Performers: Anthrax, Ektomorf, Europe, Hirax, Mad Max, More, Obituary, Rob Rock, Stryper, Twisted Sister, Unisonic
Location: Balingen / Messegelände / Germany
Date: 12.07.2014
Day two of Bang Your Head!!! 2014 got off to a slightly later start than usual for the RockLine crew. The weather had turned, clouds covered the sky, and we were “licking our wounds” after the heavily seasoned first day of the festival, since Axel Rudi Pell and his marathon show put on an event that will be written in capital letters in his career as a long-lived hard rock troubadour. His anniversary concert was in fact recorded and filmed, for a DVD and audio CD release. Anyway, we skipped the very interesting More with Chris Tsangarides, revived cavalry from the days of NWOBHM metal culture, and arrived in time for the show by the frothing-at-the-mouth classic US thrashers Hirax. The charismatic Black vocalist Katon W. De Pena, a.k.a. “Bobby Johnson,” dictated the course of events on stage. The waking crowd, which was just then busy kitting itself out with ponchos, got hit by a flint-hard stampede of incredible tightness, built on machine-gunned old-school speed/thrash riffs that riddled the grounds. If More pleasantly scratched at the ears in the morning, Hirax delivered a proper right hook to the forehead, so wild that even the Balingen hills woke up and shifted.
The third band took the energy to the complete opposite side. On stage stood the seasoned Mad Max, long-lived German hard rockers led by singer and guitarist Michael Voss, who is also a real producer guru in the waters of the German school of hard rock. Keeping him company on drums was Axl Cruse, the other original member of today’s Mad Max. The guys ran through the classics of their career. As the minutes ticked by, Voss was losing some of his vocal firepower, but the band as a whole dominated the stage with routine and experience, and Voss, for the good vibes, cracked a few dirty jokes and warmed up the home crowd even more. Burning The Stage, Night Of Passion, Rolling Thunder, Wait For The Night, Lonely Is The Hunter, Never Say Never and Thoughts Of A Dying Man rang out one after another, and the band closed its set with a cover of The Sweet’s Fox On The Run. Meanwhile it started pouring, and the crowd in front of the stage got thoroughly decimated. Then the outstanding American vocalist and composer Rob Rock took the stage with his crew of Scandinavian musicians. He used his time to run through songs from his career and stunned with an unruly vocal poise that, after a long career of defiance on the scene, didn’t let the seasoned singer down this time either. Outstanding. He had the backing of a solid, tight-knit crew of Swedish musical perfectionists, among whom the name of guitarist Carl Johan Grimmark (Narnia) stood out. The rest of the festival went on under heavier sounds. Even brutalized to the core, when the unique Florida death metallers Obituary “cut the stage out from under us” with their butcher’s riff machinery. Tardy is Tardy. Vocals, charisma. Plus the extra flex of an incredibly well-preserved natural curly mane, the kind that the bedecked Twisted Sister doll Dee Snider can only dream of today. The songs The End Complete, Stinkupuss, the obligatory Slowly We Rot, Inked By Blood, Immortal Visions, I’m In Pain, Chopped in Half and Back to One! Could a fan of old-school death metal thunder even ask for more? A devastating performance. From head to toe.
Stryper, the white hard rockers with the charismatic Michael Sweet, work great even in their mature years. The new album “No More Hell to Pay” sounds like the heaviest in the band’s history, while being stuffed with great ideas and a polished sense of songwriting. It even happened that Robert Sweet had his drums set up so that he faced the audience. Alongside the classics Reach Out, sing Along Song, Calling On You, Loud And Clear and Free, the band spiced up the setlist with a Kiss cover, Shout Out Loud, and delivered the only new song from the album “No More Hell To Pay,” the excellent and dark Marching Into Battle. The band closed its set with Soldiers Undrer Comand and To Hell With The Devil. Stryper keep their stage shows fresh and dynamic. This time only a couple of Bibles flew into the crowd, and when they hit the asphalt ground of the venue they really did get smashed to pieces.
Around five in the afternoon, Unisonic took the stage. A supergroup made up of guitarists Mandy Meyer (Krokus, ex-Asia) and Kai Hansen (Gamma Ray), bassist Denis Ward (Pink Cream 69), drummer Costa Zafiriou (ex-Pink Cream 69) and the indestructible vocalist Michael Kiske (ex-Helloween). Today, together with Gamma Ray, Unisonic are what Helloween will never be again, or can’t even be anymore. In their current form and lineup, from 2003 onward, certainly not. That’s why Unisonic are a real band-aid for the wounds of all the inconsolable fans of old Helloween. And that wouldn’t fly if Kiske didn’t have such a superbly preserved voice. His performance was fully convincing, and Kiske handled every passage with feather-light ease, even those we quietly expected him to “coast through” in the lower registers, or leave the “screaming” to the crowd instead. The band mostly played songs from the debut, tossed in the new For the Kingdom, and surprised with a rendition of the Helloween classic March Of Time. Deris can only dream of the vocal form Kiske has today. Unisonic, a format of incredible experience, closed their bravura set, as expected, with the Helloween standard I Want Out, with that unforgettable riff staked out by the father of European power metal, Kai Hansen.
We skipped Ektomorf and treated ourselves to a break and a bite in the meantime, and the festival day was tipping toward its peak, with Anthrax, Europe and, as the main draw of the second day, Twisted Sister still to come. But let’s start with Anthrax. They put together the expected setlist made up of nothing but classics, starting with Among the Living, then Caught in the Mosh, followed by Indians and Got the Time, and, as expected, wrapped up their stormy set, where everything flew from the crowd and a cloud of dust rose over the grounds, with the songs I Am the Law and a cover of Trust’s Antisocial. The lineup now features a new guitarist by the name of Jonathan Donais. He replaced Volbeat defector Rob Cagianna. And Belladonna of course couldn’t rein in his nimble patter, which added extra salt to this colorful slapstick theater. Anthrax remain a machine!
After the madness of Anthrax the crowd shuffled around thoroughly, and next up were the Swedish hard rockers Europe. They used their set to present the album “Riches to Rags,” opening with the title track. Singer Joey Temepst’s charisma isn’t fading, and his trademark stage show is the main building block of the group’s dynamic performance, which would otherwise be dull given how static the other members are. John Norum once again cast his spell with superb feel and a subtle brilliance in his approach to the instrumental mid-sections. The band is still an indestructible fortress on stage, while Tempest wisely conserves his energy and routinely dodges the highest vocal registers. As expected, the classics Superstitious, Girl From Lebanon, Sign of the Times and Let the Good TImes Rock didn’t go missing, and the band closed the regular part of the set with Rock the Night. They then served up the “unnecessary” newer Last Look at Eden and of course the song everyone was waiting for, The Final Countdown. A Europe gig without Cherokee and Kerry was actually the biggest surprise of the band’s performance this time.
For the big finale, Twisted Sister closed out the action on the main festival stage. They’re old friends of Bang Your Head!!! What has always plagued this band’s headliner slot is the lack of original material. Okay, the album “Stay Hungry” is the expected stage staple of the band… But Dee Snider has to fill such a show with a sea of “stories” and “juicy fabrications” that his fertile imagination keeps cooking up, and with which Twisted Sister routinely stretch out their sets. The iconic and incorrigible rock’n’roll blabbermouth, practically the smooth-talking doctor of glam metal, Dee Snider felt more than great in the role of “king of the scene,” and the jam-packed grounds literally ate out of his hand. So: a start with Stay Hungry, followed by Shoot ‘Em Down, You Can’t Stopp Rock ‘n’ Roll, Captain Howdy, Street Justice, the indestructible We’re Not Gonna Take It, The Kids are Back, I Believe in Rock’n’Roll, Born to Raise Hell, The Fire Still Burns, The Price, Burn in Hell and the closer I Wanna Rock (with Come Out And Play and S.M.F. following as encores). Whether Twisted Sister lived up to the headliner role or not is debatable, given how repetitive and predictable their live shows are. For those of us who weren’t seeing them for the first time, the show certainly wasn’t anything special. There’s a lot of acting and slapstick theater, which the band, with the cocky and uncontrollably charismatic Snider, whips up with feather-light ease. Balingen enjoyed it, went nuts, and boiled over with positive vibes. And that’s what counted, and Twisted Sister once again conquered the festival’s main stage, which was exactly what they set out to do.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Odlične fotke “mojega” najljubšega, karizmatičnega benda, mislim, da, uredništvo ve, za koga gre.