Wacken Rocks South (Day Two) – A Salute to Thrash Metal Godfathers Slayer! (2009)

Location: Rieden – Kreuth / Germany
Date: Saturday, 28.08.2009

After a wild first-day celebration with assorted sweet liquors of the alcoholic kind and a hangout with the fascinating In Extremo, the first proper festival day finally rolled around, when the music kicked off on both stages: the smaller one in the hall called the “Wet stage” and, of course, the bigger one out on the open grass, the main stage. I’d like to point out the Slayer factor. Wacken Rocks South hit its peak on day two, because the main act closing the night was none other than the legendary thrash metal giants Slayer. It was the band’s first show in Europe this year, and Slayer’s second and last European gig of the year followed the next day in the German town of Aurich, at the Wacken Rocks Seaside festival.

We spent the morning in a thoroughly useful way. We drove to the town of Burglengenfeld, 15 km away. It’s a taste of the medieval idyll of these little Germanic towns, with a dominant castle on top of a hill. We grabbed a bit of a bite there, fought unforgettable battles with wasps, and fueled up properly for the assault on the afternoon-into-evening metal session!

First we popped over to see what was going on at the “wet stage”. And there was plenty to see. Up on stage, the dirty German rock n’ roll “lumberjacks” 9mm were flapping around! Lyrics entirely in German! The band is led by vocalist and rhythm guitarist Rock Rotten, joined on stage by guitarist Richie, with roots in Puerto Rico, who, going by the formula for the volume of a sphere, ranks among the true giants of rock, plus bassist Maubi and the not-yet-of-age drummer Bommel. 9mm were one of the festival’s best discoveries, because they came across as incredibly convincing. Not just the dirtily cranked-up sound, with a bit of crackle, written basically by the rock n’ roll recipe that knows no complications, just simple “one-syllable” combos of walking around the “little squares” of the guitar neck (two-string riffing in fifths), but of course also Rock Rotten’s vocals. He has incredible power. The whole thing really felt like Rock wanted to blow every single monitor membrane to bits with his voice. Harsh, piercing vocals. On the verge of dictator-style shouting from the best of the Hitler era, with an insolent, arrogant stare and deliberately goofy grimaces. Exceptional charisma that pulls you over to his side in an instant. The sound and presence of the band, banging out of full balls, straight into the forehead of the silly. Quite a few wobbly heads were crashing into each other down in front of the stage. Picture a mosh pit of drunk fruit flies, in other words a mosh pit in slow motion, where even the most famous NHL hockey players could draw inspiration for their body checks. So an unbelievably hard and dirty rock n’ roll version, where muscles crack without brakes! Before Ich will…erst Hart, Rock stopped the show and asked the male half of the crowd: “How many of you will be having sex tonight?” (the actual original question sounded, of course, a lot more perverse). Mumbling comes back. Rock repeats the question more clearly, and the male half of the crowd answers with a roar. Of course we’ll all be doing that, obviously, it’s only logical for us men! Then comes the same question for the female half of the crowd. But we heard nothing more than some kind of moaning from two lost female souls. Anyway, the lead verse of that song also contains the sequence of words …ich werde ficken…, built into a typical rock n’ roll woodshed of rolling riffs. So, fooling around down to the foundations! Let me quickly break down what 9mm are roughly. Take Motörhead, add a bit of Running Wild speed, and throw the big AC/DC-style balls on the tray! Believe me, at 9mm shows it always lights up properly in every respect! Spin Kampfschwein and it’ll all be clear right away!

We found ourselves at the main stage just as our good old acquaintances Axxis were already busily “rustling” away on it. We visited them exactly a year ago at the biker festival in Pula (Croatia). It’s also interesting that Axxis announced the official release of their new studio album “Utopia” just a day after the Wacken Rocks South gig. Even so, they didn’t present it at the show, playing songs from the album “Doom Of Destiny” (2007) instead, such as Tales Of Glory Island, which they opened the show with, and later Bloodangel in the middle of the set. Of course they spiced up the performance with classics like Little War and Touch The Rainbow, which they played in an acoustic version. For the occasion Bernhard once again invited a girl onto the stage, planted a tambourine in her hands and showed her how to handle it so she wouldn’t accidentally “wander off” from the basic rhythm during the song. A moment that immensely entertained the audience as well as the band on stage. Guitarist Marc has grown lush long hair in the year since we met in Pula, and Bernhard Weiss remains a special stage figure, with a unique vocal approach you can’t miss every time the stout fellow opens his mouth. The singer is in great shape and the band has excellent working chemistry on stage. Axxis closed their 40-minute show with the classic Kingdom Of Madness, which brought back the band’s former glory days as a hard rock outfit. A few years ago, Axxis turned into pure symphonic power metallers!

After 9mm, ex-Accept guitarist Herman Frank stepped onto the “wet stage” with his band. He eagerly presented his new studio album “Loyal To None”, from which the ultra-shrapnel Bastards Legion especially stood out, written in the classic “bad to the bone” Accept manner. Herman is still an indestructible tough old bone, with a polished stage look and incredible charisma. The band conjured an extremely cranked-up, voluminous sound that filled the little hall and quickly subjugated everyone loyal to the ossified form of heavy metal of original German descent. On top of that, the band hammers in Kill The King, with excellent, polished vocals of a theatrical kind that confidently tie the performance together, a mid-paced tempo and coquettishly venomous attacking riffs, and the cup is full! The lineup around Herman Frank, Peter Pichl (bass, Nektar, Running Wild), Stefan Schwarzmann (ex-U.D.O., ex-Running Wild, ex-Helloween, Godiva,…) and Greek-born singer Jiotis Parachidis, played out a similar story to the one that repeated a little later on the big stage when U.D.O. took it over. Victorious!

Around half past three in the afternoon, German metalcore outfit Heaven Shall Burn took over the main stage, cheered on by a sizable crowd of some good 3,000 fans of the band. In one of the addresses, the singer masterfully “provoked” the crowd into running a full lap around the tower housing the mixing desk, 100 m from the stage, which kicked up real volleys of dust into the air. During Heaven Shall Burn we enjoyed the sight of enormous “mosh pitting” as well as intense “crowd surfing”. The security guys literally had a blast down in front of the stage catching the crazed Heaven Shall Burn fan heads. So it’s a Heaven Shall Burn show tradition that both the security and the crowd understand, and that’s very important. The energy of high-spirited abandon was unblemished. True, the band is deliberately dressed “scruffy”, as if they’d stopped by Caritas before the gig and grabbed a few old rags in a pinch, which is the style of modern bands with the “core” suffix, but they play great and command stages with confidence. And that, in the end, is what matters. The band walked through a repertoire that included the following songs: Behind The Wall Of Silence, Endzeit, Voice Of The Voiceless, Counterweight, Like A Thousand Suns, Murderers Of The Murderer, The Weapon They Fear. Heaven Shall Burn wrapped up the intense show with their Edge Of Sanitiy cover of Black Tears.

A few months ago the heart of every heavy metal fan flared up on hearing the news that good old Accept were back together and ready for a new tour and album. But Accept will work with one big flaw: the unmistakable Udo Dirkschneider won’t be on vocals! So the only logical substitute for an Accept fan is to catch a U.D.O. show, the band Udo founded when he left Accept way back in 1987. It’s even better when U.D.O. play at a festival you happen to be at. The band works on the foundations of the old Accept school: every track bets on an excellent riff that leads to an insanely catchy chorus, all seasoned with Udo’s screeching vocals. Right on schedule, Stefan Kaufmann, Igor Gianola (both guitars), Fitty Wienhold (bass) and Francesco Jovino (drums) took up their positions on stage and launched into the intro of the classic Metal Heart, and a wave of excitement swept over the folks in the front rows. One of the most recognizable songs of the German school of heavy metal is just the right excuse for headbanging and a fist in the air, in support of the band! Meanwhile, where was little uncle Udo hiding? When the instrumental overture was over, he toddled out from backstage and started singing. Singing? Anyone hearing him for the first time surely had his singing put a smile on their face. Closed eyes, grimaces, and a screeching, hoarse, fairly high-pitched voice you can recognize from a mile away. Together with his short, slightly hunched frame, he looks downright comical. But what that little guy has done for heavy metal! While I was thinking about everything I’ve roughly described, the show raced on at the speed of light. We heard four Accept classics and four songs from the U.D.O. era; from the latter the guys served us a “bit of a mix”, with the older They Want War (1987) and three relatively newer pieces. All eyes were on the band’s frontman throughout, the old chief with a charisma that has no equal. When the instrumental parts came, Udo stepped back to the rear of the stage and left some crumbs to guitarists Kaufmann and Gianola too, who got a few moments for self-promotion. The band did its job with distinction: down in front of the stage it pushed the fans’ heavy metal pulse to the max, the front rows were in delirium, and I believe that even further back, tracks like Princess of the Dawn and Balls to the Wall did what they’re there for: a good heavy metal party!

Just a short word about the pirate drunkards from Scotland, Alestorm. The lads, whose show was scheduled for shortly before six in the afternoon, turned up late to the venue. So they got pushed to half past two in the morning the next day, to play on the wet stage. While we were strolling from the main stage toward the camp, at the time when Alestorm should have started playing, a good pile of furious heads was leaving the hall with the “Wet stage”. One of them described the situation roughly like this: “If you go to the Alestorm show, know that the band is invisible, that the whole audience in the hall is invisible, and that Alestorm are playing so quietly that absolutely nobody can hear them!” That was how they summed up the fact that the show was cancelled. Well, eyewitnesses who made it to half past two in the morning could tell the next day that Alestorm did in fact end up on stage. But they ended up there as a trio, without a drummer. They played to a backing track and sounded worse than the average band at a regular rehearsal. Out of tune, with plenty of mistakes while playing and slip-ups singing the verses. So much for whether they’re worth all the racket and support from the “crazed” ones, who clearly took them to heart more because Alestorm are deeply in love with barrels of English ale, while as far as musical expression, a genuine authorial essence and charisma go, there’s less to be felt in it than there is black under the fingernails of your average Bosnian Hamdija swinging a hoe and a “špohtl” somewhere high up by the old Ljubljana Opera building. Alestorm? Yuck and shame!

Doro Pesch is a legendary heavy metal singer. Her charisma, positive attitude, openness, humility and approachability can be a great example to other musicians. Madam has waded through big things in her musical career and can only teach us all a lesson. Practically the one and only woman on the planet who can boast a very successful solo heavy metal career, Doro is the only legitimate heir to the Warlock legacy. She has gathered around herself a backing crew of “Latin lovers”, sad looks, neo-eyeliner, tattoo mania and other kitsch. Among the names in the lineup, drummer Johnny Dee definitely stands out, fascinating during the show with his perfect incorporation of the double bass drum pedal, which contributed the lion’s share to controlling the dynamics and variety of the songs, especially in terms of the ebb and flow of the atmosphere! The man also drew attention to his quality with a few excellent transitional “rollings”. Doro keeps her voice and presence in exceptional shape. On stage, her charisma radiates incredible energy. She keeps eye contact with the crowd the whole time, and she also inherited quite a few stage moves from the excellent Ronnie James Dio.  Doro put her set list together so that she mostly played Warlock songs. So the attack starts straight away with Earthshaker Rock from the second Warlock record “Hellbound”. The first five songs of the show were a pure Warlock assault! Later on there was an interesting pairing of the song Celebrate, which suddenly and brilliantly flowed into Metal Racer, a new Warlock classic from the debut “Burning The Witches”. Fantastic. Especially since it was a unique set list, quite different from the other summer shows Doro has already played this year. We also got a tribute to the creators of the heavy metal bible, Judas Priest, when the band tackled a cover of Breaking The Law. It was opened by guitarist Luca Pinciotta in a wittily recoded acoustic manner. The band played one round of the song (pre-chorus and chorus), then erupted with cranked-up distortion into a real magnetic avalanche that brought the whole crowd to its knees. The sign that we were at the peak of the show was the arrival of the best-known and obligatory Warlock song, All We Are, during which it goes without saying that by far the most alternating energy flux was flowing. With Night Of The Warlock and Celebrate, Doro also made it known that her fresh new album “Fear No Evil” (2009) is out. The band crowned its intense, flawlessly executed performance with We Are The Metalheads, which Doro wrote especially for the 20th anniversary of Wacken Open Air, expressing great respect for the organizer who keeps the metal flame so very much alive. No two ways about it. After an experience like that, only one thing follows. You absolutely have to see the band in Zagreb, on the October headliner tour coming up later this year!

“Der W” is Stephan Weidner, former bassist and leader of Böhse Onkelz, who in his more mature years tried himself out as a lead singer! He’s backed by a lineup of two guitars, bass and, of course, drums. Der W is thus also the name of his band. That same band released the debut album “Schneller, höher, Weidner” last year and played the whole thing at the Wacken Rocks South festival show. Böhse Onkelz have cult status in Germany and Austria, and Stephan didn’t have to strain himself in any great detail on stage to have the crowd eating out of his hand. In fact, it shows that Stephan spent most of his career playing bass, and he still needs quite a few more helpings of buckwheat porridge before he’s a polished singer. First of all, the stage act is witless, with monotonous pacing on the left and right sides of the stage; second, there’s too little emphasis on a more impressive stage look. This despite a version of rock that didn’t fall far from the legacy of Stephan’s mother band, which simply means tightening chords, simple sentences, with a bit more emphasis on building an intense curtain of riff background, though not overdone! Vocals fairly ordinary, punkish, but with a committed and confident approach. In a few parts the guys proved that they aren’t at home only with monotonous blasting, but that they’re excellent musicians who can pull off more demanding tasks when needed. That includes more interesting moments conjured by some (admittedly rare) solos from both guitarists and more demanding drum fills in the transitions. Otherwise the surface feeling that Stephan’s approach brings to life is a kind of “self-pity” and emotional weeping over the time of better days, but no two ways about it. Popularity is popularity. The German crowd found the whole thing hugely appealing, so Der W drew by far the biggest crowd in front of the stage up to that point. And believe me. They didn’t let it down. Not even with the cover of Gewinnen kann jeder, by Nordend Antistars, a band in which Stephan was also once active. For an outside observer, though, the Der W show is unfortunately something that doesn’t leave much of a feeling of satisfaction.

Every, absolutely every band is tormented by the same question at its founding. How to win over fans and, with them, glory as quickly as possible. The Danes Volbeat have obviously found the answer, becoming universally known in a relatively short time (they started playing in 2001) and thereby one of the headliners of huge festivals, of which there really were quite a few for the Danes this summer. One of those festivals was Wacken Rocks, where the organizer even treated them as the second string of the event after Slayer.. Let everyone think what they will about that fact and a look at the other bands, but I wouldn’t exactly agree with the organizer.

In a flood of newer bands dressed in the same colors, where it’s hard to find any recognizable trait that would make them unique, Volbeat are a bright star standing out from the gray average. They presented the audience with their unique sound, matched by the style of frontman Michael Poulsen, a kind of mix of rockabilly and heavy metal. The musical horizons of the Volbeat members are very wide, so besides those two genres you can hear the influence of punk in their music (they played a cover of Misfits’ Angelfuck) and country (they dedicated one of the songs to the eternal legend Johnny Cash). The colorful sound went down well with the audience, and the venue saw the largest number of long-haired folks up to that point. Next to Poulsen, who draws the eye with his interesting look (white shirt and rockabilly hairdo), the newest addition, guitarist Thomas Bredahl, is also very noticeable on stage, radiating lots of energy and never standing still. In a program of a good hour they covered songs from all three studio albums so far, with an emphasis on the still-current Guitar Gangsters & Cadillac Blood, released last year. The title track of the latest album, Still Counting, or say the last-played We, are bangers with the real Volbeat spirit wonderfully captured, which the crowd felt too, dancing along with the Danes  until the good hour-long show came to an end…

Late in the evening, really already at night, the time finally came for the stars of the night and of the whole festival: the headliners of the first-ever Wacken Rocks South were the standard-bearers of the American “Bay Area thrash” scene, the great Slayer. In Slayer’s calendar for the 2009 touring year, only two European shows can be spotted. This night was the first, and the very next day they were loosening up their fans’ necks in northern Germany, and that’s it. So Rockline was present at one of only two Slayer shows for miles around, both in time and in place. Tom Araya, Jeff Hanneman, Kerry King and Dave Lombardo is the lineup that shyly started writing its story in 1981, and in the late eighties released a few cult records that are and always will be metal “evergreens”, which every thrash metal band plays through at its beginning. After Metallica’s self-destruction from the throne of the thrash kings, Slayer, with still very solid releases, are nowadays the driving force of the genre, and as they showed, only (the already announced) retirement can take the crown of thrash kings away from them.

Darkness of Christ, the opening piece from the album “God Hates Us All” (2001), has been the “tape intro” of Slayer shows ever since the album came out.  The stage wrapped itself in fog, a morbid mood hung in the air, very aptly captured in the intro, and after a minute and a half of anticipation and pounding hearts, it happened! The guitar trio rushes onto the stage and starts with the logical continuation, Disciple, another song from the album mentioned above. The very first heavy riff sent the gathered crowd, the biggest of the whole festival, flying, and behind the first rows a fight for survival began, also known as the mosh pit. What an unforgettable experience it is to watch the King & Hanneman guitar duo on stage! The legendary “twins”, who have been working together for almost 30 years, read the crowd a proper lesson in tightness and infallibility, which, given the constant touring, is a perfectly logical thing. Kerry King’s fearsome look and his ice-cold attitude toward the crowd, which he couldn’t care less about and doesn’t grant so much as a glance during the show, are the two traits that stand out most about Kerry. Despite his grotesquely scary getup, it was quickly noticeable that he stays unsure, even funny, on the solos. With Jeff Hanneman I get the feeling that despite his important role in the band he enjoys playing in the shadows, in the background, since King often completely overshadows him with his personality. The view of Dave Lombardo was blocked by a huge drum kit, so watching what was happening behind the drums was a little difficult, but Dave wasn’t bothered. Once again he proved what he’s made of! The already slightly gray Tom Araya, who earns his bread as a vocalist besides playing bass, is getting older relentlessly, which shows in the growing effort on vocal duties. The biggest proof is Angel of Death, where he doesn’t do the high opening scream at all, but with a smile on his face leaves it to the crowd. Most of the time Araya sits in the mid-range vocal waters, which gives him no trouble, while on the (rare) high screams he adapts his voice to his age, lowering it a step or two. Otherwise, though, he’s an exceptional frontman! He holds the crowd in check throughout, his performance is convincing, the crowd gasps for his exhaled words, and overall he’s the only one of the four who communicates with the audience at all (in any form whatsoever). The other three don’t get bothered. Not on your life.

The set list was extremely predictable: they didn’t serve us a single sweetie. As expected, they completely ignored the albums from the mid-nineties, and played, among other things, the new single Psychopathy Red, which will appear on the upcoming “World Painted Blood” album, out in the fall. Until playing that song, King had huge technical problems; the connection between his guitar and the PA kept acting up, and the techs finally managed to fix it. The peak of the show was, especially for those seeing Slayer for the first time, the last few tracks, whose riffs raise every single hair on your body and which will always be written in gold letters in all the metal textbooks.  A predictable show from the old cats. It ran smoothly and went just as expected. Since Slayer are always expected to deliver the most, it made for an outstanding finish to the night. We saw total command of the stage, charisma radiating from all four of them, and last but not least, we saw something of the biggest to ever stomp on Mother Earth in the world of thrash metal!