Performing: Snake Ride Rodeo, Madien United, Tokyo Blade, Vicious Rumours, Candlemass
Date: Wednesday, 11.07.2013
Location: Balingen / Volksbank Messe / Germany
By tradition, RockLine is somehow bound to, or fatefully tied up with, the yearly edition of the famous German festival Bang Yor Head!!!, held every year at its traditional home in the lovely little German town of Balingen, smack in the middle of the rural countryside of Porsche country, Baden-Württemberg! As every year, the organizer served up a warm-up day with a bundle of bands that are hard to say no to.
The evening was kicked off by locals Snake Ride Rodeo, whom we skipped this time. They also opened the warm-up show at Balingen back in 2009. Without a doubt a warm welcome, delivered in the manner of boldly dirty rock ‘n’ roll rolling by seasoned German gentlemen, with The Preacher on guitar, formerly of German power metal fortress Running Wild.
Tents pitched, batteries charged. We’re in the hall at the festival grounds, the day before the official opening. The place is buzzing, and burly German beer drinkers are already lining up briskly to buy drink tokens. Tonight the beer will flow by the hectoliter!
On stage are Maiden United. Unbelievable. An acoustic lineup, a real blend of pastoral and chamber music. With an “Iron Maiden impression” like nothing we’ve heard before. The songs 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, using their know-how and imagination to turn the originals into something remarkably interesting that worked at full power on stage too. The main energy generator was Damian Wilson, the famous returnee to British progressive metallers Threshold. He took on all the vocal duties. He tailored the vocal lines superbly to the adapted arrangements, especially given the different rhythmic keys the reworked Maiden classics were set in. He took a full run-up to flip Dickinson’s well-known lines completely upside down, keeping only a loose resemblance to the originals in the choruses. And that was enough. By the end of the gig the crowd was eating out of the band’s hands. They sang along powerfully with Wilson in the choruses, joining in on the typical Maiden harmonies in thirds, this time of course adapted to the unplugged version. A mix of cunningly clever re-arrangements of Maiden’s studio originals and typical black humor (a trademark of the British Isles, after all), all courtesy of the exuberant, good-natured, bearded Scottish giant Steven Wilson, who cast a spell with an outstanding vocal performance that never bored for a second. Excellent 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. Still-active veterans who burst onto the scene during the NWOBHM boom, i.e. the early eighties. Today they’re gray-haired gentlemen, but seriously heavyweight, and they’re in fact playing in the original lineup, or more loosely put, 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 want to ask: “Where have you guys been hiding all these years?” Incredible playing, guitars oiled, calibrated and razor sharp. Harmonies in thirds played just 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 a great mood, radiating incredible cheer! The old, experienced tomcats looked razor-honed 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 a hugely dynamic stage show. Besides the superb solos we were spoiled with by the fantastic Andy Boulton, the one who stood out most during the set was vocalist Rhunow, who kept firing up his comrades with committed and “naughty” stage antics. He filled the stage, and of course it wasn’t just his stage presence that counted, which was packed with playful quips inherited from the treasure chest of British black humor. Tokyo Blade rattled off the setlist like a jet! The band cut through songs from the latest album “Thousand Men Strong” (2013) – Black Abyss, Thousand Men Strong, Lunch-Case, and mixed in the classics between them! The EP “Midnight Rendezvous” didn’t go missing (the title track, Mean Streak), and the band surprised even more by including Fever and Attack Attack, which date from the time of “Night Of The Blade” but didn’t make it onto the album back then. From Night Of The Blade we also got the title track and Love Struck. In fact, Tokyo Blade surprised us right off the bat by opening the gig with a lost song from the time of the debut “Tokyo Blade”, called Death On Main Street. Pure fantasy and a complete trip back to the days when heavy metal was still a first-grader. You can’t get any closer to the essence of the NWOBHM movement. It’s great to see the new album cut on the same principle as the first two, so the new songs work brilliantly alongside the classics. Let’s hope the band churns out another studio album or two 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 the show. Every single instrument was “totally busted” and nothing worked. Instead of tearing across the stage, what greeted the venue was anything but a new concert orgy with this excellent and highly regarded American old-school speed metal band, which in recent times thrashes more and more! On stage, guitarist Bob Capka is deep on his knees by Thorpe’s pedals, frantically hunting down and fixing sound problems, drummer Larry Howe is already behind the kit and can’t help blasting out a few superior rolls before quickly retreating backstage. There’s also a third man on stage. Tilen Hudrap, Slovenian born and bred. 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 the new album “Electric Punishment” (SPV Records, May 2013), thanks to a lucky turn of events. Hudrap is temporarily standing 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 on the first leg of the European tour, which wound across European soil this May. There he replaced Brian Allen, who had to stay home due to pressing family obligations. 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 proper recognition for its defiance and a one-of-a-kind confirmation that our musicians offer great quality in this genre and thereby inspire a lot of 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 joined Vicious Rumors as a special guest, the son of the band’s late original singer Carl Albert. For this one gig and no more!
The band was seriously late with tuning (the devil only knows what was wrong, but every instrument had to be calibrated from absolute zero), and our Tilen got the short end of the stick, since sorting out the bass sound came last. When Vicious Rumors launched 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 the sound of his instrument. Band leader Geoff Thorpe used his 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 set aside 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. In the opening stretch Kevin Albert was startling, coming within an inch of his late father Carl with his vocal tone. Later he and Brian Allen shared the vocal lines, joined in duets and kept the whole thing incredibly tight and dynamic. Both have very similar vocal characteristics, except that young Kevin uses new-agey gestures that would fit some hip hop metal fusion band, while Allen, with his charismatic figure and provocative attitude, played the role of a proper backup hellraiser with vehemence (his closing stage dive naturally didn’t go missing either). To make up for the rough start as much as possible, the band invited four strippers on stage in the closing stretch, who shook it along with the band to the long-awaited classic Soldiers Of The Night, courtesy of the audience. In that sense the move turned out to be an excellent solution. The band kept a “level head” by steering the crowd’s attention elsewhere. And our Tilen? As soon as the bass was fixed, he put his charismatic figure to work, which of course stands out thanks to his long blond hair, charged confidently toward the front of the stage and gave himself over to the joys of executing the Vicious Rumors material. You can tell Tilen has racked up a solid pile of hours playing bass 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 act combined excellent bass playing with proper stage positioning and gestures in the same breath, which added to the overall bombast of the Vicious Rumors gig. Tilen was therefore far from playing a passive role on stage (in the style of the unobtrusive 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 gig delivered what we expected. A top-notch stage performance, a first-rate blend of boundless metal destructiveness and villainous “badass” temperament. Superb execution. You can tell the band is deep into a run of shows, that the chemistry works, that fresh material is coming together, and that hardly anyone can stand shoulder to shoulder with Vicious Rumors when it comes to battling it out on stage. We’re also eagerly awaiting Vicious Rumors at this year’s Metaldays festival in Tolmin. Be there, 100%!
The headliners of the festival’s warm-up day were Swedish doom metallers Candlemass. So a complete swing of the atmosphere into the realms of gloom, witches’ evil deeds and similar medieval monstrosities and apparitions, and down came the curtain, laying out fields of blackness and lamentation. Here and there you hear the ominous howl of banshees calling for death. Original members Leif Edling (bass) and Mats Björkman (guitar), alongside Jan Lindh (drums), guitarist Lars Johansson and the latest addition, vocalist Mats Leven, hold the reins, and Candlemass aren’t letting up. Last year Candlemass released the new studio album “Psalms For The Dead” (2012) and opened the evening with the album’s first track, called Prophet.
The stage lighting was tailored to the band’s nature as much as possible. Monochrome flickering lamps with the occasional blast of white or blue beams. Otherwise all red, green or blue. Mats Leven sadly will never be Messiah Marcolin, but his singing handled the older material excellently all the same. Leven is a hardened man. He already worked with Björkman in Krux, and he’s got a touch of theatricality in his little finger, since he previously worked with Therion. An experienced artist, then. Of course the charisma of his stage presence is cut from a completely different cloth than Marcolin’s, but execution counts first and foremost. And the Swedes are deadly on stage, like the last toll of a bell of doom! Genuine in every move, convincing in every gesture. The manifesto of true Scandinavian perfectionism radiated, somewhere underneath, the sincere passion of musicians who settled scores with the setlist’s riffs without mercy. Both the newest ones (Prophet, Waterwitch, Psalms For The Dead, Black As Time) and the most anticipated ones, which delivered mocking “Our Fathers” of performances of the classics Emperor of the Void, At The Gallows End, Bewitched, Dark Reflections and, as you’d expect, Solitude to close. 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 at 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 Candlemass live as a sixth member.
This year’s warm-up show was titled “Milestones Of Rock ‘N’ Roll History”. It served up performances by five bands from the developmental eras of rock genres, or more precisely, metal. If Tokyo Blade are the standard-bearers of the NWOBHM movement, their answer across the Atlantic is the hardened speed metallers Vicious Rumors. Candlemass are still considered one of the most influential doom metal bands today. It was great to hear Iron Maiden songs tuned a bit differently by Maiden United, and there was also a whiff of primal rock ‘n’ roll sharpness (Snake Ride Rodeo’s set). Still, we can safely say that the handful of Slovenes who caught Vicious Rumors at Balingen with Tilen Hudrap in the lineup witnessed a whole new baptism by fire for Slovenian heavy metal. We got to be part of a new milestone for Slovenian heavy metal, which has gained important new springboards on the international scene, as its stock has risen even further, and so has the respect it commands!
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tokyo Blade setlist:
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)
