Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Balingen / Messegelände / Germany
Concert date: July 12, 2017
Attendance: 1500
Ticket price: €35.00
Just like every year, this year’s Bang Your Head!!! 2017 got a warm-up day, the one that happens the day before the festival officially kicks off. This time there was no real standout headliner, but still a bundle of bands that make showing up a worthy investment. Sanctuary and Death Angel alone do the trick, and if you throw in Angel Dust, the practically forgotten cult German speed/thrash metallers turned melodic heavy metal act, it’s really hard to resist.
The festival’s warm-up day started off on the softer side. First on stage were German power metallers Stormwarrior. The Hamburg boys are fairly regular guests in Balingen and at Bang Your Head!!!, and way back when they also played, among others, the legendary Metal Mania Open AIr. The only original member left in the quartet is, naturally, the boss: guitarist and of course lead voice of the band, Lars Ramcke. This year the band swapped longtime bassist Yenz Leonhardt for Connie Andreszko, while the current Stormwarrior lineup is rounded out by drummer Jörg Uken and guitarist Björn Daigger. Aware of the top-notch company on the bill, Lars and the crew came out with all the artillery and grabbed everyone’s attention instantly with opener Iron Eagle, from the most popular Stormwarrior record, »Heading Northe« (2008). With the very next song they surprised pretty much everyone in the hall, going back to the very beginning of their career and the single »Possessed By Metal«, as they charged on with Heavy Metal Fire. The band keeps its stage power and expressiveness, even if it’s clear that the influences of Running Wild and Helloween don’t exactly reveal any musical revolution. Solid, confident, aggressive and full throttle. With real fire. The seasoned Lars keeps skillfully combining guitar work and vocals, while the other three in the band build him way more than a solid platform for it. The band built most of the set around Heading Notrhe, since besides Iron Eagle they closed the show with that album’s title track, and also slipped Ragnar’ock and Metal Legacy into the setlist. Stormwarrior didn’t skip the current studio album »Thunder & Steele« either, playing the title track and Steelcrusader, while from the older stuff Valhalla and Bloode Eagle rang out from Northern Rage. The band also threw in one more pleasant surprise, Odin’s Warriors, which comes from the EP »Heavy Metal Fire« (2003). Forty minutes of Nordic-flavored German power metal cannonade to open the day, then.
Next came a turn toward an even more melodic power metal band, the Swedes Bloodbound. This time they played as a sextet, with Fredrik Bergh on keyboards. If anyone remembers, years ago they played the Gala hala in Ljubljana as a quintet, with the keyboards »pinned« to backing tracks. The lineup is unchanged except for the drum spot, which has been filled by Daniel Sjögren since this year. Bloodbound have been on the scene for thirteen years, and their members, especially founding guitarist Tomas Olsson and the aforementioned Bergh, who know each other from the AOR band Street Talk, have a nice stack of live and studio mileage under their belts. Bloodbound didn’t let their followers down at this show either. This year the crew recorded and released a new studio album, »War of Dragons«, and they showed it off generously at the Balingen gig. With as many as five songs (that was half the entire setlist), including opener Battle in the Sky, the title track and Stand and Fight (all three played back to back in the opening stretch), plus Silver Wings and Dragons Are Forever, which were saved for the closing stretch. The rest of the setlist came from »Stormborn« (2015) with two songs (Stormborn, Whern All Lights Fail), and »In the Name of Metal« with Moria, while Bloodbound closed with an older number called Nosferatu (»Nosferatu«, 2005). Patrik J. Selleby remains in superb vocal form. This time he stuck little horns on his shaved head. Nosferatu, you know. Bloodbound have always worked a pinch of kitsch and glitter into their stage look and character. A nice, solid show.
Angel Dust are a legendary German band that actually played thrash and speed metal back in the eighties. Their slot on this year’s Bang Your Head warm-up day was a real little surprise for anyone who doesn’t follow the band’s circles, since it showed no signs of life for years. But the guys recently reactivated and confirmed at the same time that they’re working on material for a new album. Angel Dust’s set was therefore one of the main reasons to show up on the festival’s warm-up day. The crew is revitalized in the lineup that recorded their last four studio albums between 1997 and 2002. Those four marked a radical departure from speed/thrash metal roots toward atmospheric heavy metal, seasoned with a heaping helping of melody, led by the original rhythm section of Frank Banx (bass) and Dirk Assmuth (drums), plus singer Dirk Thurisch and guitarist Bernd Aufermann (the latter spent some time as a touring guitarist for the legendary Running Wild). The band got back together last year, and sure, they hadn’t been on stage for a while, and you could feel it in a show that delivered a few fleeting slip-ups, especially the occasional wobble off the ideal vocal line, as well as some clumsiness in the guitar transitions, but Angel Dust built a proper live atmosphere, and the crowd visibly enjoyed it. Whatever. Angel Dust are here. Again. They built most of the setlist around the album »Enlighten The Darkness« (opening Let Me Live, then The One You Are, closing First In Line, plus Cross of Hatred, Enjoy! and Come Into Resistence), while the rest of the repertoire was filled by the excellent albums »Bleed« (Bleed, Never) and »Border of Reality« (Border of Reality, Nightmare). Even though the show didn’t hit its peak, it was great to see the veterans on stage, and let’s hope the new studio album will carry them back to Europe’s stages more intensively.
Things really heated up once the speed and thrash metal veterans from Seattle, Sanctuary, took the stage. Hordes of the band’s fans pushed their way up front, and over fifteen songs the band, with a show seasoned with emotion and superb playing, delivered nothing less and nothing more than a brilliant performance. Sanctuary, led by the great vocal commander Warrel Dane, built a setlist from three albums. You don’t have to be Einstein to solve that riddle. That’s of course the cult first two, »Refuge Denied« and »Into The Mirror Black«, while a nice chunk of the setlist was filled by songs from the current »The Year The Sun Died«. What was especially striking about Sanctuary’s show was the superb tightness and the sound the band developed as they played. From the drums to both guitars and the potent, piercingly rattling bass. Granted, these days we can’t expect a mighty twenty-year-old from Warrel Dane. The days of extraordinary vocal performances are gone, and Warrel wisely saved his strength, mostly staying in the middle to low registers, and happily left the most impressive chorus melodies of the chosen songs to the crowd to sing. A solid, coherent show, with incredible crowd participation. The birth of insane, cult riffs from the hands of a cult band. The band built an unbelievably predatory, almost blasphemous groove. The new songs have also caught on brilliantly with the crowd over three years, and the singing along proved it, especially during the infectious Frozen, where you can even sense a hint of stylistic kinship with the prematurely buried Nevermore.
For the big finale, Bay Area Thrash Metal veterans Death Angel took the stage. A band that plays a ton and has lately been putting out a whole lot of new original music too. Death Angel are frequent guests at the Bang Your Head!!! festival, and they feel very much at home on Slovenian stages as well. Among other things, they played Metaldays again this year. The band has such quality, especially in terms of performance, that the label Bay Area thrash metal almost sounds too perfect. On stage, the two eighties members of the quintet impressed most: the incredibly energetic, charismatic and just plain explosive singer Mark Osegueda, and the brilliant lead guitarist Rob Cavestany. The band strolled through its catalog like it was nothing, covering pretty much the whole exposition of their career, with an emphasis on new songs from the current album, »The Evil Divide«, released last year. Sanctuary and Death Angel were matched at an hour and a half each, but it was the style and the relaxed energy that sent the crowd into a full gallop during Death Angel, where everything flew sky-high and the crowd surfers finally woke up too, and there seemed to be no end to them. Boundless moshing, circle pits, deadly spewing from the stage from Death Angel’s insane artillery. From every angle. Even at the end of the show the band didn’t show a speck of fatigue. The band surprised no small number of people by including the cult Black Sabbath classic Falling Off the Edge of the World, and closed the venomous, breakneck show with the exceptionally edgy The Moth, taken straight from the newest album. Death Angel remain an extremely venomous, razor-sharp band and the very definition of unconditional stage destruction and devastation. Mark’s superb vocal execution and a fresh exposition of his incredible gymnastic moves during the show. A band that always delivers the best, and a band you always have to watch. From the first second to the last. If there’s any chance to catch one of their gigs. Nothing more, nothing less. They deliver the best, and that’s why you can’t get sick of them. Not on record, and even less live. Let’s hope we meet them again soon.
Setlists
STORMWARRIOR:
1. Iron Gods
2. Heavy Metal Fire
3. Metal Legacy
4. Bloode Eagle
5. Valhalla
6. Ragnarok
7. Thunder & Steele
8. Odinn’s Warriors
9. Steelcrusader
10. Heading Northe
11. Iron Prayers
1. Battle In The Sky
2. Stand And Fight
3. In The Name Of Metal
4. Stormborn
5. When All Lights Fail
6. Moria
7. Silver Wings
8. Dragons Are Forever
9. Nosferatu
1. Let Me Live
2. The On eYou Are
3. Never
4. Enjoy!
5. Nightmare
6. Come Into Resistence
7. Border of Reality
8. Bleed
9. First In Line
10. Cross of Hatred
SANCTUARY:
Ad Vitam Aeternam (intro)
Arise and Purify
Let the Serpent Follow Me
Exitium (Anthem of the Living)
Die for My Sins
Seasons of Destruction
Future Tense
White Rabbit (Jefferson Airplane cover)
Question Existence Fading
Frozen
The Year the Sun Died
Battle Angels
The Mirror Black
Eden Lies Obscured
Soldiers of Steel
Taste Revenge
DEATH ANGEL:
1. The Ultra-Violence/Evil Priest
2. Claws in So Deep
3. Left For Dead
4. Son of the Morning
5. Father of Lies
6. Caster of Shame
7. Thrown to the Wolves
8. Seemingly Endless Time
9. Breakaway
10. Lost
11. Falling Off the Edge of the World
12. Kill As One
13. Relentless Revolution
14. The Moth
Photo Gallery
