Location: Messegelände / Balingen / Germany
Date: June 27, 2008
Performers:
QUEENSRYCHE, ICED EARTH, GREAT WHITE, WHITE LION, RAGE, ENSIFERUM, FORBIDDEN, KORPIKLAANI, AGENT STEEL, TYR, CONTRACRASH
This year’s traditional Bang Your Head!!! festival, held on the edge of the little town of Balingen in Baden-Württemberg, in southwestern Germany near the Black Forest nature park, celebrated a big ten years! Like every year, it served up a spectacular program made up of legendary bands as well as the hottest and most current newcomers. This festival is always a draw, because it happens a lot that, say, old bands get back together, sometimes after years of silence, just to play it. That’s proof that Bang Your Head!!! enjoys great prestige and respect in the music world and the heavy metal industry.
Heaven on Earth for everyone who came to pay tribute to heavy metal started with a warm-up the day before the official opening, June 26, 2008, when Forbidden, Firewind, Breaker and No Creeps played in Hechingen, 15 km away. We reached Balingen that day, but late in the evening. So we pitched the tent in peace and, after the grueling drive, finally got a decent night’s sleep. The next day at 9:30 we were already on duty in front of the Bang Your Head!!! stage. A 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. These are newcomers to the scene, locals who made it onto the festival as the band with the most votes in the qualifying contest for a slot. The troubles that plagued them back in May, when their singer Andi Rohrer officially announced he was leaving, were resolved at the last minute when singer Philo from the band Diversion jumped in. The guys obviously didn’t hide that they’re still wet behind the ears, and the quintet showed they like trendy alternative sounds, which they like to weave into their otherwise lighter rock expression. A rather featureless and static performance came across as boring, though that impression can be deceiving. Still, for this obviously ambitious young band it’s one of the most important events as far as their career goes. They brought the music closer to the listeners, but came across a bit shy, even too modest, and what we heard didn’t have much to do with the heritage of heavy metal, so the show passed straight through the digestive tract.
TYR: 10:15-10:55
These Viking metallers, who cram the folklore of the Faroe Islands into metal riffs, were the first to really wake up the crowd in front of the stage. Half naked, with animal skins around their waists, singing in authentic Faroese, they made for a pretty interesting morning treat. They backed up their rowdy, festive and very lively take on the metal tradition with decisive, confident playing and great communication between crowd and band. The big number of mostly younger fans in the front rows proved the band is very popular. Tyr are definitely oddballs on the scene and very attractive 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 that gets under your skin right away, lighter metal impulses accessible even to the wider masses and not necessarily just metalheads. An interesting new Nordic metal discipline. Check it out!
AGENT STEEL: 11:05-11:45
40 minutes is definitely too little for the old school speed metal legends from Florida, at least for a metal purist. “Old school is back!” read the shirt on singer Bruce Hall, who has kept his high registers untouched even after 10 years since joining 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 way back in January 2000, in Ljubljana too. Agent Steel shows are always intense and uncompromising. This time too, an extraordinary combination of speed and precision was a treat. Wild solos from both guitarists, Bernie Versailles and Juan Garcia, were woven into noble riff-racing, a real feast for 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 ‘It’s Not What You Think’ from the album “Omega Conspiracy” (1999), then things got dangerous when poisonous napalm rained down in front of the stage in Bleed For The Godz, then Children of the Sun, and the band worked in the obligatory classics ‘Unstoppable Force’, ‘Agents Of Steel’ with a mega execution of double-triplet harmonies and trading of multi-part solos, and ‘Mad Locust Rising’, which closed their razor-sharp apocalyptic set, wrapped in scorching semitone machine-gunning of highly polished guitar phrases. Putting the band on the festival stage so early was a bit of a surprise, since these are legends with a high pedigree among admirers of the more demanding, hardcore and original form of speed/thrash metal, where the tonnage of noise and genuine aggression hits most directly. Agent Steel were (along with Forbidden) a real attraction of an endangered breed and the first highlight of the festival’s first day.
KORPIKLAANI: 11:55-12:40
The forest clan led by guitarist and singer Jonne Järvelä tipped the scales once again in favor of fans of melodic softness, underlaid with brighter-colored guitar riffs. Järvelä undoubtedly came into firm and irreversible contact with Jethro Tull in his youth. The guys dress like that band did at their concerts way back, sometime in the mid-seventies. Add the weaving in of traditional Finnish folk elements and it all becomes that much clearer. There was no end to the wit and sparkling performance, full of cheerful rushing about and stage antics from Jonne, who didn’t forget the obligatory deer antlers from home that decorated his mic. These northern clowns know how to make the crowd laugh with their stage charisma and energy-charged showmanship. The band’s huge popularity, as they presented their latest studio album “Korven Kuningas”, was confirmed by the beer-fueled rowdy songs Beer, Beer and Happy Little Boozer, which must never be missing from their repertoire. Drinking anthems for drinking buddies, which 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 new 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 ŠTUK in Maribor, you could expect the birth of hell on Earth.
During their long break, when they vanished from the thrash metal scene, Forbidden put on quite a few pounds. Singer Russ Anderson in particular carries extra kilos and is barely recognizable compared to photos from 20 years ago, and guitarist Glen Alvelais (massive these days) was by no means far behind him. Regardless, the pounds don’t cause Forbidden any particular trouble when they have to grab their instruments and get on stage.
Forbidden haven’t lost a spark! They were forced to trim the Maribor set list 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 the 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, marked throughout by detailed craftsmanship, with no wasted notes thrown into the void. Both guitar masters have a superb feel for when to “hang” on the tremolo or pull a squeaky “lick” along the neck, which they used to dress up the solos throughout and, in a relaxed stampede march, even came across as very spontaneous. Russ Anderson is still in super form, convincing in every register, and so he negated some of the empty rumors that he can’t sing like he used to. With his showmanship Russ properly fired up the already overheated heads in front of the stage, even though the German crowd is considered rather passive and uninterested when it comes to moving around at gigs.
In general, the band’s tour is a real treat for all thrash nostalgics. That they play exclusively the first two albums, with which Forbidden set new milestones at the turn from the eighties to the nineties, is a special experience. Forbidden are already announcing a new record, which they didn’t say out loud during the show, but which came 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 set list:
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
More Finnish conquerors, with an epic, assaulting metal flavor. Despite the growl vocals, you’d still have a hard time calling it death metal; something here really doesn’t add up. The lineup 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-fueled layers of fat, with skirts in the colors of the Finnish flag around their waists. Meiju of course didn’t treat herself to that, but alongside Pamela Moore, who later performed 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 vocal is nothing special if you compare it to real death vocals, say from Obituary. If I may be rude, 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 leaning, the brutal vocal is different, but without any special charm or swagger. As for the band’s stage confidence, there’s nothing to talk about. It’s undeniable, despite the fact that the big stage stayed largely unused during their set. The pagan metal the band cultivates is hugely popular among Germans, and the band got real support in front of the stage.
RAGE: 15:00-15:55
That I’d ever watch Rage at three in the afternoon, heh, heh, heh… There’s not much more to say about this famous legendary German power metal trio (by now almost 10 years a trio again). Rage are standard and remain standardly unbreakable on stage, even with new drummer Andre Hilgers (the man is also part of the German power metal band Axxis). How nice it is to watch just three people build a huge sound on stage and run their show with such featherweight ease that the whole thing borders on pure perfection. As always, the band delivered excellent sound. Peter “Peavy” Wagner once again didn’t let us down with his recognizable clipped, lower-pitched but piercing vocal. Victor Smolski raged far away from Peavy, on the right side of the stage, enjoying himself through extremely fast, devilishly crafted solos that are his trademark, while Hilgers filled the hole left by Mike Terrana’s departure from the band quite respectably. With Terrana gone, Rage lost a bit of their appeal, but their material lost not one speck of noble Rage metal when played live.
The only thing that’s a bit annoying is that the band really hates to surprise with its set list. Rage played a shortened set list of their spring “Carved In Stone” tour. In that set list they kept a treat from the album “End Of All Days” (1996) called Under Control, but otherwise we got a set list with almost half the songs coming from the new “Carved In Stone” album.
Rage delivered a top-notch execution of their material, and at the end they whipped up the crowd with a medley that they began and ended with the new song Long Hard Road, working into it the basic motifs of the iron repertoire, which includes the songs Higher Than The Sky and Don’t Fear The Winter. The trio was in great spirits, played a great show and made the vast majority of the crowd in front of the stage happy, who, despite the afternoon heat, cheerfully whooped it up and banged their heads along with the band.
Rage set list:
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 they are, White Lion, up and running again! Mike Tramp, a Dane with an Australian passport and the only original member left in the band, presented a new group as Tramp’s White Lion just two years ago, but apparently soon got all the rights to use the White Lion name even without former guitarist Vito Bratta, one of the band’s founding members, in the lineup. Of the original White Lion lineup from the golden days, only singer Mike Tramp remains. You can really 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 excellent 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 quickly caught the ear.
The White Lion started their show with the punchy, riff-driven Hungry from the album “Pride” and stuck to it diligently afterwards, building up the show with Little Fighter. Mike was very relaxed throughout the whole set and, with his tattoos and a bandana wrapped around his head, looked like a frisky little canary. His performance was hugely impressive, because the man is incredibly charismatic, curious and charmingly cheeky. He won the crowd over right away when he made the effort to address people in German, and of course touched on the debate about the 2008 European Football Championship, since the Germans were playing Spain in the final the next day, and wished them lots of luck. White Lion’s set naturally glowed with classics, so the guys went on to touch the first album with El Salvador and All the Fallen Men, then fired up the pit 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 tunefulness only proves that Mike Tramp still has a real feel for writing the hardest songs of all, if I may call ballads that (as long as we stay genre-bound in the field of hard rock).
White Lion brought their excellent one-hour set home in the closing stretch through golden-age 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 leadership and charisma that gets the masses singing along to White Lion verses in a heartbeat. And by the way, one more remark. Keyboardist Henning Wanner, who is otherwise a member of the German melodic hard rock band Jaded Heart, has obviously become part of White Lion’s standard lineup. “Keep the White Lion roaring!”
White Lion set list:
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 came the great white shark, which dove straight into the attack with the classic Call It Rock’N’Roll. This is another of the big comebacks on the scene: 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 after the unthinkable catastrophe on February 20, 2003, in the USA (Rhode Island), when a fire engulfed the venue during their show and 100 people burned to death, including Great White guitarist Ty Longley.
All eyes were on singer Jack Russell, who sweated himself silly in the one hour available for the band’s set. Russell is an incredibly bouncy guy and literally ricocheted around the stage like a pinball. The other members were nowhere near as energetic during the show, which was rather surprising given the band’s notorious glam stance. Well, the glam is gone. Apart from Russell, the guys on stage are totally “normal,” with no need to grab attention. The guys cranked out 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 reborn. An excellent show and Jack’s handling of the connection with the crowd made happy everyone who thought Great White had been written off for good after that unfortunate February in 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 closed the show with Once Bitten, Twice Shy.
ICED EARTH: 18:40-19:40
Iced Earth have transformed once 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 Eve 2007. Since Iced Earth see constant lineup changes, let me quickly list, besides Schaffer and Barlow, the remaining three who are helping the band get through the concert dates of summer 2008. There were also Brent Smedley (drums), Troy Seele (guitar) and absolute newcomer to the band Freddie Vidales (bass).
Band boss Jon Schaffer cashed in on his big comeback with Barlow on vocals for all it was worth. He radically overhauled the set list and put in songs that characterize one of the best “live” metal albums, “Alive In Athens” (1999). At the Bang Your Head festival the band cut down the set list it has been playing since May 2008, and everyone attending the band’s show at the Metal Camp festival in Tolmin on July 5, 2008, will get to enjoy that same set list.
Barlow no longer has the long hair he flaunted on stage back in 2002, when he toured with the band on the “Horror Show” tour, and in the time without Barlow in the lineup Schaffer visibly went gray and packed on some solid pounds over the years. Regardless, Barlow brought back to life that unique magic that can only be born and developed live at an Iced Earth show with him on vocals. The man kept his top-notch singing untouched. He padded out his standard singing with extreme “screams” whose explosiveness took your breath away a few times. The guys served up exceptional tightness and a confident execution of the material. The technical bravura of Troy Steele’s 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 those 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 vocal, as confirmed by long “screams” of a kind that aren’t exactly common for Barlow; in Declaration Day especially he overdid the screams, which came across as pushy and annoying in the chorus.
Apart from that remark and the one about the solos, there’s nothing to reproach about the concert performance. The sound was excellent, the execution superb. 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 profits and losses are for Iced Earth.
Iced Earth set list:
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, set to run a solid three and a quarter hours in total. The last time they played both “Operation: Mindcrime” albums on stage, parts one and two, and anyone for whom this band means a lot would have had a hard time forgiving themselves for missing this spectacle. The band began its set while it was still daylight. The backdrop on stage depicted a dark street where the revival of the “Operation: Mindcrime” concept would unfold. It started right on the dot. You remember how “Operation: Mindcrime” (1988) goes, right? The asylum… a dose of sedatives and already we’re wandering the street, on the edge of survival, then the mysterious “savior” Dr. X offers us a job… first, of course, all four instrumentalists took the stage, 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 incredible euphoria filled the air. And then Geoff Tate appears with a wireless mic clipped on, which let him move freely through the stage acting. A real drama was in the making. To start, as usual, he quickly flipped a few anti-Bush banners around and got down to singing.
To keep this from running too long, I’ll only break down how the concert was played, not walk through it backdrop by backdrop. Tate still has a mostly very well-preserved voice. A few times it strained in the highest registers, where he now and then came up half a tone short of breath, but it all came across as perfectly acceptable, unobtrusive and painless. Tate is still fantastic. An extraordinary stage performer who did his job on stage with total commitment. The sound was sharp and clear, especially the guitars; Rockenfield’s drums, chained together, created that majestic deep echo, with a slapping sound that brought the very sound of the album “Operation: Mindscrime” back to life. The sound was dialed in perfectly. During the concert, even with other effects in use, there were no flaws to spoil the sonic picture. Suite Sister Mary is the definite peak of the first part as far as stage execution and the drama theater itself go. The conversation between singer Pamela Moore and Geoff Tate was so striking and felt incredibly real throughout the show. Certain inserts, like when Sister Mary puts a bullet in her head, or when Nikki 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 to at least five minutes, underpinned with a solid beat and bolstered by keyboards.
The crowd played along with the band and got intensely into it especially during Suite Sister Mary, The Needle Lies, Breaking The Silence, I Don’t Believe In Love and of course Eyes Of A Stranger, the closing classic of the first part, which in the finale actually makes 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, which the guys well and truly earned.
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 treated himself to an exciting moment when he threw a suitcase of dollar bills out among the people. 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 acting. The second part also had excellent sound, mighty and tangible. The excellent guitarist Mike Stone also took on quite a few more important roles in it. The Queensryche machine didn’t falter for a moment in the second part either. At the end of All The Promises came a majestic finale, similar to the first part, as Wilton and Stone walked all the way out to the edge of the extended stage among the people and closed out the “sequel” with massive riffs.
The band returns to the stage and opens the encore with a new motif, which, with a touch of unpredictability, it masterfully melts into Walk In The Shadows, a Queensryche classic from the album “Rage For Order” (1986). The goosebumps were by no means missing, and the crowd really went up in flames in front of the stage when the guys took on Jet City Woman (“Empire”, 1990), which was especially intense in terms of emotional charge. Well, there was no rest for us afterwards either, since Queensryche stayed with the title track of the album “Empire”, the revelry, not to say celebration, in front of the stage went on, and Tate was visibly moved. So Queensryche came back for a second encore, and dedicated 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 filled that in with experience and routine using only guitar work, and the crowd contributed hugely too, merging for a moment into one with the band.
The concert lasted over three hours, and we soaked up the sounds of a legendary band that has always burned with its perfection and that, after the stubborn insistence of its fans, decided to play the “Operation: Mindcrime” album in full. This was one of the last, if not the last, Queensryche performances with the “Operation: Mindcrime” repertoire, to which they also added the second part, though that probably won’t boost sales of the second part on European soil all that much; otherwise it’s a real change of pace for the band itself, which perhaps gets a little bored after several years of playing the “Operation:Mindcrime” (part one) album live back to back. Queensryche will surely never run out 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 nickname “Operation: Balingen”. It made plenty of people’s dreams come true, even though Queensryche already played the whole of “Operation: Mindcrime” live in Balingen back in 2006, and there probably aren’t many Queensryche fans left in Germany who hadn’t already seen it in the flesh. You could notice, though, that Queensryche have gotten older. In front of the stage there were lots of people aged somewhere between 30 and 45.
Besides Queensryche, the other bands also delivered an exceptional experience; apart from the day’s headliner, Forbidden, Rage, Iced Earth and Agent Steel really burned. Everything ran to the minute, and sometimes the technicians got the sound ready for the bands so fast that they even gained minutes, so the breaks between sets actually got longer. Afterwards we headed to the party tent. We squinted at the ring where strippers writhed to the hot beats of AC/DC classics, even Iced Earth and Saxon, not to mention Manowar. The beer flowed in rivers once again, it was another long night, metal-salted to the extreme, a night that never ends…
Queensryche set list:
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
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
text: Aleš Podbrežnik
text for White Lion: Aleš Podbrežnik & Jani Mihevc Cah
set lists for White Lion & Great White: Jani Mihevc Cah
