making the whole thing even more bestial and devilishly evil. Despite the very solid performance, you could see the band was pretty reserved, and from one of the godfathers of death metal I justifiably expected more than »fuck, come on you fucking mother fuckers« banter from McEntee.
With Insomnium we drifted back into gentler waters. The guys led us over Finnish lakes and through little forests into the gloomy melancholy that has become so typical of Finnish bands. Insomnium are still promoting their latest record One For Sorrow, which once again made up a full 90 percent of the set, though sadly that means the guys are forgetting their older releases (which top the new one in many ways). The good sound, which luckily was more the rule than the exception this year compared to previous editions of the festival (I don’t know if they bought the sound guys earplugs, hid their Becherovka, or explained that the knobs on the mixing desk aren’t just for decoration, but whatever they did, it finally worked this time!), pushed the essence of Insomnium to the front: more aggressive melodic death metal full of slower, sorrowful parts that have become so characteristic of the Finnish metal scene. Melodic passages came flying from all sides, played side by side by both guitars, along with plenty of harmonic embellishments and varied, lively solo excursions. The two guitarists showed stunning quality, firing off riffs at full power, and despite how many there were, they never repeated themselves. Despite the aggressive foundation, Insomnium always carry a certain tragic sorrow and black melancholy, and they pull off that atmosphere remarkably well with guitar lines alone. They don’t need cliché keyboards to build it, just the occasional keyboard part floating in from the backing track, which successfully elevated the experience. As always, Insomnium did their job with quality and confidence, it’s just that their melancholy doesn’t quite fit the festival’s atmosphere, and real death or thrash metal would have sat much better in their slot.
Norwegian black metallers Kampfar (don’t miss them in Ljubljana in November either!) rightly reminded us of the festival’s primary focus on extreme, brutal metal, bringing the chill of the Norwegian fjords to the Czech Republic. Kampfar wrapped us in a thick atmosphere of nightmares with atmospheric, mid-tempo black metal that doesn’t need pointless jingle-bell keyboards to create ambience. With Kampfar, the intense, thick layer of fog is conjured solely by varied and lively guitars that can offer more than just black metal buzzing, dynamic drums that don’t rely only on constant blast beats, and the beastly, bestial vocals of Askeje and Dolk. In my opinion they were the black metal winners of this year’s festival, encasing Brutal Assault in a mighty layer of Norwegian glacier ice, with national pride bursting out of the songs and complete, unbridled energy on tracks like Ravenheart, Mare and Vettekult. Follow the Ravenheart!
Since the various offshoots of core don’t do much for me, and I avoid them like Glen Benton avoids upside-down crosses, I skipped Darkest Hour. Luckily Brutal Assault has plenty of other activities, in case a hundred bands wear you out to the point where you need to give yourself a rest. You can watch the band undisturbed from the natural grandstand, where this year they made the smart move of putting a bar. If you’re a fan of obscure (Czech) grind, you can thoroughly empty your wallet at the metal market, or you can catch an excellent selection of horror films at the metal cinema (with Czech subtitles/dubbing, haha), or you can spend hours and hours agonizing over what to eat (at Brutal Assault, besides the standard kebabs, pizza and burgers, you can also sink your teeth into Mexican, Chinese and Arabic food, plus Czech and Polish specialties, sausages, vegan and vegetarian food, etc.). And if that’s still not enough, this year Brutal Assault even laid on a paintball course. Wow.
A few beers later I was in front of the Jaegermaister stage for this year’s first Brutal Assault appearance by the legendary Greg Mackintosh (Paradise Lost), who stepped on stage with his brand-new band Vallenfyre and delivered a proper slap of old-school death metal, laced here and there with doom and even bits of crust. Delicious! Last October Vallenfyre released their debut, A Fragile King, which was born in the dark atmosphere following the death of Greg’s father. A Fragile King works like a musical setting of the five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. On one hand, Vallenfyre is brutal old-school death metal with bulldozer-toned guitars that roll right over your head, with riffing that’s occasionally almost crust-primitive, and on the other, deep, menacing, slow and heavy doom passages. Over it all comes Mackintosh’s brutal barking, which in its personal, confessional lyrics often takes a sophisticated swipe at the Church: »because it’s so easy.« Even though Mackintosh is primarily a guitarist, he handles the frontman role surprisingly well, especially when it comes to linking the program together, and the rest is said by the hard-hitting music anyway, which one moment rips your head off at unbridled speed and the next pushes you underground with ton-heavy riffs.
Vallenfrye were only the overture to the return of the Cursed, the cult German death metal band Morgoth, who broke ground for European death metal in the late eighties and early nineties. The Germans, who laid the foundations of Euro death metal with their debut Cursed (1991), sank into oblivion after splitting up in 1998, and two years ago they came back from the dead as one of the more interesting and exciting »reunions.« Morgoth meant deadly business and kicked things off by counting the corpses with the Cursed classic Body Count. A fantastic sound that cut straight into the brain’s cortex, guitars that sounded like rabid dogs let off their chains and hacked off heads mercilessly with murderous riffing like Melkor, earthquake drums, and the raw, brutal and unbelievably well-preserved vocals of Marc Grewe, topped off by an exceptionally well-disposed band, were the factors that sent Morgoth soaring to the top of this year’s Brutal Assault. In honor of the twentieth anniversary of the album Cursed, the Germans devoted themselves mostly to crushers from that death metal classic, lining up the unforgettable Unreal Imagination, Sold Baptism and Suffer Life, and then they hurled us without a shred of mercy even deeper into the abyss of Utumno (the fortress of Melkor, later Morgoth, the Dark Lord and main villain of Tolkien’s Middle-earth, after whom the Germans took their name) with the anthems from the EP The Eternal Fall, White Gallery and Pits of Utumno. Throughout, Morgoth kept the quality of the performance at the highest level and showed phenomenal form (as proven by the excellent DVD Cursed to Live, released recently). Too bad time didn’t allow the band to take us back to the (unjustly) overlooked record Odium, or maybe even their last studio effort Feel Sorry For the Fanatic, even though they were already toying with industrial elements on it. The charismatic Grewe held the crowd in the grip of a lion’s roar that sounds like an unholy mix of John Tardy (Obituary) and Chuck Schuldiner (Death), while the varied and lively guitar lines of the Sebastian Swart/Harry Busse duo mutilated us beyond recognition like a horde of orcs. As expected, but bombastically, Morgoth closed their set with the hit Isolated, which first trampled us with a doomy, heavy and slow intro, then finished us off and doomed us with a hurricane-force storm of hard-hitting death metal. The highlight of this year’s Brutal Assault, and I’m putting this warmly on your hearts – if you care about death metal at all, catch Morgoth the moment you get the chance!
Late afternoon was perfect for resting and quenching my thirst in town, where during the festival almost every window sill offers beer, and it was far more enjoyable than the festival grounds (and converted to euros it cost a laughable 70 to 90 cents). In the evening I gave Sweden’s Amon Amarth one more chance to win me over. They failed again, and I truly hope I’ll be spared in the future and manage to steer clear of them by a wide margin. You won’t find more generic and boring »death metal« than what Ama Njama offer. Three quarters of the riffs from the unoriginal guitar duo Johan Soderberg/Olavi Mikkonen sound like they’ve been chewed over a hundred times and heard before in practically every Swedish melodic death metal band, and the Vikings and Norse mythology theme is worn out and forced to the point of unconsciousness. It was more exciting watching Chinese noodles being tossed in a wok at a nearby stand.
Obviously one of the most anticipated bands of this year’s festival were the giants of modern thrash/groove metal, America’s Machine Head. The area in front of the stage was packed to the last corner before their set, and Josefov exploded into a giant bomb of human bodies, limbs and everything that goes with them. When Machine Head, led by Robb Flynn, fired the starting pistol and launched into the eight-minute epic I Am Hell (Sonata in C#), hell broke loose in front of the stage too, with nonstop moshing, circle pits, constant crowd surfing and, in the middle of the show, a gargantuan wall of death that Flynn got going with just a flick of his pinky. The crowd went wild as the band, in the best form of its life right now, lined up the classics Old and Imperium, and the single Locust from the new record Unto the Locust. The fantastic guitar super duo of Flynn and Phil Demmel (formerly the guitar duo of the legendary Vio-Lence!) took your breath away the whole time, especially when they stood side by side and casually fired off ultra-fast harmonic solos, mostly played in spectacular twin harmonies. Sadly, the rich flow of energy was inexplicably interrupted by the band itself, who killed the stage lights after practically every song, roughly and unexpectedly breaking up what was otherwise an excellent show. The middle of the set was held down in capital letters by the phenomenal Aesthetics of Hate, dedicated to the late Dimebag and above all a big fuck-off to the American journalist who wrote that Dimebag had only himself to blame for his death because he played aggressive music (Only in America). Before the eerie semi-ballad Darkness Within, Flynn once again gave his yap a thorough workout, told the story of shooting the video in Prague, and wove in »Manowar-style« nonsense about metal brotherhood, togetherness and so on. Flynn almost talked more than he sang this time, and without his banter, which got more tiresome each time, Machine Head could have squeezed in at least another song or two! They did better, though, when they dipped into the treasure chest of the album Burn My Eyes and revived the classic Block after many years. The crushing rhythm section also deserves a mention, thundering like the entire cannon division of the Prussian army that was stationed in Josefov in the seventeenth century, under the baton of Dave McClain’s dynamic and interesting drumming and Adam Duce’s rumbling bass. Machine Head finished superbly with Halo and the booming Davidian. Machine fuckin’ Head? Fuck yeah!
Before bed, a portion of first-rate doom metal was just the thing to cap off an excellent Friday, served up like true masters by the British fathers of doom and gothic metal, Paradise Lost. The Brits haven’t sounded this good in quite a while, and good sound and a brilliant light show added to an excellent concert. Paradise Lost are currently flying high on the wings of their recently released album Tragic Idol, which they marked with the songs Fear of Impending Hell, Honesty in Death and Tragic Idol (Nick Holmes sang it surprisingly well, a bit more raspily). Holmes shone the most, and it’s well known that his vocal performance is almost always a big question mark. The old-school glory is of course gone, but this time he managed to sing every song with clean, clear, melancholic vocals, and without any wheezing. On top of that he delivered some charming banter, which he backed up entirely in his own style with gentlemanly British humor. Paradise Lost sadly didn’t pull any big surprises, since the setlist was made up of songs they’ve been playing for ages, but the new songs already sat surprisingly well in the ears and mouths of the crowd. Paradise Lost took their classic bow with the hit Say Just Words, which, even though Canadian technicians Gorguts and grindcore crew Pig Destroyer were still to follow, was exactly the right moment for a perfect end to the festival’s second day.
Setlist
WARBRINGER:
1. Living Weapon
2. Severed Reality
3. Wake Up… Destroy
4. Shoot to Kill
5. Shattered Like Glass
6. Total War
7. Living in a Whirlwind
8. Combat Shock
MORGOTH:
1. Body Count
2. Unreal Imagination
3. Suffer Life
4. Sold Baptism
5. White Gallery
6. Burnt Identity
7. Pits of Utumno
8. Isolated
AMON AMARTH:
1. War of the Gods
2. Runes to My Memory
3. Destroyer of the Universe
4. Death In Fire
5. Cry of the Black Birds
6. The Fate of Norns
7. The Pursuit of Vikings
8. For Victory or Death
9. Victorious March
10. Twilight of the Thunder God
11. Guardians of Asgard
MACHINE HEAD:
1. I Am Hell (Sonata in C#)
2. Old
3. Imperium
4. Locust
5. Aesthetics of Hate
6. Darkness Within
7. Real Eyes, Realize, Real Lies (taped intro)/Block
8. Halo
9. Davidian
PARADISE LOST:
1. Widow
2. Honesty in Death
3. Erased
4. Forever Failure
5. Tragic Idol
6. One Second
7. As I Die
8. Fear of Empending Hell
9. The Enemy
10. Faith Divides Us – Death Unites Us
11. Say Just Words
Photo Gallery
