Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Balingen / Volksbank Messehalle / Germany
Concert date: July 11, 2013
Attendance: 2,000
Ticket price: €33.00
By tradition, RockLine is somehow bound, or fatefully tied, to the yearly edition of the famous German festival Bang Yor Head!!!, held every year at its traditional home in a lovely little German town in the rural heart of Porsche country, Baden-Württemberg: Balingen! As every year, the organizers put together a package of bands for the warm-up day that’s hard to resist.
The night was kicked off by local boys Snake Ride Rodeo, whom we skipped this time. Snake Ride Rodeo also opened the warm-up show in Balingen back in 2009 – RockLine report HERE. Undoubtedly a warm welcome, delivered in the manner of boldly dirty rock ‘n’ roll rolling by seasoned German gents, with The Preacher – a former member of German power metal stronghold Running Wild – shredding on guitar.
Tents pitched, batteries charged. We’re inside the festival hall, the day before the official start of the festival. The hall is buzzing, and burly German beer drinkers are already lined up in neat rows to buy drink tokens. Tonight the beer will flow by the hectoliter!
Maiden United take the stage. Unbelievable. An acoustic setup, a real blend of pastoral and chamber music. With an »Iron Maiden impression« the likes of which we’ve never experienced. Aces High, Revelations, 22 Accacia Avenue, The Evil That Man Do, The Trooper, Wasted Years and Die With Your Boots On! All so heavily reworked that you can barely recognize them in the verses and pre-choruses, if at all. The guys in Maideh United are cut from the right cloth — with their skill and imagination they turned the originals into something incredibly interesting, and it worked fully in the live interpretation too. The main generator of energy was the famous returnee to British progressive metallers Threshold, Damian Wilson. He took on all the vocal duties himself. He adapted the vocal lines superbly to the reworked arrangements, especially because of the different rhythmic keys the transformed Maiden classics ran in. He took a full run-up to completely turn Dickinson’s recognizable ranges on their head, keeping only a relative similarity to the originals in the chorus melodies. And that was enough. By the end of the show the crowd was eating out of the band’s hand. In the choruses they sang along with Wilson full-throttle, joining in on the characteristic Maiden harmonies in thirds, this time of course adapted to a stripped-down version. A mix of cunningly intelligent rearrangements of the Maiden studio originals and typical black humor (a trademark of the British Isles, after all), taken care of throughout by the lively, good-natured, bearded Scottish giant Steven Wilson – he cast a spell with an outstanding vocal performance that didn’t bore for a second. Great vibe, then, and a warm recommendation if you want total relaxation, shock therapy and, of course, boundless fun!
One of the most anticipated performances of the warm-up day was the arrival of Tokyo Blade. These still-active veterans burst onto the scene during the NWOBHM expansion, in the early eighties. Today they’re gray-haired gentlemen, but seriously heavy ones, and they’re actually playing in the original lineup, or more precisely the lineup that shaped the band’s first era, up to around 1986. The exception is vocalist Nikolaj Rhunow, who joined in 2010. Tokyo Blade are phenomenal! Seeing them on stage today, you just have to ask: »Where have you been hanging out all these years, guys?« Outstanding playing, guitars oiled, calibrated and sharp as a razor. Harmonies in thirds played the way they should be, proper old-school heavy metal in the best possible variety. Fast and precise. Melodically tamed. The band was perfectly tight, in great spirits, radiating pure cheer! The old, experienced tomcats looked sharp on stage, as if the weight of the years had never stuck to them, let alone any signs of rust. Tokyo Blade won us over with an incredibly dynamic stage show. Besides the superb solos we were spoiled with by the fantastic Andy Boulton, vocalist Rhunow stood out most during the set, firing up his comrades throughout with a heartfelt and »cheeky« stage performance. He filled the stage completely, and of course it wasn’t just his stage presence that counted — there was no shortage of witty gags inherited from the treasure chest of British black humor. Tokyo Blade rattled off their repertoire like a jet! The band cut in songs from the latest album »Thousand Men Strong« (2013) – Black Abyss, Thousand Men Strong, Lunch-Case – and mixed in classics between them! The EP »Midnight Rendezvous« wasn’t left out (the title track, Mean Streak), and the band surprised us even more by including Fever and Attack Attack, which date from the time of the album »Night Of The Blade«, when there was no room for either of them on the record. From Night Of The Blade we also got the title track and Love Struck. In fact, Tokyo Blade surprised us right from the start by opening the show with a lost song from the time of their debut »Tokyo Blade«, called Death On Main Street. Pure fantasy and a complete return to the days when heavy metal was still a real greenhorn. You can’t get any closer to the essence of the NWOBHM movement. It’s great to see that the new album was cut on the model of the first two records, so the new songs work brilliantly alongside the classics. Let’s hope the band pushes out another studio album and shows up at a gig closer to Slovenia. As long as they’re still moving, of course.
Vicious Rumors ran into a few problems before their set. Every single instrument was »shot« and nothing worked at all. Instead of tearing up the stage, the view from the floor offered anything but a new concert orgy with this excellent and highly respected American old-school speed metal band, which in recent times thrashes more and more! On stage, guitarist Bob Capka is down on his knees by Thorpe’s pedals, frantically hunting down and fixing sound problems, while Larry Howe is already behind the drums, can’t help but fire off some superior rolls, then quickly vanishes backstage. There’s also a third member on stage. Tilen Hudrap – a son of the Slovenian hills. Who? You read that right. The excellent Slovenian bassist jumped in as a temporary member for the second leg of the band’s new European tour, on which Vicious Rumors are presenting their new album »Electric Punishment« (SPV Records, May 2013), thanks to a lucky turn of events. Hudrap is temporarily filling in for regular bassist Stephen Goodwin. According to the RockLine editorial team’s guess, Tilen was recommended to Geoff Thorpe by none other than Helstar vocalist James Rivera. Rivera had stepped in to help the band during the first leg of the European tour, which rolled across Europe this May. There he replaced Brian Allen, who had to stay home because of urgent family commitments. And the bottom line? Rivera works with the Slovenian band Metalsteel in Sabbath Judas Sabbath, where Tilen’s girlfriend Daša plays drums. So it’s an unverified guess, but a very likely one. This time Slovenian heavy metal finally got real recognition for its defiance and a one-of-a-kind confirmation that our musicians offer top quality in this genre and thereby inspire great trust. And when that’s confirmed by legendary bands like Vicious Rumors in this case, the weight of such recognition is that much greater and more important.
The Vicious Rumors show served up one more exclusive, which for Slovenian heavy metal this time was even of minor importance. Kevin Albert, son of the band’s late original singer Carl Albert, appeared as a special guest with Vicious Rumors. For this show only and never again!
The band was badly late with tuning up (the devil only knows what was wrong, but every instrument had to be recalibrated from absolute zero), and our Tilen drew the shortest straw, since sorting out the bass sound came last on the list. When Vicious Rumors hit straight into the classic Digital Dictator, the sound techs were still wrestling with the bass guitar, and Tilen was standing by the monitors just to hear what was going on with his instrument’s sound. Band boss Geoff Thorpe used the opening greeting to remind everyone that this year marks 25 years since the release of this cult Vicious Rumors album »Digital Dictator«. The band sacrificed some of the time meant for presenting the new album and focused on playing classics such as Hellraiser, Lady Took A Chance, Soldiers Of The Night, Ship Of Fools and Down To The Temple. Early on, Kevin Albert gave us goosebumps, since his vocal tone came within a hair of his late father Carl’s. After that he and Brian Allen shared the vocal lines, joined up in duets and kept the whole thing incredibly tight and dynamic. Both have very similar vocal characteristics, with the difference that young Kevin of course uses new-age gestures that would fit some hip hop metal fusion band, while Allen, with his charismatic figure and provocative attitude, vehemently played the part of a true understudy little devil (and of course his closing »stage diving« wasn’t missing either). To make up for the rocky start as much as possible, the band invited four strippers on stage in the closing stretch, who shook it along with the band, from the side of the crowd, to the long-awaited classic Soldiers Of The Night. In this respect the move turned out to be an excellent solution. The band kept a »cool head« by steering the audience’s attention away that way. And our Tilen? As soon as they fixed the bass, he made use of his charismatic figure, with its standout long blond hair, charged confidently toward the front of the stage and gave himself over to the joys of delivering the Vicious Rumors material live. You can tell Tilen has played plenty of hours on the club scene in Slovenian dive bars. He’s turned into a chiseled, confident stage performer with a bright future ahead of him. His stage game combined excellent bass playing with the right stage positions and gestures in one breath, which added to the overall bombast of the Vicious Rumors show. Tilen was nowhere near a passive presence on stage (in the unnoticeable manner of, say, Ian Hill of Judas Priest) and Geoff must have been especially proud of him that night.
Despite the initial collapse, the Vicious Rumors show delivered what we expected. A top-notch stage performance, a first-class mix of boundless metal destructiveness and villainous »badass« temperament. Superb execution. You can feel that a run of shows has done the band good, that the chemistry works, that fresh material is coming together, and that hardly anybody can keep up with Vicious Rumors when it comes to a stage showdown. We’re eagerly awaiting Vicious Rumors at this year’s Metaldays festival in Tolmin too. Be there, 100%!
The headliners of the festival’s warm-up day were Swedish doom metallers Candlemass. A complete shift of atmosphere into the fields of gloom, witches’ evil deeds and similar medieval monsters and apparitions, and the curtain dropped on a landscape of blackness and lamentation. Here and there you could hear the ominous howl of banshees calling death. Original members Leif Edling (bass) and Mats Björkman (guitar), alongside Jan Lindh (drums), guitarist Lars Johansson and the newest addition, vocalist Mats Leven, hold the reins and Candlemass aren’t letting go. Last year Candlemass released a new studio album, »Psalms For The Dead« (2012), and they opened the night with the album’s first track, called Prophet.
The stage lighting was tailored to the band’s nature as much as possible. Monochrome glimmers with bursts of white or blue light in between. Otherwise everything red, green or blue. Mats Leven, sadly, will never be Messiah Marcolin, but his singing nonetheless handled the older material superbly. Leven is a hardened guy. He’d already worked with Björkman in Krux, and he’s got a dash of theatricality in his little finger, since he previously worked with Therion. A seasoned artist, then. Of course the charisma of his stage presence is cut from a totally different cloth than Marcolin’s, but execution counts first and foremost. And the Swedes are deadly on stage, deadly like the last toll of a fateful bell! Genuine in every move, convincing in every gesture. A manifesto of true Scandinavian perfectionism, with the sincere passion of musicians who uncompromisingly tackled the riffs of the repertoire glowing somewhere underground. Both the newest ones (Prophet, Waterwitch, Psalms For The Dead, Black As Time) and the most eagerly awaited ones, which offered mocking »re-do« versions of the classics Emperor of the Void, At The Gallows End, Bewitched, Dark Reflections and, in the finale, as expected, Solitude. Candlemass wrapped Balingen in total blackness for an hour and a half and, with excellent execution, confirmed the high expectations for their visit to this year’s Metaldays festival in Tolmin. After what we enjoyed in Balingen, we can expect their show in Slovenia to be one of the highlights of Metaldays. Oh, and I almost forgot. Keyboardist Per Wiberg (ex-Opeth) helps out Candlemass live as their sixth member.
This year’s warm-up show was called »Milestones Of Rock ‘N’ Roll History«. It served up five bands from different eras in the evolution of rock, or more precisely, metal. If Tokyo Blade are the standard-bearers of the NWOBHM movement, their answer across the Atlantic pond is the ossified speed metallers Vicious Rumors. Candlemass are still considered one of the most influential doom metal bands. It was lovely to hear Iron Maiden songs tuned a little differently by Maiden United, and the primal rock ‘n’ roll edge (Snake Ride Rodeo’s set) hit the spot too. And yet we can conclude that the handful of Slovenes who caught Vicious Rumors at Balingen with Tilen Hudrap in the lineup experienced a new baptism by fire for Slovenian heavy metal. We got to witness a new milestone for Slovenian heavy metal, which has gained important new stepping stones on the international scene, so its stock has risen even further, and so has the respect it commands!
Setlist
TOKYO BLADE:
1. Death On Mainstreet
2, Attack Attack
3, Night Of The Blade
4. Lunch-Case
5. Thousand Men Strong
6. Dead Of The Night
7. Lightning Strikes
8. Mean Streak
9. Lovestruck
10. Fever
11. If Heaven Is Hell
12. Unleash The Beast (not played)
Photo gallery
