Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Concert date: 27.06.2008
Attendance: 2706
Ticket price: 15000
This year’s traditional Bang Your Head!!! festival, held on the outskirts of the little town of Balingen in the state of Baden Württemberg, in southwest Germany near the Black Forest nature park, marked a big ten years! Like every year, it served up a spectacular lineup made of sets from some legendary bands as well as the hottest, most current newcomers. This festival is always a draw, because it often happens that, say, old bands get back together, even after years of silence, just to play it. That’s proof that Bang Your Head!!! enjoys serious prestige and respect in the music world and the heavy metal industry.
Paradise on Earth for everyone who came to pay tribute to heavy metal kicked off with a warm-up the day before the official opening, on 26.06.2008, when Forbidden, Firewind, Breaker and No Creeps played in Hechingen, 15 km away. We got to Balingen that day, but late in the evening. So we pitched the tent in peace and, after the exhausting drive, finally got a decent night’s sleep. The next day at 9.30 we were already standing guard in front of the Bang Your Head!!! stage. Huge stage in front of me, a huge “shopping mall” behind me, with a metal market of cheap CDs leading the way…
CONTRACRASH: 9.30-10.05
Probably the most controversial band of the festival played first of all. They’re newcomers on the scene, locals who made it onto the festival as the band with the most votes in the qualifying contest for a slot. The trouble that plagued them back in May, when their singer Andi Rohrer officially announced he was leaving, was solved at the last minute when singer Philo from Band Diversion jumped in. The lads obviously didn’t hide that they’re still wet behind the ears, and the quintet showed they like trendy alternative sounds, which they weave into their otherwise lighter rock style. The fairly nondescript, static performance felt boring, though that impression can be deceiving. Still, for this obviously ambitious young band it’s one of the most important events when it comes to their career. They brought their music closer to the listeners, but came across a bit shy, even too modest, and what we heard had little to do with the heritage of heavy metal, so the show went straight through the digestive tract.
TYR: 10.15-10.55
These Viking metallers, who stuff the folklore of the Faroe Islands into their metal riffs, were the first to properly wake up the crowd in front of the stage. Half naked, with skins around their waists, singing in the authentic Faroese language, they made for a really interesting way to spice up the morning. They backed up their wild, joyful and very lively take on the metal tradition with determined, confident playing and great communication between the crowd and the band. The large number of mostly younger fans in the front rows proved how popular the band is. Tyr are definitely oddballs on the scene and very eye-catching in that respect, especially for all of you who get fired up by anything that smells of the classic Scandinavian metal school with traditional folk elements added. A compact, tight performance with a very simple melodic take on lighter metal impulses that gets under your skin right away, accessible even to wider audiences and not only metalheads. An interesting new Nordic metal discipline. Check them out!
AGENT STEEL: 11.05-11.45
40 minutes for the old school speed metal legends from Florida is definitely too little for a metal purist. “Old school is back!” confirmed the slogan on singer Bruce Hall’s T-shirt, whose high registers are untouched even 10 years after he joined Agent Steel. When the band made its big comeback at the end of the nineties, we had the honor of seeing the guys for the first time back in January 2000 in Ljubljana too. Agent Steel shows are always intense and uncompromising. This time too, we got that outstanding combination of speed and precision. The wild solos of both guitarists, Bernie Versailles and Juan Garcia, were woven into noble riff-driven racing, a real feast for the eyes and ears, and it was all backed up by Bruce Hall’s already mentioned excellent singing and a gigantic rhythm section.
The band surprisingly opened the show with the excellent, dark, mid-tempo track ‘It’s Not What You Think’ from the album “Omega Conspiracy” (1999), then dangerously derailed as toxic napalm poured over the front of the stage in Bleed For The Godz, followed by Children of the Sun, and the band included the obligatory classics ‘Unstoppable Force’, ‘Agents Of Steel’ with its megastic execution of double triplet harmonies and back-and-forth trading of multi-part solos, and ‘Mad Locust Rising’, which closed their apocalyptic set, razor-sharp and wrapped in searing semitone machine-gunning of highly polished guitar phrases. It was a bit of a surprise to see the band on the festival stage so early, since these are legends with a high pedigree among devotees of the more demanding, true and original form of speed/thrash metal, where the tonnage of noise and genuine aggression is unleashed most directly. Agent Steel were (alongside Forbidden) a real attraction of an endangered breed and the first peak of the festival’s first day.
KORPIKLAANI: 11.55-12.40
The forest clan led by guitarist and singer Jonne Järvelä tipped the scales back in favor of fans of melodic softness, underpinned by brighter-colored guitar riffs. Järvelä undoubtedly came into firm, irreversible contact with Jethro Tull in his youth. The guys dress like that band did at their concerts way back, somewhere in the mid-seventies. Add in the weaving of traditional Finnish folk elements and it all becomes that much clearer. There was no end to the wit and the sparkling performance, full of cheerful recklessness and stage clowning from Jonne, who didn’t forget the obligatory deer antlers from home that adorned his microphone. These Nordic jesters know how to make the crowd laugh with their stage charisma and energy-charged showmanship. The band’s huge popularity, as they presented their newest studio album “Korven Kuningas”, was confirmed by the booze-fueled rowdy tracks Beer, Beer and Happy Little Boozer, which can never be missing from their repertoire. Drinking anthems for drinking buddies warmed up the crowd in front of the stage nicely. “One more beer please!”
FORBIDDEN: 12.50-13.35
The legendary reunited Bay Area thrash metallers from California (USA), Forbidden, actually played in their original lineup of Russ Anderson (vocals), Craig Locicero (guitar), Glen Alvelais (guitar) and Matt Camacho (bass), with newly minted member Mark Hernandez, who previously played in Heathen, Defiance, Re:Ignition, Vio-Lence, Torque, Technocracy and Social Unrest. Judging by what they showed three days earlier at Maribor’s ŠTUK, you could expect hell on Earth to be born.
During their long break, when they vanished from the thrash metal scene, Forbidden packed on quite a bit of weight. Singer Russ Anderson in particular carries extra kilos, so he’s barely recognizable compared to photos from 20 years ago, and (today massive) guitarist Glen Alvelais was certainly not lagging behind him in bulk. Regardless, the kilos don’t cause Forbidden any particular trouble when they have to pick up their instruments and walk on stage.
Forbidden haven’t lost a single spark! They were forced to trim the Maribor setlist from three days earlier, which they also played at the BYH!!! Warm up show the day before in nearby Hechingen. Forbidden played only songs from their first two albums, “Twisted Into Form” (1990) and “Forbidden Evil” (1988). The Locicero/Alvelais guitar duo remains a well-oiled machine, showering the listener with fascinatingly shaped, multi-part solos, always detailed in their design and never throwing notes around for nothing. Both guitar masters have an outstanding feel for when to “hang” on the tremolo or pull a squealing “lick” along the neck, which accompanied the solos throughout and made them sound very spontaneous even in a relaxed stampede march. Russ Anderson is still in superb form, convincing in every range, and so he negated some of the empty rumors that he can’t sing like he used to. With his performance Russ thoroughly fired up the overheated heads in front of the stage, even though the German crowd has a reputation for being fairly passive and uninterested at concerts when it comes to moving around.
In general, the band’s tour is a real treat for all thrash nostalgics. The fact that they play exclusively the first two albums, with which Forbidden set new milestones at the turn of the eighties into the nineties, makes it a special experience. Forbidden are already announcing a new record, which they didn’t say out loud during the show, but which came out later from the mouth of one of the band members in the press tent. Welcome back, guys! Thanks for one of the most convincing performances of the festival’s first day.
Forbidden setlist:
1. March Into Fire
2. Forbidden Evil
3. Off The Edge
4. Follow Me
5. One Foot In Hell
6. Step By Step
7. Through Eyes Of Glass
8. Chalice Of Blood
ENSIFERUM: 13.50-14.45
Yet more Finnish conquerors, with an epic, charging version of metal. Despite the growl vocals, you’d still have a hard time calling this death metal, and something here would definitely be off. The five-piece of Markus Toivonen (guitar), Petri Lindroos (vocals, guitar), Sami Hinkka (bass), Janne Parviainen (drums) and keyboardist Meiju Enho grandly presented the new album “Victory Songs” on stage. As befits the spirit of the band, the guys once again showed off their chests with nicely shaped beer-fat layers on their muscles, with skirts in the colors of the Finnish flag around their waists. Meiju of course didn’t allow herself that, but along with Pamela Moore, who played later with Queensryche, she was the only member of the fairer sex to take the stage on the festival’s first day, which is a special honor. This band seems a bit too calm and inactive. The growl vocals are nothing special if you compare them with real death vocals, like Obituary’s, say. If I’m being rude, or not, you could superficially mistake the band’s soft melodic expression for Chidren Of Bodom with the keyboard solos taken away. The riffs radiate a power metal orientation, the brutal vocals are different, sure, but without any particular charm or swagger. There’s no question about the band’s stage confidence. It’s undeniable, despite the fact that this big stage remained largely unused during their set. The pagan metal the band cultivates is hugely popular among Germans, and the band got serious support from the crowd in front of the stage.
RAGE: 15.00-15.55
That I’d ever watch Rage at three in the afternoon, ha, ha, ha… There isn’t much more to say about this famous, legendary German power metal trio (now back for almost 10 years). Rage are standard and remain standard-issue unbreakable on stage, even with new drummer Andre Hilgers (the man is also part of the lineup of the German power metal band Axxis). How lovely it is to watch just three people build a huge sound on stage and run their show with such featherweight ease that it all borders on pure perfection. As always, the band delivered excellent sound. Peter “Peavy” Wagner didn’t disappoint this time either with his recognizable, clipped, lower-pitched but piercing vocals. Victor Smolski raged far away from Peavy on the right side of the stage and had fun with extremely fast, devilishly crafted solos that are his trademark, while Hilgers filled the gaps left by Mike Terrana’s departure from the band quite respectably. With Terrana gone, Rage lost a smidgen of showiness, but their material lost not a speck of noble Rage metal when played live.
The only slightly annoying thing is that the band is extremely reluctant to surprise with the setlist. Rage played a shortened setlist from their spring “Carved In Stone” tour. They kept a treat from the album “End Of All Days” (1996) called Under Control in it, but otherwise we got a setlist with almost half the songs from the new “Carved In Stone” album.
Rage delivered a top-notch execution of their material, and at the end they fired up the crowd with a medley that they started and ended with the new song Long Hard Road, working into it the basic motifs of the iron repertoire, which includes Higher Than The Sky and Don’t Fear The Winter. The trio was in great spirits, played a great show and so made the vast majority of the crowd happy, who, despite the afternoon heat, cheerfully whooped and banged their heads in front of the stage along with the band.
Rage setlist:
1.Carved In Stone
2.Drop Dead!
3.Under Control
4.Soundchaser
5. Refuge
6. No Regrets
7. Lost In The Void
8.Down
9. Long Hard Road (incl. Higher Than The Sky & Don’t Fear The Winter)
WHITE LION: 16.10-17.10
And finally something for fans of glam hard rock! Here are White Lion, active again! Mike Tramp, a Dane with an Australian passport and the only original member left in the band, was still presenting a new band two years ago as Tramp’s White Lion, but he apparently soon acquired all the rights to use the name White Lion even without former guitarist Vito Bratta in the lineup, who was one of the band’s founding members. Of the golden-era White Lion, only singer Mike Tramp remains in the original lineup. You can definitely hear it in the sound, the energy, the very essence of the band, that Vito Bratta is missing, a true gem of the golden generation of great hard rock guitarists of the late eighties and a founding member of White Lion. He was known above all for his tapping solos, which were very melodic and caught the ear fast.
The White Lion opened their set with the punchy, riff-driven Hungry from the album “Pride” and stuck to it diligently from there, building up their show with Little Fighter. Mike was very relaxed throughout the whole set, and with his tattoos and a bandana wrapped around his head he looked like a frisky little canary. His performance was hugely impressive, because the man is extremely charismatic, curious and endearingly cheeky. He won the crowd over right away when he made the effort to address people in German, and of course he also touched on the debate about the European Football Championship 2008, since the Germans were playing the final against Spain the next day, and he wished them lots of luck. White Lion’s set naturally glowed with classics, so the guys went on to touch on the first album with El Salvador and All the Fallen Men, then set the front of the stage on fire with the MTV hit Wait! White Lion also released a new album this spring, “Return of the Pride” (2008), and from it they tackled the excellent new ballad Dream, whose catchiness only proves that Mike Tramp still has a true feel for writing the hardest songs of all, if I may call ballads that (as long as we stay genre-bound to the field of hard rock).
White Lion brought their excellent one-hour set to a close through the golden-era hits Lady of the Valley, Broken Heart and Tell Me up to the peak, and ended their time with us with the lively, drawn-out Sangre de Cristo from the latest album.
Mike doesn’t roar like he did in the golden years, but he’s still an excellent frontman with a good feel for connecting with the crowd, outstanding bossiness and charisma that gets the masses singing along to the verses of White Lion songs in an instant. And by the way, one more observation. Keyboardist Henning Wanner, who is otherwise a member of the German melodic hard rock band Jaded Heart, has apparently become part of the standard White Lion lineup. “Keep the White Lion roaring!”
White Lion setlist:
1. Hungry
2. Little Fighter
3. El Salvador
4. All the Fallen Men
5. Wait
6. Dream
7. Tell Me
8. Lady of the Valley
9. Broken Heart
10. Sangre de Cristo
GREAT WHITE: 17.25-18.25
After the white lion, a great white shark swam in and went straight on the attack with the classic Call It Rock’N’Roll. We’re talking about another big comeback on the scene. These are the American rock veterans Great White. Eight years have passed since they last played in Europe, and the guys, reincarnated in the lineup of Jack Russell (vocals), Mark Kendall (guitar), Michael Lardie (keyboards, guitar), Sean McNabb (bass) and Audie Desbrow (drums), are riding again. Last fall they released the new album “Back to the Rhythm” (2007). It was hard to believe this would ever happen again after the unimaginable catastrophe on the twentieth of February 2003 in the USA (Rhode Island), when a fire engulfed the venue during their show and 100 people burned to death in the blaze, including Great White guitarist Ty Longley.
All eyes were on singer Jack Russell, who thoroughly sweated himself out in the one hour available for the band’s set. Russell is an unbelievably bouncy guy and he literally ricocheted around the stage like a pinball. The other members were nowhere near as energetic during the show, which was fairly surprising given the band’s notorious glam attitude. Well, the glam is gone. Apart from Russell, the guys on stage are totally “normal”, with no need to attract attention. The men cut loose with an excellent repertoire made up of classics as well as the new album. Great White showed they’ve found new creative strength and drive, and that they’ve been born again. An excellent show and Jack’s handling of the connection with the crowd made happy everyone who thought Great White were written off for good after that unfortunate February of 2003. Great White tackled the following songs: Call It Rock’N’Roll, Face the Day, Back to the Rythm, On Your Knees, Save Your Love, Rolling Stoned, Rock Me, Can’t Shake It, and they closed the show with Once Bitten, Twice Shy.
ICED EARTH: 18.40-19.40
Iced Earth have transformed yet again. Matt Barlow is back. You read that right. Apparently he figured out that the USA doesn’t need his services as a civil servant. And so it happened that poor Tim “Ripper” Owens got the boot from Jon Schaffer on Christmas night 2007. Since Iced Earth see constant lineup changes, let me list, besides Schaffer and Barlow, the remaining trio that helps the band get through the summer 2008 live shows. Also on stage were Brent Smedley (drums), Troy Seele (guitar) and the absolute newcomer to the band, Freddie Vidales (bass).
Band boss Jon Schaffer cashed in thoroughly on the big comeback with Barlow on vocals. He radically overhauled the setlist and put in songs that define one of the best “live” metal albums, “Alive In Athens” (1999). At the Bang Your Head festival the band cut down the setlist they’ve been playing at their shows since May 2008, and the same setlist will be enjoyed by everyone attending the band’s show at the Metal Camp festival in Tolmin on 05.07.2008.
Barlow no longer has the long hair he flaunted on stages back in 2002, when he played with the band on the “Horror Show” tour, and Schaffer visibly went gray during the years without Barlow in the lineup and put on a few solid kilos along the way. Regardless, Barlow brought back to life that unique magic that can only be born and develop live at an Iced Earth show with him on vocals. The man has kept his top-class singing untouched. He filled out his standard singing with extreme “screams” that in their explosiveness took your breath away a few times. The guys served up remarkable tightness and a confident execution of the material. Troy Steele’s technically brilliant solos didn’t run in the same “tracks” as Larry Tarnowski’s, whom I badly missed in the lineup this time.
As for the performance of the new song Ten Thousand Strong and especially Declaration Day from the record “Glorious Burden” (2003), you have to admit that Tim Ripper Owens left such a strong stamp on these songs that Barlow failed to match or surpass it on stage. It was also bothersome to realize that Barlow was even trying to imitate Ripper’s vocals, which the long “screams” confirmed, not exactly common for Barlow, and in Declaration Day especially he overdid the screams, which in the chorus came across as pushy and annoying.
Other than that remark and the one about the solos, there’s nothing to fault in the show. The sound was excellent, the performance outstanding. The compactness of the stage delivery and the energy were totally typical of Iced Earth and hard to capture. Iced Earth are rising once again with Barlow. They’re already preparing a new album, which will clearly reveal what the gains and losses for Iced Earth really are.
Iced Earth setlist:
1. Dark Saga
2. Vengeance Is Mine
3. Burning Times
4. Declaration Day
5. Pure Evil
6. Ten Thousand Strong
7. Dracula
8. Coming Course
9. Melancholy
10. My Own Saviour
11. Iced Earth
QUEENSRYCHE: 20.10-23.15
The main reason I traveled to Germany was the announcement of a show by the legendary Seattle art metallers Queensryche, which was supposed to last a solid three hours and a quarter in total. The last time, they performed both “Operation: Mindcrime” albums on stage, meaning part one and part two, and someone for whom this band means a lot would hardly forgive themselves for not making it to this spectacle. The band started the set while it was still daylight. The scenery on stage sketched out a dark street where the revival of the “Operation: Mindcrime” concept would play out. It started right on the hour. You know how “Operation: Mindcrime” (1988) goes, right? The asylum… A dose of sedatives and we’re already wandering the street, on the edge of survival, and then the mysterious “savior” Dr. X offers us a job… first of all the four instrumentalists took the stage for the intro, of course, with Wilton on the main opening solo in Anarchy-X. Even though Mike Stone drew attention with a gas mask on his face, all eyes were on Michael Wilton. The Germans were hungry for Queensryche’s music, and there was incredible euphoria in the air. And that’s when Geoff Tate appears with a wireless mic strapped on, which let him move freely through the stage drama. A real drama was in the cards. To start, as usual, he quickly flipped around a few anti-Bush banners and got down to singing.
To keep this from getting too long, I’ll break down only the performance of the concert, and we won’t walk through the show set by set. Tate mostly still has a very well-preserved voice. A few times it twisted him up in the highest registers, where he occasionally ran out of breath by half a tone, but it all came across as perfectly acceptable, unobtrusive and painless. Tate is still fantastic. An outstanding stage performer who did his job on stage with total immersion. The sound was sharp and clear, especially when it came to the guitars, and Rockenfield’s drums, chained together, produced that majestic deep echo, amid the slapping, that brought the very sound of the album “Operation: Mindscrime” back to life. The sound was set up to perfection. Even with the use of other effects during the concert, there were no mistakes to spoil the sonic picture. Suite Sister Mary is the definitive peak of the first part as far as stage performance and the drama theater itself go. The conversation between singer Pamela Moore and Geoff Tate was so striking and felt incredibly real the whole way through. Certain inserts, like when Sister Mary shoots herself in the head, or when Nikky is put in a straitjacket before Eyes Of A Stranger and wheeled off the stage on a cart, literally shook you. A special treat was the performance of the instrumental Electric Requiem, which, compared to the studio original, was stretched out to at least five minutes, underpinned with a solid beat and backed by keyboards.
The crowd got involved with the band and got intensely immersed especially during Suite Sister Mary, The Needle Lies, Breaking The Silence, I Don’t Believe In Love and of course during Eyes Of A Stranger, the closing classic of the first part, which really makes the end of the album “Operation: Mindcrime” so grand, mighty and a step above the vast majority of rock and metal albums. The magic of the first part of the show was followed by a 15-minute break that the guys richly deserved.
It was getting properly dark when the theater on stage continued with the second part of the saga, “Operation: Mindcrime”. This one didn’t lag behind the first part in execution at all, either. In it Tate allowed himself an exciting moment too, when he showered the crowd with a suitcase full of dollar bills. For a moment or two during the performance I honestly forgot about the other band members, because everything revolved around Geoff, Pamela Moore, Dr. X… in short, the stage play. The second part also had excellent sound, mighty and tangible. In it the excellent guitarist Mike Stone also took on quite a few important roles. The Queensryche machine didn’t falter for a second in the second part either. At the end of All The Promises came a majestic finale, similar to the first part, when Wilton and Stone walked all the way to the edge of the extended stage among the people and wrapped up the “sequel” with massive riffs.
The band returns to the stage and opens the encore with a new motif, which they masterfully pour, with a hint of unpredictability, into Walk In The Shadows, a Queensryche classic from the album “Rage For Order” (1986). Goosebumps were certainly not missing, and the crowd really went up in flames in front of the stage when the guys tackled Jet City Woman (“Empire”, 1990), which was especially intense in terms of emotional charge. Well, there was no peace for us afterward either, since Queensryche stayed with the title track of the album “Empire”, the revelry, not to say celebration, in front of the stage continued, and Tate was visibly moved. Then Queensryche came back for a second encore, dedicating the song to the festival organizer. You’d have expected something like Queen Of The Ryche, but that didn’t happen. Tate announced perhaps one of the most beautiful ballads in rock music, Silent Lucidity. This time without orchestral arrangements, but the guys, experienced and well-practiced, filled that in with guitar work alone, and the crowd contributed hugely too, merging into one with the band for a moment.
The concert lasted over three hours, we feasted on the sounds of a legendary band that has always burned with its perfection and that, after the stubborn insistence of fans, decided to play the “Operation: Mindcrime” album in its entirety. This was one of the last, if not the last, Queensryche performance with the “Operation: Mindcrime” repertoire, to which they added the second part too, though that probably won’t boost sales of the second part on European soil all that much, but otherwise it’s a real change of pace for the band itself, who probably get a bit bored after several years in a row of playing the “Operation:Mindcrime” (part one) album live. Queensryche will surely never be short of bread. Who knows? Maybe next time they’ll play the whole “Rage For Order” or “Empire” live.
The first day of the festival had no trouble earning the flattering title “Operation: Balingen”. It fulfilled a dream for many, even though Queensryche already played the whole “Operation: Mindcrime” live in Balingen in 2006 and there probably aren’t many Queensryche fans left in Germany who haven’t already seen it live. But you could tell Queensryche have aged. Plenty of people in front of the stage were somewhere between 30 and 45 years old.
Besides Queensryche, other bands also contributed an outstanding experience; apart from the festival’s first-day headliner, Forbidden, Rage, Iced Earth and Agent Steel were the ones that burned. Everything ran to the minute, and sometimes the techs got the sound ready for bands so fast that they gained whole minutes, so the breaks between sets even got longer. Afterward we headed to the party tent. We squinted at the ring with the strippers, who were writhing to the hot beats of AC/DC classics, even Iced Earth and Saxon, not to mention Manowar. The beer flowed in streams again, it was another long night, metal-salted to the extreme, a night that never ends…
Queensryche setlist:
1. I Remember Now
2. Anarchy-X
3. Revolution Calling
4. Operation: Mindcrime
5. Speak
6. Spreading The Disease
7. The Mission
8. Suite Sister Mary
9. The Needle Lies
10. Electric Requiem
11. Breaking The Silence
12. I Don’t Believe In Love
13. Waiting For 22
14. My Empty Room
15. Eyes Of A Stranger
—15 min. break—
16. Freiheit Ouverture
17. Convict
18. I’m American
19. One Foot In Hell
20. Hostage
21. Hands
22. Speed Of Light
23. Signs Say Go
24. Rearrange You
25. The Chase
26. Murderer
27. Circles
28. If I Could Change It All
29. An Intentional Confrontation
30. Junkie’s Blues
31. Fear City Slide
32. All The Promises
—encore—
33. Walk In The Shadows
34. Jet City Woman
35. Empire
36. Silent Lucidity
Setlist
QUEENSRYCHE ICED EARTH GREAT WHITE WHITE LION RAGE ENSIFERUM FORBIDDEN KORPIKLAANI AGENT STEEL TYR CONTRACRASH
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