A Wrecking Storm Plucks the Eagle Bare (2009)

Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik

Location: Backstage / Munich / Germany
Concert date: 09.11.2009
Attendance: 370
Ticket price: 20,00 (presale) / 25,00€ (day of show)

A three-week tour aimed at the “upper” part of the old continent, with its stop closest to Slovenia in German Munich (as so many times before) and a lousy date, a Monday, when the working souls of this world are chained to their jobs. Two excellent metal bands that came up during the “power metal revival” that defined the second half of the nineties of the last millennium. This is actually one of the few tours this fall of 2009 that take place in Europe at all and stay true to the tradition of that genre.

The names Primal Fear and Brainstorm sound like a dream combo, the kind you can share and relive as a proper power metal-flavored evening of live music. Still, the days of power metal are far from rosy, which is why most of the current dates on the “Viva La Swabia” tour are limited to Germany, where the crowd stays loyal to the genre even at a time when metal is once again betting on the card of “anti-melodic” extremes, especially brutal vocals and semitone masturbation of lead phrases in the effort to break through the sound barrier of noisiness.

Both bands released new studio albums in 2009. Primal Fear “hurried up a bit” and put out their new effort, “16.6. (Before Devil Knows You’re Dead)”, back in May, while Brainstorm released “Memorial Roots” right before the tour started, in mid-October of this year. That leaves both bands with 8 studio albums apiece.

The current tour has been marked by some juicy mishaps. The first was that after only three days of the tour, support act Jaded Heart was kicked off it, even though they were initially part of the “Viva La Swabia 2009” triple bill. The main reason Jaded Heart got expelled from paradise was the fuss made by their management, who refused to accept the number of minutes available for the stage show each night. They claimed there were far too few of them. The second unpleasant situation that Brainstorm and Primal Fear had to shake off as the tour went on was Spanish inhospitality. At all three stops on the Spanish leg, Villaba, Madrid and Barcelona, the bands found rooms supposedly called “dressing rooms” with no lockers, tables or chairs, and no sanitary conditions either (no toilets, not even a shower stall, etc…). On top of that, the Spaniards conveniently forgot what “catering” is. Five days before arriving in Munich, on the way to Bergen in Norway (the bands set off from Oslo), there was a traffic accident in which the bus was swept off the road into a ditch in winter conditions (black ice, snow). Luckily everyone got away without injuries. The journey continued after a few hours, but they had to scratch the Bergen show on 04.11.2009 from the list.

So we’re finally at the venue. It’s well past eight in the evening, and Brainstorm are already raising hell in Munich’s Backstage club. They kicked off their set, as expected, with a showcase of the new studio album “Memorial Roots” and the song Forsake What I Believed. The Germans delivered excellent sound in the club, actually even better than Primal Fear got after them, but more on that below. I hadn’t seen the band on stage since way back in 2003, when they played Salzburg before Saxon! In the meantime Brainstorm have been steadily building their name with quality studio releases, and above all they’ve climbed a good few steps when it comes to stage performance. The guys still come across as agile and thirsty for live shows! You can feel in their playing that they’re enjoying themselves and that the situation gives them no reason for boredom or going through the motions. Both guitars are perfectly in sync in the three-part harmonies and the solo duels in the instrumental mid-sections, and the active, lively rhythm section sounds strong and punchy, of course, commanded by those double bass drum torpedoes.

The cut-off, crisp, almost thrash riffing of the older releases is being replaced from album to album by more and more melody, which obviously comes with the band’s maturing. The new material proves this unmistakably too, with the new album “Memorial Roots” and the performance of the epic, mid-tempo Conjunction of 7 Planets.

Ruling the stage with charisma and positive vibes was the excellent singer Andy B. Franck. The guy has a great voice, polished and expressively strong in every register. For bringing melody into metal of Brainstorm’s kind, Andy B. Franck is the ideal singer! He’s also incredibly flexible and mobile, striking all kinds of poses and positions during the show. Most often he crouches with one foot propped on the front monitor and, eyes locked on individual people, urges the crowd to join in. He often hands his microphone to someone so they can “growl out” a verse of a particular song in his place, but above all Andy is an entertainer who knows how to make fun of himself as well as of individuals in the audience. And all of that is totally forgivable, because first and foremost the guy is a fantastic singer. So, 100% use of stage charisma, with polished and very punchy stage play, a true frontman of the kind similar bands can only dream of. At certain moments he was breathtaking, especially when he strung together contrasts of dizzying articulation from the middle registers to the very highest (still on the edge of normal). Especially with his great ability to win the audience over during the show (a good 300 Backstage visitors were eating out of Andy’s hand), Andy in many ways threw down the “challenging” gauntlet to Primal Fear singer Ralf Scheppers.

You can tell Brainstorm have kept practically the same lineup since the very beginning, so their longevity is marked by exceptional coherence and a solid, polished show with relentless bite in delivering their own take on metal. The band built up the hour-and-15-minute set especially toward the end, when they started lifting the mood with the “Metus Mortis” classic Hollow Hideaway, touched on the album “Liquid Monster” with All Those Words, and closed a fantastic show with two great “Downburst” tracks, Fire Walk With Me and the punchy How Do You Feel, with its seductively anthemic chorus! In a word, a real brainstorm! 

The German Judas Priest, a label they’re drifting further and further from with their last two albums, we had already caught this July in the Austrian town of Debant near Lienz. There, after the release of the new album in May of that year, Primal Fear tried out the new set list for the fall tour for the first time. Apparently the tests were satisfactory, because they kept the repertoire on this tour completely unchanged. Already in Lienz we got to watch Alex Beyrodt on stage, guitarist of the German power metal outfit Silent Force and a guy whose guitar approach is driven by a quickly noticeable Malmsteen obsession. Back then he jumped in as a “backup substitute” for regular Primal Fear member Magnus Karlsson, who had become a dad in the meantime. Months and days have rolled on, and logically Karlsson should be with Primal Fear on the new tour. But on this one too, Alex Beyrodt ended up in his role. What’s more, judging by the series of new Beyrodt guitar picks bearing both the Primal Fear logo and Beyrodt’s signature, one can quietly conclude that another guitarist change is coming for Primal Fear. Of course the band hasn’t announced it officially yet, but in Munich there was already a strong whiff of it in the air.

This time, though, Primal Fear didn’t live up to their role as favorites. Things on stage didn’t quite click, and even a few missed hits from drummer Randy Black were pretty surprising. In the song 16.6 he completely lost the beat… The guys also behaved a bit reservedly on stage, which isn’t typical of the band’s stage signature. Bringing Beyrodt into the lineup is certainly an excellent solution, since the guys know him well and Beyrodt knows exactly what he has to do on stage with Primal Fear. Of course, the guys again threw in their trademark shoulder-to-shoulder stage posing and “headbanging,” and Ralf again imitated the typical “robotic” moves of his role model Rob Halford,… It all came across as professional and with no time for lame jokes. But the chemistry wasn’t as convincing and gripping as at the Debant show this summer.

To top it off, the guitars were set too quiet in the mix, which meant we were deprived of properly enjoying the solo duels of the two guitarists. Scheppers is still an elusive singer when he goes into the high and highest registers. He wails like a siren and keeps himself in extraordinary shape for it, rightfully earning the label “German Rob Halford.” Especially impressive was the power of his devilishly melodic screaming in the verses of Sign Of Fear (“New Religion”, 2007). Still, it wasn’t his best day. The guy showed some signs of wear, especially in the closing part of the show and in the “Jaws Of Death” song Final Embrace.

The encore was pleasing with an acoustic version of the new song Hands Of Time with its excellent chorus, and with the expected “smasher” Chainbreaker the band rounded off its set. What caused the band’s greater reserve this time remains an open question. Maybe it was that Primal Fear played in the small Backstage Werk hall, on the small stage, in front of a good 300 people, or maybe they were carrying some grudge against each other, from the dressing room, right before the show.

With that, I can conclude that Brainstorm, with the fiercely driven and relentless leadership of singer Andy B. Franck, came across as more convincing and genuine! Primal Fear will have to think seriously about how to spice up their show for the next tour. They need a bit more flash. So far they’ve solved everything with sheer power, precision and the singing “at the edge of human capability” of Ralf Scheppers. But even such perfect tightness and hair-splitting can start to get boring, with all due respect to the band. I personally have no problem with it, but you could especially feel in the club that in the closing part of the band’s set the audience was nowhere near showing signs of being swept away, or any special interest in joining in with the band.

photos: Aleš Podbrežnik

Setlist

BRAINSTORM: 1. Intro 2. Forsake What I Believed 3. Highs Without Lows 4. Blind Suffering 5. Shiver 6. Shiva’s Tears 7. Worlds Are Coming Through 8. Conjunction of 7 Planets 9. Falling Spiral Down 10. Doorway To Survive 11. Hollow Hideaway 12. All Those Words 13. Fire Walks With Me 14. How Do You Feel PRIMAL FEAR: 1. Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead (Intro) 2. Under The Radar 3. Battalions Of Hate 4. Killbound 5. Nuclear Fire 6. 16.6 (Six Times Dead) 7. Angel In Black 8. Guitar solos 9. Sign Of Fear 10. Fighting The Darkness 11. Riding The Eagle 12. Final Embrace 13. Metal Is Forever —encore— 14. Hands Of Time 15. Seven Seals 16. Chainbreaker

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