Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Concert date: 28.06.2008
Attendance: 2806
Ticket price: 15.000
AGE OF EVIL: 09.30-10.10
On day two my head was seriously heavy thanks to a healthy dose of alcoholic derivatives. I staggered onto the grounds a good while late and got there just as Age Of Evil, the band that opened day two of the Bang Your Head!!! festival, were wrapping up. What my ears managed to catch was a great mix of standard rock n’ roll foundations played in the extreme guise of old school thrash, with Maiden-style twin harmonies. The boys from Arizona have barely turned 18, they weren’t even born yet when the thrash beast was already terrorizing the planet, and their arrival gives hope that thrash metal’s mission will get passed on in a healthy way from the older generation to the younger one. I regretted being late, of course.
SECRECY: 10.20-11.00
Balingen is obviously a lucky town for reunions. The organizer managed to get Germany’s Secrecy back together after 15 years of silence, a band whose career reaches back into the deep eighties of the last millennium. They reunited in the original lineup and added one extra guitarist, Dennis Krüger. In the eighties the band released two albums, “Art Of Motion” and “Raging Romance”, which enjoy cult status in the German metal underground.
The band brought its classics back to life on stage. Secrecy have a distinctive, I wouldn’t quite say “neotenic”, Rush-style vocal, which brings the required obscure vibe to the atmosphere. These guys are a proper eighties band. The riffs and melodies leaned hard toward American old school speed metal and the second half of the eighties. That they had barely dragged their asses back into action showed in their rather sorry look. They could have invested a cent or two more in their appearance. The band’s extreme stiffness on stage was also a bit of a snooze. We’ll see whether Secrecy sail out again, or whether this reunion was just for one day.
BREAKER: 11.10-11.50
Pretty much the same story with Breaker, from Cleveland (USA). Like Secrecy, they got back together at the organizer’s invitation to play Bang Your Head!!! The reunion was originally planned with original singer Jim Hammar, but he had to bail at the last minute because of illness and surgery. The band called in Greg Wagner and showed up on stage as a sextet a little after eleven in the morning. Breaker were the festival’s first real wake-up call.
These guys are cut from completely different cloth than the limp Secrecy. They looked like they couldn’t wait to blow up the stage. They had already played two days earlier at the BYH!!! 2008 warm up show in Hechingen, near Balingen. They have no fewer than three guitars in the lineup, all three Flyin’ V’s, and all three guitarists take solos. The guys came across as a seriously tight unit, and Greg Wagner especially impressed everyone with a great stage show, general craziness and firing up the crowd. Greg has a voice you can still file under melodic, but with a rasping, slightly raw undertone that, by ear alone, recalls Blackie Lawless (W.A.S.P.), superbly preserved and explosive in every range. Breaker hit with everything they had. Hugely encouraged by individuals in the crowd who knew the lyrics to their classics, like Ten Seconds Day, they delivered a one-of-a-kind, polished and energetic set. It rang in the ears for a long time, and singer Greg shocked and woke up the crowd with a stage dive, jumping from the two-and-a-half-meter-high stage into the audience. The band also threw a pile of Breaker shirts into the crowd.
ONSLAUGHT: 12.00-12.40
Legendary bands were raining onto the stage that day. Another reactivated thrash metal outfit, this time from the United Kingdom, which isn’t all that common, the excellent Onslaught attacked the stage at noon sharp. With Killing Piece they immediately proved they were hungry for music, hungry for thrash, having tightened their ranks into such a solid, compact unit that you’d never believe it could ever have stopped playing and taken a break. The lads are phenomenally rehearsed, and the most important factor, despite all the virtues of the band’s classic old school thrash style, is singer Sy Keeler’s vocal. It worked brilliantly. He uses a huge variety of approaches. From aggressive, brutal singing to melodic and obscure with a rasping undertone, which is demanded especially in the mid-to-high registers. But what really sated us were the extremely high, polished “screams”, without which a complete live performance of Onslaught material is unimaginable. The machine was grinding, and the crowd below the stage gave the energy right back with “banging” and singing. The band got through its 40 minutes in a blink. A hellishly good gig, sharpened to the max. They simply enchanted with the essence of directness and authenticity, with the sinister rage of a wounded lion’s defiance shining through. Conformists, yuppie mass manipulators and the rest of the empty gray! Watch out!
After the show Onslaught gave heartfelt thanks to both the audience and the organizer. They drove a full 16 hours to Balingen and it was far from too much, or a regret. Their great mood was also confirmed by the fact that after the show they strolled freely among the crowd below the stage, enjoying other bands’ sets, and they were also happy to show up in the press tent, where a mug (or two, or more) of Fürstenberg beer was certainly no stranger to them.
Onslaught setlist:
1. Killing Peace
2. Let There Be Death
3. Angels Of Death
4. Destroyer Of Worlds
5. Metal Forces
6. Planting Seeds Of Hate
7. Demoniac
8. Burn
LIZZY BORDEN: 12.55-13.45
After nine years, Lizzy Borden returned to the scene of the crime. The band took its name from the murderess who killed her father and stepmother with an axe, still considered one of the cruelest and most mysterious crimes in American history. Lizzy Borden play classic American metal, which hasn’t changed all that much over the course of their career.
The band took the stage and kicked off with the title track of their brand-new album “Appointment With Devil”. It comes out at the end of October this year. A Lizzy Borden show is always something special. Makeup and powder, please! All the members were slathered in a thick layer of white cream, and Lizzy ran onstage in a black cloak with a baseball bat in his hands. He had dyed his hair black and tied it in a topknot in the middle. For a moment you could think you were watching Marilyn Manson himself.
On one of the guitars was Ira Black, who used to strum for Vicious Rumors and Heathen. Lizzy’s vocal remains superior and at moments recalls Bruce Dickinson in better days, or Kiske (ex-Helloween). The band worked songs from all their released albums into the set, and Lizzy entertained the crowd by swinging an axe and pouring and drinking “blood”. Toward the end, scantily clad bunnies from the nearby party tent marched onto the stage, climbing and writhing all over the singer, who by then had wrapped himself in a German and an American flag.
All of this would be silly, a mere attempt to distract attention, if the musicians were poorly versed. But since that’s not the case, the stage theatrics and the excellent execution of the material, if anything, feed and reinforce each other. That means Lizzy Borden delivered a highly bombastic show, with a hypnotic spark that sucked you in and didn’t let you out of its claws for a second. After twenty years Lizzy Borden and his band have kept an extraordinary sense of rock n’ roll craziness, which he channels through the tracks of authentic old school heavy metal, loaded with melody and shock-rock catchiness.
Lizzy Borden setlist (first set):
1. Appointment With Death
2. Abnormal
3. Notorious
4. Rod of Iron
5. Tomorrow Never Comes
6. Red Rum
7. We Only Come Out At Night (intro)
8. There Will Be Blood Tonight
9. Me Against the World
10. We Got the Power
TANKARD: 14.00-14.50
A proper storm, and a thunderstorm right after it, broke out below the stage thanks to German beer thrashers Tankard. They shook out their rage for over forty minutes, and people came roaring in even in the worst heat and packed tight below the stage. Singer Andi, visually the ideal Tankard type, tore around wildly and flung his bales of blubber across the stage, while the other three companions burned like they were in a trance. Rectifier and similarly titled songs, a staple of Tankard’s beer humor, sent the crowd into ecstasy. Curt and kicked straight in the face, yet wrapped in lyrics you can laugh yourself unconscious at. Andi is a terrific frontman. With an approach like that, their tankard will hardly ever be completely drained!
OBITUARY: 15.05-15.55
The only death metal act at the festival, Florida’s Obituary, are definitely among the legends of their metal craft. And that’s not all. By showing up at BYH!!! 2008 they delivered metal in its most extreme form of anything the festival saw over two days. As one of the founders of the genre, the band set new milestones of extreme music back in 1989 with their debut “Slowly We Rot”. This time too the band, who also presented their new album “Xecutioner’s Return” (2007), were welcomed with enthusiasm by the crowd below the stage, who, despite the worst of the heat around three in the afternoon, started a wild deadly dance with the band. Once again John Tardy’s excellent vocal stood out. It’s the decisive factor in the band, the thing by which you either embrace Obituary’s music or reject it completely. He’s one of those special growl singers with a somewhat higher-pitched voice, but a voice from another galaxy, one that pierced every concrete wall at the festival, that’s how penetrating and powerful it is.
Midway through the show the band had some trouble with the PA, which they tried to fix, so we got two somewhat longer interruptions. Otherwise the guys played like they were in a trance. The work of the two guitars linked up and built on each other superbly. The black ambience of a perfect, gloomy, apocalyptic day of blackness of all blackness with no way back glowed bloody red out of Obituary’s torture of noisy lashing and abuse of the monitors, and brought the crowd below the stage to its knees. Obituary are in top form right now and don’t show their two decades at all.
LIZZY BORDEN: 16.10-17.05
Back in the morning it was announced that Hardcore Superstar and Obituary had swapped slots. Obituary played theirs, but Hardcore Superstar just never showed up on stage. Instead, from the crowd we could spot members of Lizzy Borden pottering around the amps and the walls of Marshalls. Am I seeing this right? Lizzy Borden were setting up their own sound for another show. Hardcore Superstar were evidently forced to cancel, and Lizzy Borden offered the organizer, Horst, on their own initiative, to play the Bang Your Head stage one more time.
For the second show Lizzy Borden gave the crowd a completely different setlist than in the first! That’s fair to the fans and especially to the organizer, who will write this event down in bold letters in his Bang Your Head diary! The second show proved to be even more energetic and relaxed than the first. The crowd took the new Lizzy Borden gig completely unburdened and went wild with the band. The band had to put together a new setlist, and they had two hours to do it. This material, which this lineup had never played live on stage before, was rehearsed in a hurry backstage. And so well that on stage the earlier “not playing” didn’t show at all.
In a somewhat shortened program they also played their probably biggest classics, Give ’em the Axe and American Metal, which pumped an extra dose of adrenaline into the listeners’ blood. The scandalous girls were back on stage too, wildly shaking their asses and twisting into every pose imaginable. Lizzy staged a proper Dracula attack on one of the girls and once again liberally soaked himself, her and the stage in fake blood.
The band hit the nail on the head with excellent versions of covers by classic bands Rainbow (Long Live Rock N’ Roll) and Steppenwolf (Born To Be Wild) and walked out of the ring as the absolute winner. With a selfless move, Lizzy Borden showed great character, the kind you don’t run into every day in the music show business. The golden eighties of heavy metal, dressed up in shock tradition, showed up for a moment in that classic light which even real music laypeople couldn’t stay completely indifferent to. Hats off, guys!
Lizzy Borden setlist (second set):
1. Perfect World
2. Be One of Us
3. Give ’em the Axe
4. Psychopath
5. American Metal
6. Long Live Rock And Roll
7. Born To Be Wild
GRAVE DIGGER: 17.25-18.25
Grave Digger, today you can call them the legendary German Teutonic lumberjacks of heavy metal, have become a very predictable band. An album every other year, followed by a winter tour and the odd appearance at summer festivals. Catching Grave Digger this year was a real little masterpiece of a job, since in Balingen the band played its only summer show in Europe. Grave Digger are a respected name among Germans these days, so a sizable crowd of headbangers packed in below the stage. The show started interestingly, with the taped intro from the album “Tunes Of War” (The Brave), then, to everyone’s surprise, flowed into the prehistorically venomous march The Reaper. Right from the start it was clear this would be one of the most intense sets of the day in terms of interaction between crowd and band. Chris Boltendhal, the well-known, seasoned rasper “Uncle Reaper”, once again ran from one side of the stage to the other like a thug and soaked up the attention he got from the whole mass below the stage. Grave Digger still spiced up their show, though. They brought a sixth member into the ranks, crew-cut guitarist Thilo Hermann (ex-Running Wild), who is fully equal to Manni Schmidt in the solos.
The band’s setlist was standard. Grave Digger touched practically every record, except “Heart Of Darkness” (1995), and played the best-known hits from them. A pleasant surprise on the setlist was the inclusion of the excellent, highly atmospheric mid-tempo track The Silence (“The Grave Digger”, 2001), but otherwise the show ran entirely by routine, formulaic and predictable. At the end the guys floored it with a red-hot trio, The Grave Digger, especially Rebelllion (The Clans Are Marching), which practically the entire crowd sang along to with fervor, and the closing Heavy Metal Breakdown, where Chris and the gang squeezed even more quanta of energy out of the audience. They left an excellent impression, confirming that Grave Digger can hardly fake it on stage and that, out of the eighties German metal guard, they’re one of the most experienced bands, who know how to fully satisfy listeners with their compactly crafted sets, the most elementary heavy metal shot.
Grave Digger setlist:
1. The Brave (intro)
2. The Reaper
3. Excalibur
4. Valhalla
5. The Dark Of The Sun
6. Knights Of The Cross
7. The Silence
8. Silent Revolution
9. Last Supper
10. The Grave Digger
11. Rebellion (The Clans Are Marching)
12. Heavy Metal Breakdown
YNGWIE J. MALMSTEEN: 18.45-19.55
The set by the “baroque hair” rocker was undoubtedly a voluptuous treat of a special kind. Things didn’t go entirely the way the fans wanted, though. The wait for the maestro dragged on, because the techs just couldn’t get Yngwie’s guitar sorted. Impatience grew by the minute, especially for those of us curious how Yngwie’s new singer Tim “Ripper” Owens (ex Iced Earth, ex-Judas Priest) would fare on stage. We waited a good 15 minutes before the two-meter highlander finally came barreling onto the stage with his cream-colored Fender Stratocaster. Baroquely decked out and with Richie Blackmore in his veins, Yngwie opened his show with a standard classic from his repertoire, Rising Force. Right at the start, when he first strutted over to Ripper on his right, he opened a pack of picks and threw a few quite spontaneously out ahead of him and down off the stage among the photographers, who started fighting each other over the precious plastic (read: poor, dear camera gear).
Well, “Dr. Ripper” is the kind of singer you can call a typical “metal screamer” who in no way belongs in hard rock. Yngwie is basically a hard rocker, and when he isn’t firing off a pleiad of classical note runs, his songs can be very appealingly punchy and rockishly possessive. Ripper is therefore a very bold choice, because so far Yngwie has only brought typical hard rock singers into his ranks, which Tim Owens is far from, and couldn’t be. Ripper sang everything there was to sing without a problem. The songs got an emotionally colder reflection, but on the other hand they grew out of an explosive attitude and picked up a pinch more darkness. Ripper sang absolutely everything Yngwie came up with. Particularly witty was the interplay between singer and guitarist in reaching the ultimate extreme of height that the instrument and Ripper’s voice can manage. Ripper really is a metal terminator. The man doesn’t care where he sings anymore. He’ll earn a nice bit of cash with Malmsteen, and it would be interesting if the guitar virtuoso invited him into the studio to record a new record. That would surely be something special in Malmsteen’s repertoire.
Yngwie, who had sound trouble on stage throughout, kept twiddling his knobs during the set, and the show was cut short because of these hiccups. Even so, Yngwie was a special treat on stage, reviving that special musical charm you only believe once you experience it live. Besides his excellent singing, Ripper also paid constant attention to the egomaniac Yngwie, who demands it. Perhaps in this role Ripper is even Yngwie’s first singer who’s up to the task, and Yngwie even enjoys Ripper’s “Yngwie fuckin’ Mouseteen” style of address. We’ll see what time brings.
Yngwie J. Malmsteen setlist:
1. Rising Force
2. Never Die
3. Far Beyond the Sun
4. I Am a Viking
5. Guitar Solo
6. You Don’t Remember, I’ll Never Forget
7. I’ll see the Light Tonight
SAXON: 20.20-21.35
Old farts from the days of the birth of the “New Wave of British Heavy Metal” are always a one-of-a-kind attraction when you go to see them live. Like Grave Digger, you can say of Saxon today that they’ve been sailing along thoroughly predictable tracks for quite a while now. Autumn tours are followed by festival appearances, and the guys don’t forget to put out studio albums fairly regularly either. Saxon take a completely rational approach these days. They don’t waste excess energy. For festivals they put together a setlist of the biggest hits, wedge in a track or two from the current record, and that’s that.
This time they did exactly the same, and for the opening, somewhat unfortunately, not to say rather unwisely, or on the other hand boldly, they picked Attila the Hun (“The Inner Sanctum”, 2007). The song with its clunky riff completely stopped the band from exploding across the stage, which would doubtless suit Saxon given their body of work. If you asked the band why, they’d diplomatically answer that they love the song and never care which song they open their shows with. Anyway, let’s leave philosophy aside, because the very next track, with Byford’s whistling, meant Motorfuckin’cycle Man had come roaring down the track. Old farts, but not a single clunker. They play flawlessly, they play sharp, they play full-on and of course with lots of confidence, brought by long, long concert mileage. Biff seemed much fresher and more rested, he’d even shed a few kilos compared to what I saw at Salzburg’s RockHouse (11.12.2007). Of course he didn’t forget to wag his characteristically long tongue, and since the man likes to ramble, that took a good measure of healthy taste off the show itself, especially because it was cut short by 15 minutes.
Saxon did still offer one interesting moment. For Denim & Leather they invited Yngwie Malmsteen onto the stage. As soon as Biff announced his arrival, a classical arpeggio poured out from behind the stage, and then Yngwie came bounding on like the happiest puppy. Do you think his classically cut solo style suited the rock n’ roll foundation of the song? Surely not. But Yngwie did spice up the legends’ otherwise casual stage routine. To finish, the band came back and fired off a three-minute And The Bands Played On, which brought some extra quality to the set. But as I said, Biff’s blabbing that Germany saved Saxon in the nineties and similar flattery aimed at the crowd’s emotions, despite the general mass support from the audience, which proved what a big name Saxon are in Germany and how happy people were with the show, did not wash away the stain on the gig that the band brought on itself by cutting the repertoire by 15 minutes.
Saxon setlist:
1. Atilla the Hun
2. Motorcycle Man
3. Let Me Feel Your Power
4. To Hell And Back Again
5. Heavy Metal Thunder
6. Strong Arm Of The Law
7. 20.000 Feet
8. Crusader
9. Wheels Of Steel
10. Princess Of The Night
11. Denim And Leather
—encore—
12. And The Bands Played On
JUDAS PRIEST: 22.05-23.50
And so we fought our way through to the grand finale of the Bang Your Head festival for 2008! The set by the band that, inadvertently and unwittingly, wrote a good chunk of the metal bible through their seventies and rose among the immortal legends in the eighties. Even Biff Byford himself admitted that on their first tour Saxon played as the support act for Judas Priest, and said it was a special honor that Saxon could play before Judas Priest tonight too.
Judas Priest had just released their new album “Nostradamus” (2008), which came out 14 days earlier (counting from Priest’s Balingen show), so it was only logical to dress the stage in the spirit of the new album. More than that, even. Right after the intro, Rob Halford appears on the top step of the stage dressed up as Nostradamus. A bearded Rob Halford in a silver priest’s robe, with a staff topped by the characteristic Judas Priest cross. The song stirs up interest in the new album, but we’d all come to the front for something else. Judas Priest knew that perfectly well, so they got people on their feet right away with the obligatory Metal Gods. The next one, Eat Me Alive, promised an excellent setlist, and then Between The Hammer and the Anvil showed the biggest flaw in the band’s current makeup. Rob Halford’s voice is cracking at every seam. To help a colleague in need, Priest tuned the guitars down half a step, and during the show, pre-recorded high “screams” helped Halford out in certain parts too, successfully masking the sad state of his singing today. That’s singing by the standards demanded of Judas Priest, of course. Halford seemed to be in somewhat better shape than a good two weeks earlier at the Nova Rock festival in Austria, and yet he’s far from the Rob Halford we were used to even three or four years ago. The devil only knows what happened to the man overnight that he got so weak. After the show people were joking maliciously that he sang Breaking The Law best (in which he turns the mic to the crowd anyway so they can sing most of the song).
Neither the fantastic gems on the setlist, Devil’s Child, Rock Hard, Ride Free, Dissident Aggressor or Hell Patrol, nor the excellent work of the unbreakable guitar duo Tipton/Downing and the cannon-like Travis/Hill rhythm section, nor a horde of different leather outfits, and not even the motorbike ride during Hell Bent For Leather, managed to chase away the stain and the bitter realization that this was practically a show that was sorely missing something.
The contact with the audience is also lacking. Halford avoids eye contact. To that end he wears sunglasses for a good part of the show, or he compensates with stage acting, bracing himself against the mic and, while singing, stiffly turning his head and staring down at the stage floor. You could see and feel that Halford was trying his utmost anyway, but the fact that his high registers have failed him remains, and it’s reality. In songs like Angel, Hellion/Electric Eye, Hell Bent For Leather or Eat Me Alive, the man still somehow defied the obstacles, since those don’t call for the highest lines of the vocal, and likewise in songs where the “screams” are added just as decoration, like You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’, Between The Hammer And The Anvil and Devil’s Child, it wasn’t a bother, while Painkiller, Rock Hard, Ride Free, Sinner and Hell Patrol sounded dismal. There was a time when Halford’s awkwardness in making contact with the crowd wasn’t felt at all, or was completely unobtrusive, because the man smashed through every wall with his one-of-a-kind singing in the highest ranges, which, together with him, makes Judas Priest unique.
Compared to the Nova Rock show in Austria, Judas Priest played the full set this time. In the second encore, before You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’, Halford took 5 minutes to fire up the crowd by getting them to join in the characteristic Halford “Oh! Yeah!” singing (the standard Judas Priest concert routine).
Otherwise, the scene itself, the performance and the sound were pure perfection and standard, which the band of course owes to the tremendous backing of the experienced crew that sets up their stage, as well as the band’s own great power and know-how.
The show would have been a real mega spectacle if Halford could have sung the high, higher and highest registers, but that didn’t happen. Where do Judas Priest go from here? Is it possible that Halford can fix his voice? Let’s hope so, and the sooner the better. If that’s not possible, Judas Priest have to replace their singer as soon as possible. There are plenty of candidates among the promising youngsters, but the ideal move would be for the guys to call the legionnaire Tim “Ripper” Owens back into the ranks. Where are you, Ripper?!?! We miss you!
Only two days after the Balingen show, Glenn Tipton had to urgently seek medical help because of appendicitis. He’d been feeling pain for about a week already, and thank God he gritted his teeth and we got to witness a show by the legends. Because of this, Judas Priest had to cancel their already announced concerts in Zagreb and Belgrade. It was the first time in their career that Judas Priest were forced to do something like that.
Judas Priest setlist:
1. Intro: Dawn Of Creation
2. Prophecy
3. Metal Gods
4. Eat Me Alive
5. Between The Hammer And The Anvil
6. Devil’s Child
7. Breaking The Law
8. Hell Patrol
9. Messenger of Death
10. Dissident Aggressor
11. Angel
12. The Hellion/Electric Eye
13. Rock Hard, Ride Free
14. Sinner
15. Painkiller
—– encore —–
16. Hell Bent For Leather
17. Green Manalishi (with the Two Pronged Crown)
18. You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’
What is there to add at the close of the 10th consecutive Bang Your Head!!! festival in Germany’s Balingen? Mission accomplished. The festival ran smoothly, and we didn’t see any delays. Apart from Hardcore Superstar’s cancellation and Rob Halford’s wasted vocals, there were no disappointments. Metal heaven on Earth really did offer visitors its maximum. From the sale of assorted plastic junk, which can be useful or really just junk in the strictest sense, to tons of shirts and fetish gear, all the way to the Metal Market with CDs that cost practically as much as a big beer. Endless stacks of CDs you don’t see in shops every day, or maybe never see at all. After the Judas Priest show the main organizer strolled across the stage with his companion Doro, the German metal diva, to address the crowd. He sincerely thanked all the visitors, lit a well-earned cigar, sat down on the edge of the stage with Doro, and then we all watched the closing fireworks over the festival grounds together. As a bonus, with the crowd cheering her on, Doro began singing the Warlock song All We Are a cappella, and things came alive again below the stage when the audience joined in. A magical ending to a magical festival. After everything we experienced, it’s not hard to realize that Bang Your Head!!! is a place you’re always glad to come back to. Always!
Setlist
JUDAS PRIEST SAXON YNGWIE J. MALMSTEEN GRAVE DIGGER LIZZY BORDEN (second set) TANKARD OBITUARY LIZZY BORDEN (first set) ONSLAUGHT BREAKER SECRECY AGE OF EVIL
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