Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Balingen / Volksbankmesse / Germany
Concert date: 11.07.2018
Attendance: 2000
Ticket price: €35.00
Another Bang Your Head!!! festival in Balingen, Germany! A temptation you can’t resist, because it’s basically impossible. Once you get down there, you simply turn into an energy junkie. A festival with its own charisma, its own character, on the scene for over twenty years now. A tradition that counts, in other words. As always, it didn’t go without a warm-up day. The day before the official start of the festival. Same place as always. In the Volksbankmesse hall. This year’s edition is a bit more frugal in terms of lineup, though. You could feel that on the warm-up day too, which served up acts with a permanent festival home in Balingen, and the evening was even closed out by a »tribute to« band.
It was late afternoon. Unlike in past years, when we always hit the Alt Balingen beer hall in the town center in the middle of our first day, this time we hung out near the venue, shuttling between the campsite and the discount beer store, and, nicely lubricated, headed toward the Volksbankmesse hall in the late afternoon, where the first band was due on. That’s Blood God from Stuttgart, who already played the festival two years ago. The Blood God trio, led by Thomas Gurrath, who built the band out of the Big Ball project, plays mostly heavy to hard rock, with songwriting inspiration leaning on the legacy of bands like AC/DC and/or Accept. Thomas Gurrath has a voice reminiscent of Udo Dirkschneider; this is heavy metal with moves that pull toward the old school of hard rock. The very same trio can turn into the death metallers Debauchery in a heartbeat. That did happen, but the next day. You could tell Blood God are locals, that the crowd knows them very well, and so they got a very good response and plenty of participation. An opening »party time shindig« with undemanding metal marches that go straight into your ear and pump you up with an adrenaline rush. Songs like Vampire Holocaust, Crusaders of God, City Of Bones, Sexy Music, for Sexy People, …. made for a neat mix of tomfoolery and the occult, and the band delivered an extremely coherent show and won people over with their tightness and a well-studied, that is, professionally polished, performance.
Next up on stage were the Swedish rock’n’roll revivalists Thundermother. The quartet of four statuesque gals has been on the scene since 2009 and has three studio albums under its belt. The latest, titled »Thundermother«, came out just this year. It was also well represented in the set with Fire in the Rain, Quitter, Revival, and Whatever, keeping company with the albums »Road Forever« (the songs Give Me Some Lights and It’s Just a Tease) and »Rock’ N’ Roll Disaster« (the songs Hellevator and We Fight For Rock ‘N’ Roll). The band also played the singles Hellevator and We Fight For Rock’ N’ Roll, the latter closing an otherwise supremely confident gig. Fitting their band name, Thundermother actually went through a stormy period last year, when the band, which had until then been a quintet, suddenly lost four members. Guitarist Filippa Nässil is the only original member left and impressed with her confident stance, even picking up a bottle of beer during a solo and sliding it along the guitar neck. The gals know how to create that onstage allure that tends to cling to all-female bands when they handle the magic of rock. They don’t need to bewitch the male crowd with miniskirts and high heels for it, though, but simply by giving off a feeling of rawness and mischief. The band, now operating as a quartet, proved with this performance that it has weathered the crisis, and won over the crowd with a vehement, daring, superbly tight stage show.
Then came a good hour of power metal fairy-tale-telling and flute-tooting, as Twilight Force climbed on stage. Yet another band that has realized that what really grabs the younger generation of metalheads these days is glitz and kitsch. But… this is a sextet made up of experienced Swedish musicians, with Italian vocalist Alessandro Conti, who has some serious stage mileage of his own, having sung, among others, in Rhapsody (the version led by Luca Turilli). In short, a crew with plenty of experience, active for seven years with two studio albums in the bag. The show was exclusive, as Twilight Force have only appeared sporadically on European festival stages this summer. As expected, the band filled the set entirely with material from both studio albums, »Heroes of Mighty Magic« (2016) and »Tales of Ancient Prophecies« (2014). A very predictable odyssey through an hour on stage, packed with a plethora of symphonic ornaments that also veered into folk inserts. Pompous and bombastic. Ultra-musical and instantly catchy. No unheard-of musical moves that could »surprise« anyone in any way. Alessandro is a true operatic vocal »Conan«, and the rest of this Swedish mini power metal orchestra is, performance-wise, polished to nitpicking perfection. A band, then, tailor-made first and foremost for fiery power metal souls!
Lordi have played Bang Your Head!!! several times already. Both in the hall and on the open-air festival grounds (the main stage). So they’re old acquaintances of the festival, and most of the crowd really came to the warm-up show because of them. The front rows were packed with »kids«, including some screaming girls. The choir of rubber zombies played the show just as you’d expect. In a glow of bombastic reconciliation between solemnity, horror, and an obsession with devilish deeds, the pre-recorded intro erupted into the title track of the new album »Sexorcism«, and the party with the Finnish metal attraction was on. The second song, the famous Who’s Your Daddy, part of the band’s iron-clad repertoire, poured oil on the fire right away, while the third act, This Is Heavy Metal (from the album »Babez For Breakfast«, 2010), entertained with theater that no longer deals in such brutal scenes as it did years ago, which Lordi had to cut from their regular repertoire and »menus« under heavy pressure. The confetti cannon. A must! It wasn’t missing this time either. With Lordi, the party theater is what counts. Whoever comes to their show comes to switch off and enjoy the scene. That the band has quite a few backing tracks, mostly for keyboards, choir vocal harmonies, and vocal help for Mr. Lordi, is no longer news, nor a miracle. Amen once again ran theatrically on one leg from one end of the stage to the other, which remains his trademark, and Mr. Lordi, in all the band’s stage »mastery«, naturally remains the focal point of every Lordi concert. The band delivered a set that neatly and effectively covered the group’s discography. They didn’t overdo the new album. Besides the opening title track Sexorcism, they also played the brand-new Your Tongue’s Got A Cat and Naked In My Cellar, and saved most of the numbers from the albums »The Arockalypse« (Hard Rock Hallelujah, It Snows In Hell) and »Get Heavy« (Devil is a Looser, the closing Would You love A Monster Man?) for the last third of the show. An expected turn of events and, as a result, an effective creation of an atmospheric crescendo right in the closing part of the spectacle. A surprisingly short set, though, at least fifteen minutes shorter than announced. Still, there was no shortage of fun. With Lordi on stage it’s always hellish and slippery. For Kiss fans, this doesn’t even need to be pointed out.
Because the organizer wanted to please the musical tastes of every generation that faithfully attends Bang Your Head!!!, the tail end of the warm-up day went to Bömbers. That’s a Motörhead tribute band led by the famous Olve Elkemo, better known to everyone by the »infamous« nickname Abbath (»Abbath’s Hill« is, by the way, the well-known running-start spot of this musician at the Metaldays festival in Tolmin). The man is also the former backbone of the black metallers Immortal. So Bömber today, Abbath tomorrow, who did in fact play the festival the following day! Bömber shook up the scene with covers of Motörhead. What to say? The older gents I chatted with the next day didn’t buy the whole thing at all and made no secret of their indignation at the show. Olve’s charisma is certainly unrivaled. Even though his pose captured Lemmy’s stage movement and his tics very well, vocally Olve is a light-year away from the iron chancellor. Vocally, the sound fits Motörhead riffs and gets along with them just fine. But when Olve sets about imitating Lemmy’s rasp, his imitation very quickly starts to "drift" toward the well-known Immortal croak. Still, let’s not nitpick. The band played a setlist of songs that Motörhead rarely played in their later years, or no longer played at all. I’ll Be Your Sister, Jailbait, The Hammer, Stone Dead Forever and, in the closing part, Motörhead were especially fun. The band also seasoned the set with cult classics of the group. They opened with Ace Of Spades, and then came: Stay Clean, No Class, Iron Fist, Shoot You in the Back, Damage Case, Metropolis (with crossed pinkies), Over the Top, Killed By Death, Bomber and the closing Overkill. Olve could maybe have fussed with his hair a little less during the show, since Lemmy was never one for makeup. Otherwise, fair enough. In terms of playing, tightness, the »parody« or imitation itself. The hall emptied out quite a bit in the meantime, because most people had come for the Lordi show, which is musically incompatible with Motörhead. And the remaining, more mature gentlemen left the venue in disapproval sooner than they would have if there had been someone on stage who reminded them more of Lemmy than Olve and his two buddies managed to that night. There are certainly two more factors that made some people turn up their noses. The first is the German crowd’s great spoiledness, and the second is a respectful attitude toward the late Motörhead and their legacy, which hardly lets anyone »touch« them (even just with a remote control). Suma Sumarum. Perfectly decent and quite entertaining theatrical rattling and clanking, an adventure through the famous golden era of rock’n’roll, the era when the unforgettable Motörhead stomped across the planet.
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