location: Balingen / Messegelände / Germany
date: 13.07.2018
Day two of the big Bang Your Head!!! festival had arrived. This time the headliner role went to the legendary Accept, who had cooked up something exclusive for the festival’s 20th anniversary and promised a spectacular show. Plenty of other tasty treats were on the bill too, including American metal veterans Jag Panzer from Colorado, the ever-hotter Canadian speed/thrash metal revivalists Striker, a “lightly refreshed Gotthard” courtesy of CoreLeoni, the legendary Overkill, and the devil himself on guitar, Jeff Waters, with his Annihilator. In short: another hell of a fun day was on the cards.
The festival got going an hour later than the day before. At half past eleven, the German metal revivalists Alpha Tiger broke the peace and quiet. They’re no strangers to this festival, and they’ve also already played Tolmin’s Metadays festival. They were barely recognizable: the hair has lost some length thanks to a visit from the scissors, and the guys have also ditched the yellow-and-black stripes from their outfits, which is a smart move, since that trick had already been overused on the scene too many times. Just think of Stryper. Benjamin Jaino is the new vocalist who replaced his predecessor Stephan Dietrich in the run-up to the current “Alha Tiger” album. The new record is an ambitious piece of work spread over no fewer than two discs. The band presented it with real commitment and showed that they’ve got no shortage of experience handling big stages. A pleasant way to kick off day two.
Then the Canadian Striker kicked up a lot more dust. They grew into a five-piece a while ago and truly “killed” the crowd with their venomously bristling approach, with not a moment of standing still on stage. All five of them were on the prowl and hitting hard with plenty of vehemence. Singer Dean Cleary delivered an excellent vocal performance, and the two guitarists, especially lead man Chris Segger, were bouncing all over the place and bewitching the crowd with outstanding solo treats, unleashing a string of highly infectious, sharply dressed thrash/speed riffs. In a superb piece of theater full of fierce, untamed action, the band held the audience tight and in just under an hour reeled off a well-balanced selection from all five albums. Striker didn’t forget to premiere the brand-new Heart of Lies, either. They played the following set: Former Glorym, Born to Lose, Pass Me By, Lethal Force, Crossroads, Too Late, Out for Blood, Heart of Lies, Full Speed or No Speed, Phoenix Lights and Fight for Your Life.
Next up, Monument brought the feel of an N.W.O.B.H.M. re-creation to the stage, especially the life and work of Iron Maiden. Their singer is White Wizard’s Peter Ellis, a screamer who has studied every stage trick and the whole style of Bruce Dickinson down to the last detail, and we’re talking Dickinson at his best, meaning the eighties. That’s not all. Monument write riffs that are at times almost too venomously similar to those from Iron Maiden’s golden age, and in that sense they’re dangerously close to sticking their fingers into the copyright of the legendary metal veterans. The spandex, the hit-worthy tunes and the very character of the stage act once again bring pure revivalism of the classic days of the heavy metal school. The band is superbly tight and of course proverbially infectious, precisely thanks to their charging escapades full of harmonies in thirds. This May the band released their fourth studio album, “Hellhound”, and from it they played, besides the title (opening) track, Attila, The Chalice and Wheels of Steel (what a lush imagination), and added older Carry On and Fatal Attack (from “Renegades”) and from “Hair of the Dog” also Olympus and Imhotep (the Higher Priest), where the weaving in of Arabic scales once again pulled toward something that could have trickled in from Maiden’s “Powerslave”. They closed the set with Lionheart. Iron Maiden fans were thrilled. Decent, but as I said: too similar to the originals and role models.
The fourth and last band of the day with the revival label was Night Demon. Because the organizer invited Accept to the festival, he got Night Demon thrown in as a package deal, since they had been on Accept’s extensive European tour this past winter. Night Demon are a trio. As expected, half the set came from the current album “The Darkness Remains”, with five songs played from it: Black Widow, Dawn Rider, Life on the Run, Stranger in the Room and Welcome to the Night. The band surprised quite a few people by working in a cover of the Scorpions original In Tranzit. The middle of the set especially poured oil on the fire, when the somewhat grotesque-looking singer and bassist Jarvis Leatherby and guitarist Armand John Anthony stepped right out to the very edge of the stage. Jarvis put his mic stand out there too. That way Night Demon seriously ramped up a good chunk of the show and very successfully capitalized on the hellish energy that defines their raw, stripped-down heavy metal presence, firmly leaning on the pioneering work of the likes of Thin Lizzy. The German crowd knows the band very well, and the chemistry with them was spot on. The band of course also played The Chalice, when the group’s mascot (death with a chalice in hand) appeared on stage, and they built the set up with Black Widow, all the way to the closing Night Demon, which wrapped up in more than “elegant” fashion an otherwise fierce, extremely solid, confident and tight performance by the trio.
For fans of the classic days of metal, Jag Panzer showing up at the festival was especially tempting Jag Panzer. Not because they’re anything musically out of this world. They’re simply hard to catch on stage. They show up in Europe only sporadically. On top of that, they’ve been plagued by some lineup instability in recent years, as well as occasional breaks. But the latest album “The Deviant Chord” is excellent again and fully justifies the long track record of this fine classic metal outfit, which, surprisingly, didn’t play a single track from their cult “Thane to the Throne” in the set, nor from its follow-up “Mechanized Warfare”. They didn’t forget the album “Casting Stones”, though, with Achllles ringing out around the halfway mark. Anyway, a great show. The band loaded the set with songs from the cult debut “Ample Destruction” (1984), playing Harder Than Steel, Generally Hostile and Warfare. Two must-play tracks from the unforgettable “The Age Of Mastery” (1999) poured oil on the fire: Chain Of Command early in the set and the epic, bombastic Iron Eagle stuck in the middle. Also not to be overlooked was the inclusion of the cult Black from the album “The Fourth Judgement”. The lineup? Absolutely the boss and leader of the group, guitarist and main songwriter Mark Briody! Sticking with him is his longtime buddy on bass, John Tetley. Then of course there’s Harry Conklin on vocals, who has recently lost a serious chunk of body weight, let his hair grow and visibly gone gray. He’s also no longer surrounded by heaps of giant chains and other “jingly” props that once hung off him. Simple. A faded short-sleeved T-shirt and jeans. The barely recognizable Conklin, however, hasn’t lost the vocal power and exceptional range he’s always been famous for, and with it the band’s albums too. The quintet is rounded out by drummer Rikard Stjernquist and guitarist Joey Taffola, a player of exceptional virtuoso skills. The same man has helped out Graham Bonnet and Hardline in his career, and lately he’s been on hand for American metal veterans Leatherwolf. Briody has always made sure he had hot soloists on the team. Before Taffola it was, for instance, Chris Chirs Broderick. A concert full of nostalgia that thrilled the crowd. Jag Panzer haven’t lost their dynamite, charm or swagger.
Time for a refresh of the legacy of Swiss hard rock champions Gotthard. That was taken care of by the new band of Gotthard’s boss and guitarist Leo Leoni, “simply” named CoreLeoni. That’s how Leoni would be spelled if he were a mob boss in the movie “The Godfather”. Why Leoni went for this move, time will tell, since in principle he didn’t need to, unless he’s bored and the rest of his Gotthard comrades can’t be bothered to play for at least the next two years. If you rope in such an excellent new-generation singer as Ronnie Romero, who effortlessly revives the vocal reach of the late Steve Lee, and let’s not forget that this likable and incredibly charismatic Chilean has sung with Blackmore’s Rainbow, then that’s a perfectly good reason. Romero kills with his power, authority and explosiveness. Leoni found a drummer in his Gotthard comrade Hena Habegger and “reactivated” two seemingly “retired” musicians. The first is the big-haired, curly-locked Igor Gianola, who played with U.D.O. for a long time and so, like Leoni with Gotthard in 2005, once even played in Ljubljana. If memory serves, that was 24.05.2004. The second, and totally unknown, name is bassist Mila Merker. Surely a longtime friend of Leoni’s, who totally justified Leoni’s trust with his bass digging. The band’s show was pure fantasy and one of the best of the festival’s day. With the only original they’d written up to that day, Walk On Water, which is a “carved-out Gotthard track”, CoreLeoni went through Gotthard classic after classic with vehement flexibility, including the opening Higher, then Stanidng in the Light, Downtown, Fist in Your Face, Firedance, In The Name, Tell No Lies, Make My Day, and in the closing stretch poured oil on the fire with a crescendo courtesy of the back-to-back trio Mountain Mama, She Goes Down and the ultra-infectious hard rock shrapnel Here Comes The Heat. While Romero is, as mentioned, an absolutely fantastic vocalist, Leoni on stage seems like a little kid who just got a new toy. He was full of drive. He radiated enormous passion and fire. And that was the whole show. The question is where Leoni enjoys himself more these days. With CoreLeoni or with Gotthard? Time will tell. Either way, this show delivered some Gotthard classics that they haven’t played at their own gigs in a long time. The thought is almost blasphemous, but Romero is significantly more charismatic than current Gotthard singer Mic Maedder. For those words Leoni could lynch me, though. In short, a bomb of a show, and let’s hope the debut “The Greatest Hits Vol. 1” is soon followed by a second part and more concerts by the band. By the way, does anyone out there know of a date anywhere near Slovenia?
During the CoreLeoni show, thunder began rumbling in the neighboring Volksbankmesse hall. That’s where the Dutch death metal veterans seasoned with black metal impulses, God Dethroned, began summoning the devil himself from the underworld, or rather what remains of this charismatic band. Of the original members, only vocalist and guitarist Henri Sattler is left today. The other three are basically milk-toothed kids next to him, which also goes for drummer Michael Van Der Plichat, who’s got a little more mileage. Guitarist Mike Ferguson has been in the lineup since 2015, and bassist Jeroen Pomper since a year later. That year Sattler reactivated the band once more. A band shaken throughout its career by constant lineup changes and periods of silence finally managed to push out a new studio album last year, titled “The World Ablaze” (2017). And that’s how the show opened too. With the new album’s title track. The crowd, who were enjoying extreme metal gloom instead of CoreLeoni’s hard rockers, got to enjoy themselves further as the band jumped to the classic “Ravenous” for Villa Vampiria. They didn’t dig deeper into history. They stuck exclusively to post-millennium material, and besides two new ones, Escape Across the ice (the White Army) and Annihilation Crusade, they strung together Nihilism, No Man’s Land, Poison Fog, and in the closing stretch Boiling Blood and Storm of Steel. The charisma remained, and so did Henri’s vocals. Ominous and chilling. God Dethroned keep their composure, and the new album confirms creative maturity and freshness. It took a long time to simmer, but it rewarded the fans for the wait.
As the God Dethroned show tipped into its finale, the one and only took the main stage. Abbath of course. Abbath especially stuck in the hearts of last year’s Tolmin Metaldays visitors. After him, the slope above the festival grounds on the Soča is now called “Abbath’s Hill”, the place where the almighty Norwegian mountain man from Bergen, after shaking hands with fans during his set, theatrically took a run-up, caught a molehill in mid-stride and accidentally went tumbling. Well, we didn’t witness anything like that at Bang Your Head!!!. Abbath enjoyed Balingen for a few days, having already played here two days earlier with his Bombers. Back then he was playing Motörhead covers, and now he’d have to play Immortal, in full Immortal getup at that! Abbath is a clown, and he comes across like one of the Manowar members dressed up as a black metaller. That charisma and, to a degree, parodic grotesqueness, which has grown on him in recent years, gratefully lifts his shows up. The signature grimaces, the faces he pulls, the corpse paint recognizable from a mile away.. Tongue out the whole time whenever possible, bulging eyes no less so. Abbath opened with three songs from the debut studio album Abbath, namely To War!, Winterbane and Ashes of the Damned, and then seasoned almost the entire rest of the set with covers of the Immortal legacy. What followed was Warriors, In My Kingdom Cold, Tyrants, Nebular Ravens Winter, The Rise of Darkness and One by One. The crowd would probably have lynched him if it had been any other way. The show closed with the Abbath song Count the Dead. Totally decent and confident. Given the string of anecdotes, going to an Abbath show today is really a chance to laugh before your hair accidentally stands on end at his “black metalness”.
Abbath had just gotten properly underway in the middle of the show when German power metallers Mob Rules took the stage in the Volskbankmesse hall. A long-lived band that has been active since 1994, with only singer klaus Dirks left from the original members, they played one of their rare summer shows at Bang Your Head!!!. A month before the release of the new studio album “Beast Reborn”. The band is full of flirting with pomp and bombast, and so of course are the chorus melodies, which are easy to sing along to. Klaus donned some baroque “junk”, which ramped up the theater a bit, and the band plays excellently. The group closed the show with Hollowed Be Thy Name from the album of the same name, released way back in 2002, and the set also had room for, among others: Children’s Crusade, the brand-new and premiered Ghost Of A Chance, and Children of the Flames.
Overkill shows are always an attraction. Simple as that. Their gigs are that good. Overkill still bring a real storm gust to the stages, a veritable thrash metal tornado. They keep the stage vehemence, the wildness and the lack of restraint. Once again the unique Bobby Blitz took command, and while flipping the middle finger he didn’t forget to spit all over the stage. That’s not even the point, it’s a fact, and part of the obligatory Overkill folklore. The crazy singer stays crazy in his late fifties. He screams and roars with undiminished power, and with his antics and mischief adds just the right, if not perfect, dose of fun. People were going nuts, and you were better off watching the show from somewhere at a safe distance. Germany is the band’s second home. The quintet felt right at home and truly delivered another top-notch performance, proving they know nothing of rust. Overkill won’t be taking their foot off the gas anytime soon. They showed exceptional commitment and zeal. Bobby and the other original member in the lineup, their “vampirologist” and bassist D.D. Verni, of course took most of the attention. Rhythm guitarist Derek Thaier also has plenty of room to clown around on stage, while the excellent soloist Dave Linsk keeps the most stage seriousness and groundedness in the band. The band chopped through track after track, displaying exceptional tightness, unbelievable compactness and a hard-working chemistry in which Overkill come across as if in a trance. The new opener Mean, Green Killing Machine from the new “The Grinding Wheel”, joined in the middle by Goddamn Trouble, kept company with the newer tracks Electric Rattlesnake (“The Electric Age”, 2012) and Ironbound (“Ironbound”, 2010), while otherwise it was golden eighties all the way, a walk through: Rotten to the Core, There’s No Tomorrow (both from the debut “Feel the Fire”), then Coma, Infectious (both “Horrorscope”), Elimination (“Years of Decay”), In Union We Stand (“Taking Over”) and Hello From the Gutter (“Under the Influence”). The band ended the show as expected. With Fuck You!!! (originally by Subhumans), into which they wove the Dead Boys cover Sonic Reducer, reminding everyone of their punk rock roots. Overkill remain, to put it mildly, destructive!
Anyone who wasn’t too keen on all that could in the meantime storm into the hall, where Swedish glam metal revivalists Crazy Lixx were playing. The hall was jam-packed, and the band even served up some pyro. In these new times Danny Rexon has shaved half of his skull, and during the show he theatrically pulled a prison mask over his head. In tune with “Friday the 13th”, of course. So the new song XIII and the new album “Ruff Justice”, which was more strongly represented in the setlist. From it they also played Killer, Walk the Wire and Wild Child. But first place went to the material from the album “New Religion”, when the band played Blame It on Love, Children of the Cross, Lock Up Your Daughter, Rock and a Hard Place and closed the show with 21 Til I Die. Crazy Lixx are a glam metal revival band, but they also know how to boil over in a punkish, “torn-up” way, which reveals their inspiration from Motley Crue, Guns’N’ Roses, Skid Row, and Kiss too, of course. The band is perfect on stage. No mistakes. No flaws. And they’ve become incredibly popular. At least in Germany. During the show you could barely move in the hall. There must have been some 2000 heads in there. The band also played: Hell Raising Woman (“Crazy Lixx”), the songs Riot Avenue and Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (both from the album “Riot Avenue”), and early in the show they also pinned on the song Girls Of the Eighties. The eighties hardly work any better than in Swedish revival perfectionism. And the stage confirmed that once again. A superb show, a superb party!
And now the great Accept. Accept play constantly. And they record almost as much. Last year another studio album came out. This time they titled it “The Rise of Chaos”. In the role of day two’s headliners they made the most of the stage. A “The Rise Of Chaos” backdrop gleamed on it, modeled on the album cover. Apocalypse! For this year’s edition of the festival the band prepared an exclusive show that ran a bit longer than the setlists of their usual summer festival shows. At the official merch table you could even buy an official band shirt for just €15.00. Next to it, it said: “Special price, only for the 20th anniversary of the BYH!!! festival” But you had to be careful. The back of the shirt had the dates of the autumn/winter 2017/2018 tour printed on it. If you’d caught one of the Accept shows on that tour, it was certainly worth picking up the kitschy shirt. Accept are an extremely well-oiled machine, approaching things not just with routine but with honed professionalism, laced with a sense of perfectionism and an innate German craving for flawlessness, if not downright uncompromisingness. The legends keep going, and on stage there’s no sign that the years have caught up with them. Accept were incredibly lively and mischievous. They showed a lot less apparent routine than they did a week later at Tolmin’s Metaldays festival. So let no one argue with the golden rule that German bands are best watched primarily in Germany! Wolf Hofmann, who always demands the most room and spotlight for his ego, already let Uwe Lulis join him for the third song (and the first surprise of the set), Starlight. Together they marched all the way to the edge of the catwalk. Lulis was also allowed to step over to Hoffmann’s left side several times, where they rode the classic Acccept riffs shoulder to shoulder. No slip-ups. The confident Tornillo didn’t hide his great routine and experience either. He skillfully steered around the highest notes and cleverly adapted and simplified them in places, while the crowd did the rest for him, singing the choruses as if in a trance. We’ll certainly never again witness the birth of the magic that was only possible with Dirkschneider on vocals, but that’s another story. Tornillo is quite a different singer. Just different enough and still similar enough. His vocals fit the fundamental characteristics of Accept’s music, old and new, wonderfully.
Accept delighted longtime fans with a truly excellent setlist. So the “Restless And Wild” standards Fast As A Shark and Princesss Of the Dawn were this time joined by Ahead Of the Pack and Demon’s Night (with the latter they closed the regular part of the set), while interestingly the title track of that cult album dropped out of the set (which they, for instance, played later at the Tolmin show). Two “Objection Overruled” classics also exclusively found their way onto the setlist, the title track and Slaves To Metal. Then there was T.V. War from “Russian Roulette”! The rest was of course iron-clad standards, led by the “Metal Heart” tracks Up to the Limit and Metal Heart, the famous “Balls to the Wall”, the already mentioned Starlight and the closing rock’n’roll firestarter Burning (both “Breaker”), then I’m A Rebel (“I’m A Rebel”). The current album “The Rise Of Chaos” was represented by Die By The Sword (the show opener), the hugely entertaining Koolaid, then No Regrets and, for all of you who still don’t want “smart” phones, Analog Man. The best moments of the album “Blood of the Nations”, Pandemic and especially Teuthonic Terror, have apparently also become part of the band’s mandatory iron-clad repertoire.
We had to miss part of the show because it “unfortunately” overlapped with the Canadian Annihilator, who were announced in the neighboring hall. In recent years Annihilator have been operating as a quartet again. Vocals were once again taken on by the unique Jeff Waters, the man who stunned everyone with his genius in the late eighties when the band released the unforgettable studio debut “Alice In Hell”. Jeff was brimming with good spirits right from the start. In his own style, in his trademark “devilish” dance, often tiptoeing around on one leg, he never stopped zigzagging across the stage. Now on the right, now on the left, then back at the mic and in the middle! The years don’t stick to him. He acts like a rascal. And a “pumped-up” rascal with a short mohawk, at that. Jeff really should have one more member on the team, a man who would do nothing but sing, scream and howl. It’s not only Randy Rampage that’s missed, but Joe Comeau too. Jeff just isn’t a singer, but he’s stubborn enough and convinced enough of himself that he’s good enough vocally and can handle lead vocals. Fine. Let him. The opener was the new track from the current “For the Demented”, called One for the Kill, and it continued with the title track of the album “King of the Kill” (the band later played Fiasco from that album as well). Surprisingly, the band stuck the “Feast” track No Way Out into the setlist, drummed by former Annihilator drummer Randy Black, who came specially for the occasion. That evening he also sorted out the last details with his future employer Schmier about joining Destruction. Of course we ran into Schmier again that evening at the festival grounds. He’s a regular festival visitor. The totally expected classic Set the World On Fire was there, and as always we were impatiently waiting for the tracks from the first two albums. Especially the first. Allison Hell is a standard that always gives you goosebumps, and keeping it company from the debut were W.T.Y.D. (Welcome to Your Death) and the closing shrapnel Human Insecticide. The second album “Never Neverland” was as usual represented by the phantasmagorical Phantasmagoria. The closing stretch of Phantasmagoria, Allison Hell and Huamn Insecticide brought the show to its final crescendo. Interestingly, despite the overlap with Accept, Annihilator didn’t play to an empty hall. Quite the opposite. It was boiling in there. That reflected the fact that in recent years Germans have seen Accept many times, which isn’t always and everywhere true for Annihilator. And there was plenty to see and hear. No matter the grumbling about Jeff’s vocal limitations, he’s surrounded by an excellent company of three musicians, Aaron Homma (guitar), Rich Hinks (bass) and Fabio Alessandrini (drums). Interestingly, Homma at first glance looks a lot like a young Waters (from Annihilator’s early era). Waters remains a complete one-off. Watching him do everything on stage with such feather-light ease, and the technical complexity and polish that constantly surround his solo shenanigans, takes your breath away. The untamed guitarist once again sweated completely through his clothes. True, most people were watching Accept at that time as they thundered spectacularly on the main stage, but there wasn’t a second you could regret, or that you could have spent better than with Annihilator in the Volksbankmesse hall. An exceptional performance.
Accept and Annihilator ended their sets at the same time. At 23.00. Half an hour later, one more show was announced. In the hall. Stuttgart’s Primal Fear. Defenders of the honor and glory of German power metal, represented by a quintet of extremely experienced and excellent individuals. Although Primal Fear had an hour and a half at their disposal, they played considerably less. They said goodbye after an hour and ten minutes. The Volksbankmesse was jam-packed, and the band, as expected, gave a slight nod to the tracks from the album “Rulebreaker” (Angels Of Mercy, The End Is Near, In Metal We Trust). Primal Fear are still screamed through with all vehemence by the splendid Ralf Scheepers, who was in significantly better form that night than two years ago, when we saw the band play in Vienna. Once again he tore down everything in front of him and stunned with his vocal charisma and unexpected range. The guitar duo of Tom Naumann and Alex Beyrodt remains brilliant, if not outright top-class, while the rhythm section, led by chief Mat Sinner, who was once again eagerly scraping and rattling his bass, and Francesco Jovino behind the drums, gives a sense of impenetrability. With a fairly predictable selection, where the classics once again rang out, among them Nuclear Fire (“Nuclear Fire”), Metal is Forever (“Devil’s Ground”), Final Embrace (show opener, album “Jaws Of Death”) and the hurricane-force power metal slaps taken from the debut “Primal Fear” (1998), Chainbreaker and Running in the Dust, Primal Fear fairly comfortably played themselves a winning poker hand of aces and not only threw the crowd into the air but raised the whole roof of the hall with a four-of-a-kind. The band really couldn’t commit a single noteworthy slip-up or miss. The August release of the new album was heralded by the excellent Hounds of Justice (“Apocalypse”, 2018). Then a jump to “Seven Seals” with Rollercoaster, while among the newer ones When Death Comes Knocking (“Delivering the Black”) also rang out.
So the band had more time to play, but Horst would have had to slip Sinner and company a few more euros to extend the band’s time together with the extremely joyful and fired-up crowd. Primal Fear proved they could dig, tear, wreck and rage. They remain one of the finest power metal fortresses around, with an enviably long track record. A German school of experienced masters who long ago carefully crossed their honed sense for brilliantly appealing heavy metal with total professionalism.
So day two was long and full of great music. It offered something for everybody. That left the third day. That one will be more old-school, with sets lined up from, among others: the Americans Hexx, N.W.O.B.H.M. contemporaries Tygers Of Pan Tang and Cloven Hoof, Japanese legends Loudness and Denmark’s Pretty Maids, who played their cult album “Future World” in full. To be continued.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
