Bang Your Head!!! 2009: The “Warm-Up” Show

Location: Volksbank Messehalle / Balingen / Germany
Date: Thursday, 25.06.2006

Another year has rolled around, and it’s time for the new Bang Your Head festival, held every year in the German town of Balingen, in the Baden-Württemberg region, not far from Stuttgart. As is tradition, the organizers laid on a “warm-up” show again this year. But unlike last year, when the warm-up gig went down in nearby Hechingen with Frobidden, Breaker and Firewind, this time it found its home in the brand-new Voklsbank Messehalle, right on the festival grounds themselves.

The clock struck eight. In the evening, just so we’re clear. You could count the people in front of the stage on the fingers of your left hand, but Snake Ride Rodeo still had to take the stage. The band formed five years ago, but it’s made up of seasoned German musicians. You Running Wild fans are surely well acquainted with the name Preacher. The former Running Wild guy now grinds out guitar for Snake Ride Rodeo. The band goes on the attack with a venomously lively smear of riffing guitars that smells more like a boozy, noisy version of rock n’ roll than anything you could call metal. With Snake Ride Rodeo everything on the guitars creaks and sizzles as the guys crank out their material. The dirty rumble is backed by a lower-pitched, raspy, guttural, harsh vocal. Picture a head-cold-stuffed Mat Sinner (Sinner, Primal Fear). The sound and energy occasionally carry the listener off to something like Black Label Society. Songs like Ashes, Ultimate Fear and Bleed introduced the band to the crowd, among others. Unfortunately, the quartet ran into a lukewarm response from an already pretty empty hall, one that can hold around 5000 people. Considering that the band mainly plays on the energy of a rock-rooted feel generated by the power of the riff, the heavily distorted sound, in which the bass was eating away at the quality of the mix, wasn’t even that bothersome. What was bothersome was the realization that the band gave only as much as routine demanded to keep up a semblance of decency. For anything more, the hall would’ve had to be better attended.

The British “old school revival thrashers” Evile hit the stage second. This is superbly schooled thrash metal, devoted to a solid rhythmic gallop that got the crowd going as the lads in the lineup of Matt Drake (guitar, vocals), Ol Drake (guitar), Mike Alexander (bass) and Ben Carter (drums) blew up fistful after fistful of dynamite in furious songs like Bathe In Blood. It’s all new stuff, but it carries some traces of old Slayer (the early days), with the obligatory thorough (even multi-part) guitar solos, tossed off at poisonous speed and tuned to a half-step accent, just as the riffing of these up-and-coming thrash revivalists demands. The vocals aren’t annoying, “pleasantly roaring” and dosed with just the right amount of stormy character!

The band’s get-up, or stage outfit, was very much like the eighties one, when Metallica wore skin-tight black pants and high “Puma” sneakers. As long as the guys keep kneading out excellent songs like these, convincingly loaded with aggression and anger in every way, like Thrashers, We Who Are About To Die or Armoured Assault, there’s really no need to worry about the future of European thrash metal. An excellent, compact, tightly rehearsed performance that suffered a bit at times because the solos weren’t clearly audible enough. Evile came at it with everything they had, confidently, and spiced up their visit with a heaping dose of enthusiasm and untamed rebellious energy, fired up by relentlessly aggressive thrash metal riff-rolling. A great new thing that smells of the old stuff, and in a quality way! The band, who will release their second studio album “Infected Nations” in September 2009, definitely won us over with this show, and some 1000 curious souls gave them a warm welcome down in front of the stage!

Jon Oliva’s Pain managed to finally fill the hall. The band, who released their third studio album “Global Warning” last year, had obviously grown tired of playing their own repertoire and kept just one song from it, Walk Upon The Water. The rest of the material was devoted to nothing but Savatage.

That raised some questions. Why the hell doesn’t Jon Oliva just put Savatage back together? Finding a proper answer only got more agonizing once the crowd was practically screaming for the Savatage classics Chance, Edge Of Thorns, Tonight He Grins Again, Gutter Ballet, Sirens, Believe, Jesus Saves and the closing Hall Of The Mountain King. The question was reinforced above all by the sloppy look of Jon Oliva’s Pain, and the main culprit was guitarist Matt Laporte. The guy didn’t even have a properly prepared sound on stage, let alone play the Savatage repertoire with any commitment. Where the reasons for that lie, I don’t know. Was he drunk, or is the feeling not deceiving me that the guys can’t wait to finish the tour and have Jon disband them? I’m talking about a feeling here, so don’t let it mislead you!

We really missed Chris Caffery. Not only did Laporte not seem committed, he even allowed himself a few big blunders during the solos, as well as in the lead guitar patterns and guitar embellishments. In general, the venomous “tremolo bends” were scandalously lacking, actually they simply weren’t there, and neither was any real charge in the riffs themselves. Totally worn out, lifeless and seasoned with a generous dose of sloppiness, that’s what we can say about Laporte.

The whole thing was saved by the great Jon Oliva, who sang excellently and steered the crowd’s attention to himself with his huge charisma, so that they may well have missed and overlooked the “worn-out” Laporte and his stage cheating. For Oliva this is small potatoes. He sat right up front, played keyboards and sang. All the while he entertained the crowd with cheeky grimaces, tongue-wagging, etc…

Despite that remark, the Jon Oliva’s Pain show, with a lineup of Jon Oliva (vocals, keyboards), Matt Laporte (guitar), Tom McDyne (guitar), Kevin Rothney (bass), John Zahner (keyboards) and Christopher Kinder (drums), flew by incredibly fast. It was over in a flash. Mostly thanks to the crowd, which melted together with the Savatage classics into one and sang them out loud along with Jon. Especially the choruses, so there was a certain magic in the room. A unique feeling, the kind we recognize on stage only when the one and only “Mountain King” is with us. So after what we just lived through, we can only say this: it’s time for a Savatage reunion.

An hour and a half is a little too short for the legends of German, so-called Teutonic thrash metal, with everybody hungry for the unique energy of this now highly respected and, not least, great European metal act, especially when it comes to their tenacious perseverance! In mid-January this year the band released their new studio album “Hordes Of Chaos” and dug into their set accordingly, kicking off the show with the new record’s title track. German perfectionism, rich experience and home-turf advantage all contributed to a fantastic sonic picture, which delivered excellent sound throughout the Kreator set. It was defined by clearly audible building blocks. You felt it above all in the poisonously sharp blade of the riffing from both guitars. That was superbly balanced in the mix, and it was especially this massive wall of sound that carried the hall off on the wide-spread wings of the band’s ultra-thrashy sermon. Miland “Mille” Petrozza, the great chieftain of Kreator, doesn’t even surprise anymore with his act. In fact, it would be wrong if he did. Mille loves to use his favorite phrases in the banter before songs, which the metalheads who go to Kreator shows basically know by heart. Even in the new millennium Kreator are frequent visitors to stages. It actually feels like they spend most of their lives on stage rather than hiding away in various holes, forging new material.

In the Kreator sermon everything revolves around your own existence, saving yourself, preserving yourself, amid the plague of mass conformist damnation. The band persists, doesn’t let up, and is sharpened accordingly. No chipped-tooth formula here, just excellent shooting form that can hardly miss its target. Intense mosh pits from an utterly devoted and faithfully “bleating” crowd came one after another. A crowd of a good 3500 people stuck it out with “German” loyalty and egged the band on through the show to the last breath, and the flow of energy between band and audience was magnificent, tangible, and the feelings it stirred were very intense!

Kreator ramped up their show minute by minute, and it hit its peak in the closing part, when, as expected, we got two bombs from the band’s debut “Endless Pain”! In the first, Flag Of Hate, Mille waved a special “Kreator” flag at the crowd, and after that Kreator poured their anger over Balingen one last time, mowing down the audience in the closing Tormentor. Besides the new stuff, the show was spiced up especially by the evergreen Coma Of Souls, plus Pleasure To Kill, Betrayer, Terrible Certainty and Extreme Agression. The way Kreator still hack these out with such fierce commitment today proves how unshakable the band’s spirit is, and how its faith is still full and devoted to one and only vision! The vision of frontman Mille Petrozza, who delivered excellent singing with his typically cutting accent and relentlessly dictating charisma, and with a vocal that squeezed out extraordinary power, like the cherry on top of a fruit bowl, he made sure that Kreator, through the excellent working chemistry of a top-notch, tightly rehearsed crew, conjured up a fantastic show!

The eve of the Bang Your Head 2009 festival warmed up our bones and limbs nicely. Charged with raw, primal metal energy, we headed out after the show for a restorative kebab, and the revelry, full of anticipation for the first festival day, carried on late into the night.

author: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik