Performing: Grave Digger, Victory, Stormwarrior, Bullet, Dynamite
Location: Balingen / Messegelände / Germany
Date: Thursday, 10.07.2014
Another year has rolled around and a new edition of the Bang Your Head!!! festival is right on the doorstep. It’s already the nineteenth one in a row. As usual, no festival year can kick off without a warm-up day, held the day before the official opening, at the very same venue as the festival itself, only inside the hall.
For this year’s “warm up” show the organizers once again invited five bands. Two Swedish and three German. While the two Swedes belong to hard rock and rock ‘n’ roll, the three German outfits are pure power metal, carved to the bone. The lineup reads Dynamite, Bullet, Stormwarrior, Victory and, in the grand finale of the warm-up day, as headliners Grave Digger, who premiered their new studio album “Return of the Reaper”.
Dynamite are scruffy rock ‘n’ roll revivalists who love to slip into the riff-shoes of bands like AC/DC and Rose Tattooo, with a desperado ring to it, but who think wholeheartedly and purely rock ‘n’ roll. There’s a whole heap of this kind of revivalism on the planet today and Dynamite bring no musical revolution. But their gig simply served up that classic experience of discovering a new Swedish band hungry to prove itself. The show was played with a ton of heart, dynamic and potent stage presence, a high level of tightness and bold use of the huge stage, which the band had for 40 minutes to show off their musical arsenal. Even though the hall was only just filling up, those who watched the band gave the guys a roaring applause at the end.
Bullet are a band that first exploded at the Bang Your Head festival in 2010 – RockLine report HERE. This February the band toured the old continent, opening shows for German power metallers Primal Fear, and already then impressed big time with a meticulously crafted stage performance. Two years ago the band took a new guitarist into its ranks, Alexander Lyrbo, and they’ve got a newly recorded studio album called “Storm of the Blades” in the can, due out at the beginning of this September. Considering that Bullet are on the rise, and that a bunch of pumped-up fans literally crammed against the barrier and squeezed into the front rows before the set, loudly chanting the band’s name, it’s actually a surprise that Bullet were slotted in before Stormwarrior on the bill. The onslaught of classic, pouty guitar riffs inherited from AC/DC, drenched in a hefty dose of adrenaline rush, came across as not only predatory but extremely enterprising and confident. The band has racked up plenty of touring mileage in recent years and it shows in the excellent stage form the quintet delivers. From the venomously bristling, skyward-aimed screaming of singer Hell Hofer, to the subtle guitar duels of the two guitarists and the rock-solid rhythm section. Bullet are a band that simply can’t and won’t hold back on stage.
Stomwarrior are typical heirs of the Teutonic school of heavy metal, which flourished on German soil especially through Helloween and Running Wild and basically supplied the elemental cues for the genre we know today as European power metal. “Thunder And Steel” is Stormwarrior’s sixth studio album overall, released this year, and the band presented it to the crowd in Balingen with real vehemence. Frontman Lars Ramcke has added a fourth member to the trio, guitarist Alex Guth, while the rhythm section is handled by seasoned Danish bassist Yenz Leonhardt and drummer Jörg Uken, who also chipped in with backing vocals alongside Leonhardt. Stormwarrior were once hosted by the Metal Mania Open Air festival in Komen at the end of August 2008 (RockLine report HERE), so they’re old acquaintances of ours. In a slim hour the band ran through a string of songs from all six albums and served up the typical cliché power metal experience, where any fairytale swordsman full of fearlessness is surrounded again and again by various crosses and troubles, but in the end all the dragons are tamed or beheaded, and souls cleansed of devilry. In short, a Nordic pagan mission crossed with the elemental nature of Euro power melodicism. That’s the band’s musical dossier, and the Hamburg lads, formed in 1998, don’t stray from it by an inch. The hall emptied out a bit during their set; at no point was it hard to get to the second row. The band is somewhat handicapped by the fact that Lars has to play guitar, solo and handle the lead vocals as well. Still, there’s nothing to fault in the firm focus of the performance, which was all about delivering the best they could to the crowd.
Most of the crowd spent this evening feverishly waiting for the set by the great veterans of Teutonic metal, Victory. The band today consists of guitarists Herman Frank and Christos Mamalitsidis, bassist Peter Pichl, drummer Michael Wolpers and singer Jioti Parcharidis. Of these, it really all rests on one name. Herman Frank. The Accept guitarist decided last year to revive the lineup once more. The first attempt at a revival happened back in 2008, when the band recorded the album “Don’t Talk Science”, which should have come out in 2009, but we only got it in 2011. However you look at it, thanks to Frank’s persistence the band went through yet another complete lineup overhaul last year, with the result that it can play live shows. There are no original members in the lineup today, Frank included. Frank joined for the second album “Don’t Get Mad.. Get Even” in 1986. Of the remaining members, the most notable name is Peter Pichl, who once played bass for Running Wild and British progressive rock veterans Nektar. The band is in full swing and promises a new studio album. Vicrory built their setlist, of course, from the material of their classic days. The band burst out with the basher Take the Pace from “Temples of Gold” (1990), which they also closed the show with, as the hedonistic Rock the Neighbours thundered in the finale and lifted the entire hall off the ground. They kept up their lightning-fast musical nature throughout the gig with the classic Are You Ready from “Don’t Get Mad… Get Even” (1986), joined before the end by the excellent Checks in the Mail. Then came songs from “Culture Killed the Nature” (1989): Don’t Tell No Lies, On the Loose, Power Strikes the Earth, while the still-current album “Don’t talk Science” (2011) was represented by Burn Down the City and Restless. In the middle of the set Herman Frank snapped his third string, so he went over to his guitar tech for help, who temporarily thrust a black Gibson Les Paul into his hands, and with that the veteran saved a good chunk of the show. It’s great to realize I can still enjoy these songs live in 2014. And it’s in precisely these songs with Victory that Herman Frank shows what an excellent guitarist and masterful soloist he is, since in Accept the central figure, again and again, both in the studio and on stage, is Wolf Hoffmann, while Frank often gets pushed into the shadow of bare riff backing. The band plays with great distinction. A fair chunk of the elemental stage movement inherited from Accept could be experienced during Victory’s set, even though Victory are considered a band that bets a bit more on bombast and the pomp of catchy melody, the kind Accept rarely developed in their career. Victory were surely the most anticipated act on the bill. They threw a great party, which showed on plenty of wildly banging heads in the crowd.
Grave Digger released their new studio album “Return of the Ripper” at an interesting moment, right around their Balingen gig. The band thus premiered the setlist that will also grace the stages of their European tour in November. It’s an album that tops its excellent predecessor “Clash of the Gods”, not to mention the less interesting and creatively weak “Clans Will Rise Again”. That means Axel Ritt has finally integrated into the team, heart and soul. The band came out with a full stage production, including maximum lighting, pyrotechnics and stage sets, represented by upright human coffins with the famous gravedigger skulls, behind which stood the band’s keyboardist H.P. Katzenburg, as always dressed up as death. The band struck with two brand-new songs, then poured oil on the fire with a classic from “Tunes of War”, the merciless assault Killing Time. Grave DIgger radiated great mood on stage. Naturally, the only talkative one was frontman Chris Boltendahl, who at one point during a break scolded himself when he wanted to continue the show with a song that wasn’t the one listed next in the repertoire, saying it was obviously high time he got himself some glasses. The grey-maned old warhorse roared like only he can roar. Of course this isn’t his natural voice, so as usual a bit of a harmless-to-the-ear “fudge” crept into his delivery here and there, where the vocal line strayed from the ideal pitch, while Boltendahl leaves the most demanding parts of songs like the choruses of Knight of the Cross and The Rondtable to the crowd to sing.
With his skill, Axel Ritt filled the space superbly with just a single guitar. Covering the whole stage with one guitar is no easy job. In this he stepped in thoroughly worthily for his excellent predecessor Manni Schmidt. Axel plays his solos his own way. So some parts of the older songs especially gained a whole new quality. The band is so seasoned that you’d have a hard time spotting a single mistake; above all, the exceptional precision of the rhythm section once again enchanted, with experienced Jens Becker and drumming wizard Stefan Arnold, renowned for his masterpieces of jerky rolling double-bass pedal work. The setlist, which was heavily loaded with new songs from the album “Return of the Reaper”, was occasionally spiced up by Grave Digger with classics such as the march Wedding Day from “The Ripper” (1993), and the ultimate “Tunes Of War” (1996) anthem The Dark of the Sun, which works brilliantly live and was one of the atmospheric peaks of the show, since the entire hall of 2000 red-hot heads roared along as one with Boltendahl..
Considering that, as a bonus curiosity on the setlist, the band delivered only the ancient eighties balladic classic Yesterday, and then “cheated” those demanding one more surprise by playing the newer Highland Forever, followed by the predictable closer Heavy Metal Breakdown, the overall feeling was still the right one. Which means Grave Digger showed up in proper form and the tour promises a lot, especially thanks to spectacular sets seasoned with pyro and a whole bag of fog, but still, the band will have to add at least three more old classics to the repertoire to satisfy the demands of every fan of their life and work.
So the warm-up day was behind us. The heavy metal and hard rock neighing of Swedish-German origin generally delivered a proper shrapnel of distorted intoxication to hard metal skulls hungry to switch off, and primed them for the first day of the festival. More on that very soon, in the upcoming Balingen concert tale.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
