Location: Tolmin / Sotočje / Slovenia
Date: Friday, 10.08.2012
As the closing day of the festival, the fifth and final day of Metal Camp actually had the least interesting lineup of the lot. Can you picture Sabaton as the main draw of Metal Camp’s fifth day, with Sodom and Pain on the bill too? Hard, right? Any of the three could have taken the headliner slot, but it went to the most popular of the trio right now.
After some moody weather the day before, the sky settled down, even if it stayed weighed down with low clouds, and the festival vibe wrapped up in totally dry conditions. Truth is, nothing earth-shattering happened until Sodom hit the stage, since the course of events was dictated by bands with anywhere from ten-odd years of history down to just a few, and precious little in the way of artistic originality.
That said, the pre-Sodom overture did serve up a nice helping of genre variety, and the festival “peace” of the fourth afternoon was shattered by the roar of German thrash metal revivalists Purify, back in action after a few years’ break and head over heels for the legacy of the American Bay Area movement, starting with old-school Exodus and/or Forbidden, while the bit of rock n’ roll grit and rolling swagger Purify inherited from New York’s Overkill. Only in a German accent. So, a generic and less than thrilling opener for the last day. Hedienvolk, folk metallers from the Netherlands, once again drew a hefty crowd of rowdy metalheads to the front of the stage, confirming one last time at the festival the general folk metal mania currently ruling the global metal scene. The band, which cemented its place on the scene with its third album, 2010’s »Uit oude grond« (»From old soil«), naturally balances the classic building blocks of metal with folk instruments, like mandolin and violin arrangements. Another party, a confident set, no other way about it. The band is seasoned enough, having stuck it out on the scene for a whole decade. But by now the realization has sunk in about the artificial pushing of folk metal bands, who thanks to the genre’s popularity automatically get priority over far more mature bands in terms of songwriting, with doors swinging wide open for them, and the question is how much quality and authenticity such bands can still offer today, or rather manufacture, since in all their general abundance they’re as alike as two peas in a pod.
Steelwing, third on the schedule, are likewise a band that could have been swapped out on the main stage for pretty much any act from the festival’s smaller, second stage. Steelwing are old-school NWOBHM revivalists. The Swedes naturally put the pedal to the metal. The playing is dynamic and heartfelt, laced with a dose of bombast and well-studied stage antics, inherited in large part from Iron Maiden, from whom Steelwing also largely siphoned their stage outfits (spandex, and left-side guitarist Robby Rockbag with a headband, who despite his beefier look shamelessly recalled the stage presence of Adrian Smith from the golden eighties, partly just because of the Gibson Explorer guitar). The new album on Noise Art Records, out this year and their third, called »Zone Of Alienation«, proves that Steelwing have started repeating themselves. The band, which played Ljubljana’s Orto bar in February this year as part of a headline tour of their own, left a convincing impression and, generic or not, made a nice contrast to the festival mood. Even though vocalist Riley Erickson nailed every register convincingly, even the highest ones, his voice came across in the overall sound picture as incredibly thin and shrill, let’s just say “feminized.” The cause lies in the basic sound settings, the mix of Steelwing’s performance, since Erickson handled his role with total confidence. The songs that made it into Steelwing’s set were: Full Speed Ahead!, The Illusion, The Nightwatcher, Breathless, Zone Of Alienation, The Running Man, Tokkotai (Wind Of Fury), Roadkill (… Or Be Killed). Leaving a more impressive mark than Steelwing, in terms of expressive authenticity, were Finnish death/doom metallers with a generous helping of “melodic” content, Swallow The Sun. Extremely static on stage, but pulled along by a challenging atmosphere stuffed with a bitter sense of sorrow. Convincingly crafted melancholy arrogantly swallowed the venue, and even the sky went gray for a little while, as if it were mourning too. Despite his motionless, static stance, vocalist Mikko Kotamäki grabbed most of the attention. During the opener Emerald Forest and the Black Bird (also the title of the band’s current studio album) he drew eyes with a lit cigarette in his hand, resting on top of the mic stand he was otherwise fixed on, plus an impressive red Type O Negative shirt with the artwork from the album »Dead Again« (2007). But of course none of it would have meant anything without a convincing vocal performance! The band fought its way through the songs This Cut is the Deepest and, later, Hate, Lead the Way!, Psychopath’s Lair, Cathedrall Walls, New Moon in Swallow (Horror pt. I). The sextet, which has actually been running with an unchanged lineup since 2001, the exception being newcomer Kai Hahto, otherwise Wintersun’s drummer, also served up a hefty dose of psychedelic, esoteric atmosphere, backed up especially by acoustic passages supported by piano (e.g. the intro to the song This Cut is the Deepest)
With the arrival of German veterans of Teutonic thrash metal Sodom, the fifth day of the festival only really came alive and took off! The space in front of the stage finally packed into a crowd of many thousands, come to greet the legendary heavyweights! The uncompromising trio of Tom Angelripper (vocals, bass), Bernd “Bernemann” Kost (guitar) and new drummer Markus Freiwald, who replaced Bobby Schottkowski at the end of 2010, opened the show with the title track from the current album »In War And Pieces«. Predictable, and in line with expectations, but watching a Sodom show is always a special treat. This is a band with a heavily developed charisma that always comes alive on stage in full measure. Defiance over the years, and above all their exceptional stage mileage, speak for themselves. Sodom don’t play hide and seek. A rock-solid, unyielding and utterly mocking primordial cannonade of lightning-fast rolling thrash metal, the way only the Germans know how to brew it, sucked the venue into fiery tongues of rage from the brutal sonic terror unleashed from the stage! Next came Sodomy And Lust, M-16, the obligatory Agent Orange and Bombenhagel, then Remember The Fallen, City Of God, Outbreak Of Evil, Blasphemer, and the venue bathed in dripping sweat and the lashing of sodomy, sadism and masochism – something for everyone. In short, Sodom’s set was without doubt the highlight of the last day, and the guys fully made up for the impression left by their previous Metal Camp visit in 2009, when they ran into an avalanche of sound problems mid-show. So Sodom are still “killing” it! The band is otherwise in the middle of recording a new album, expected to come out this year, so we can look forward to an official announcement of a new headline tour soon.
The only industrial act on the main stage of this year’s Metal Camp, Pain, led by famed musical heavyweight and co-creator of the Scandinavian branches of extreme metal Peter Tägtgren, dressed in tattered white clothes that looked like a mix of straitjacket and mummification wraps, stormed the stage with his Pain crew after the moody intro Lux Aetema (by Clint Mansell), which morphed into the ultra-fast Pain track Crashed. That gave an immediate answer that Pain would play the whole show with the help of backing tracks, which in the band’s case means programmed sonic loops, extra undercurrent rhythms and a curtain of keyboards. The band, whom especially Hypocrisy fans turned their backs on this evening, was kept aloft above all by a flood of women, who went wild, totally unplugged, to the occasional catchy, flirty rhythmic loops that Pain weave into their musical engraving. Tägtgren delivered an extremely convincing take on the demanding blend of many vocal approaches, from clean melodic singing to screaming core shrieks and death metal growls, and Pain are certainly sly enough to also use special effects to run the lead vocal through (Shut Your Mouth), which is a well-established ambient trick of industrial metal. As expected, Pain closed the show with the ultra-melodic hit Shut Your Mouth from the album »Nothing Remains the Same« (2002). The band also played I’m Going In, Walking On Glass, an accelerated march that radically brought the whole of Metal Camp to its feet called On And On, Dirty Woman, Dark Fields Of Pain, Monkey Business, even a The Beatles cover, Eleanor Rigby, the hit Same Old Song, a crazy massacre with the song Bitch, then Stay Away, Fear Of Demons and The Great Pretender. A great show, exceptional cooperation. Flawless. The sound was brilliant. Tägtgren being glued to the mic does take some dynamics and stage charge away overall, but the knack for implanting a dark gothic yet ultra-melodic predatoriness that arches over wound-up industrial rhythms creates feelings of hypnosis, and Pain are extremely effective at that. The only shame is that they have to rely on backing tracks. Worth mentioning that two bands on the fifth day’s lineup are heading out on a joint European tour this fall, namely Swallow The Sun and Pain themselves (as headliners). Joining Pain as tour headliners are the Portuguese dark lords and greats Moonspell, with Scar of the Sun and Lake of Tears filling out the lineup as support. In short, see you this fall at one of the shows on this tour! A must!
Before Sabaton, picked as the headliner of the festival’s fifth day, the festival organizer’s staff stepped onto the stage and dropped the news about renaming the festival from Metal Camp to the future MetalDays, which sparked a wave of anger from the crowd, expressed with a resolute “Buuuuhhhhhh”! A heartfelt thank-you and greeting from the organizer followed, then came the pumped-up intro The Final Countdown, the evergreen from Sweden’s Europe, and the packed space in front of the stage jumped as one and merged into the chorus melody as a single body. The energy flux at that moment was simply fantastic.
Sabaton, who put out their new album »Carolus Rex« in May this year, have been through big changes! They swapped out as many as three members and went from a sextet to a quintet. In this new lineup, up to the moment they arrived at Metal Camp, they’d played some 50 shows around the world, and as vocalist Joakim Broden summed it up in one of his speeches, not a single fan flipped the band the middle finger at any show with the revamped lineup. He also gave Metal Camp a special thank-you and acknowledgment for all the support and loyalty shown by the band’s faithful fans. The headliner slot confirmed that Sabaton are holding their own among the hottest metal bands in 2012 as well, and that even after the shake-up of the lineup they keep their credibility.
After the intro The March Of War, the band exploded with the iron »The Art Of War« anthem Ghost Division, followed by the »Coat Of Arms« track Uprising. The very start of the show confirmed the Friday night fever brewing at the close of the festival’s fifth day, when first an enormous rescue ring got stuck in the space between the stage and the barrier separating the crowd from the stage, and not long after you could spot a whole crowd surfing session on a rubber dinghy, which likewise “ran aground” in the previously described area in front of the stage. Then in the break between Uprising and the new Gott Mit Uns, Broden addressed the crowd for the first time. At one point an object wrapped in shiny paper flew from the front rows toward the singer. Broden caught it by reflex, and the reaction went something like this: What the…? Kinder Milch-Schokolade?!?« The reaction drew salvos of laughter from the crowd… but Broden wriggled out of it masterfully like so: »This is candy for a children! On a real metal concerts ladies are throwing their panties on stage, not candies!«
As Sabaton continued marching toward wars, the picture even included a whole tent “crowd surfing”, while the band kept the atmosphere sky-high, stringing together one epic after another, including Cliffs Of Gallipoli (that “unlucky” song that recalls Gutter Ballet by Savatage), yet also one of the fans’ favorite Sabaton songs. There was also the excellent new Carolus Rex somewhere in the middle of the show, plus The Price Of A Mile, Midway, Into The Fire, The Lion From tHe North, White Death, and Sabaton ramped the set up into a closing crescendo through tracks from their iron repertoire Attero Dominatus, The ArtOf War, 40:1, Primo Victoria, and in the encore the expected party tune Metal Crue, followed by yet another demanded classic, Panzer Battalion.
Regardless of the fact that it hardly mattered which of the last three acts would be the headliner of the festival’s fifth day, Sabaton confirmed excellent working chemistry in their revamped form, made full use of the spacious stage and served up an unforgettable experience to the red-hot mass below the stage. If instead of the new Gott Mit Uns they’d played one of the strongest new marches on the album »Carolus Rex«, called Kiling Ground, the triumph would have been complete, but never mind. Sabaton ride on. Where the band’s huge success comes from, at a time when most people are turning away from the melodic forms of power metal, remains a fascinating realization wrapped in mystery, but with their proven stubbornness and defiance Sabaton have without doubt more than earned their greatness!
The second stage once again saw a total triumph of Slovenian acts, who swept the floor with the foreign competition. Even the afternoon set by Metalsteel showed that this band could have stood on the main stage without any trouble in place of any of the first three acts of the last day, and the same goes for the evening performance by Negligence , while the second stage headliners Noctiferia, fully crowned the fifth day’s dominance of Slovenian bands.
And so the last Metal Camp festival came to a close. From now on we get MetalDays. Same scale, meaning one big-name headliner in the lineup and a festival of the same length. Let’s hope the location stays at the confluence of the Tolminka and Soča, which remains Europe’s festival paradise, where devoted metal fans stream in from every corner of Europe. Above all, though, let’s hope the organizer and the locals find a solid consensus built on the long-term survival of this hugely important event, which contributes a major share to the cultural and artistic pulse of the Republic of Slovenia, spreads the country’s reputation and visibility internationally, brings profit to the residents of the municipality of Tolmin and, with a bit of ingenuity, can bring even more, and by no means a curse they’d have to run away from.
The survival of a festival in the Tolmin area, under this name or another in the future, is a test of whether we Slovenes are capable of absorbing the Western world’s perception of and attitude toward metal culture and musical creativity, for which it’s something completely ordinary, like breathing air. The Western world has been developing a relationship of coexistence with metal culture and musical creativity for more than three decades, one from which both sides profit. Are we, as a society, mature enough and broad-minded enough, or will Sunday mass-going and/or (newly imposed) shopping temples remain the essence of life for us?
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik & Jerneja Jerak (Noctiferia)
