location: Balingen / Volksbankmesse / Germany
date: 07/11/2018
Another Bang Your Head!!! festival in Balingen, Germany! A temptation you just can’t resist, because it’s practically impossible. Once you get down there, you’re an energy junkie, plain and simple. A festival with its own charisma and character, on the scene for over twenty years now. A tradition that counts. As always, it wasn’t going to happen without a warm-up day. The day before the official start of the festival. Same place as ever, the Volskbankmesse hall. That said, this year’s edition is a bit on the thrifty side when it comes to the lineup. You could feel it on the warm-up day too, which served up acts with a permanent festival home in Balingen, and the evening was even closed out by a “tribute to” band.
It was late afternoon. Unlike previous years, when we always hit the Alt Balingen beer hall in the town center in the middle of our first day here, this time we hung around near the venue, shuttling between the campsite and the beer discount store, and then, well-seasoned and pleasantly oiled, we headed late in the afternoon toward the Volksbankmesse hall, where the first band was due to play. That was Blood God from Stuttgart, who already played the festival two years ago. The trio Blood God, led by Thomas Gurrath, who built the band out of his Big Ball project, plays mostly heavy to hard rock, with songwriting inspiration leaning on the legacy of bands like AC/DC and/or Accept. Thomas Gurrath has a voice that recalls Udo Dirkschneider, and this is heavy metal with moves pulling toward the old school of hard rock. The very same trio can switch in an instant into the death metallers Debauchery. And that did happen, but the next day. You could feel that Blood God are locals, that the crowd knows them very well, and so they got a great response and plenty of audience participation. An opening “party time bash” with undemanding metal marches that go straight to your ear and pump you up with an adrenaline rush. Songs like Vampire Holocaust, Crusaders of God, City Of Bones, Sexy Music, for Sexy People, … They made for a nicely judged mix of party fun and occult, and the band delivered an extremely coherent show and won people over with how tight they were and with a well-studied, in other words professionally polished, performance.
Next up on stage were the Swedish rock’n’roll revivalists Thundermother. This quartet of strapping gals has been on the scene since 2009, with three studio albums under their belt. The latest of them, titled »Thundermother«, came out just this year. It was well represented in the set with Fire in the Rain, Quitter, Revival, and Whatever, keeping company with the albums »Road Forever« (the songs Give Me Some Lights and It’s Just a Tease) and »Rock’ N’ Roll Disaster« (Hellevator and We Fight For Rock ‘N’ Roll). The band also played the singles Hellevator and We Fight For Rock’ N’ Roll, which closed out an otherwise supremely confident gig. True to their telling name, Thundermother actually weathered a stormy period last year, when the band, which had been a quintet until then, suddenly lost four members. Guitarist Filippa Nässil is the only original member left and impressed with her self-assured stance, even grabbing a beer bottle mid-solo and sliding it up and down the guitar neck. These gals know how to create that onstage allure that tends to cling to female bands when they wield the magic of rock. They don’t need to bewitch the male audience with miniskirts and high heels for it, either, just a feeling of roughness and cheekiness. The band, now a quartet, proved with this show that it has come through the crisis and won the crowd over with a vehement, bold, superbly tight stage performance.
Then the venue was taken over by nearly an hour of power metal fairy-tale storytelling and flute-tooting, as Twilight Force climbed on stage. Yet another band that has grasped that what grabs the younger crowd of metalheads these days is above all glitz and kitsch. But still… This is a sextet made up of experienced Swedish musicians, with Italian vocalist Alessandro Conti, who has some serious stage mileage of his own, having sung with Rhapsody (the version led by Luca Turilli), among others. In short, a crew with a wealth of experience, active for seven years with two studio albums in their pocket. The show was exclusive, since Twilight Force have only popped up sporadically at European festivals this summer. As expected, the band filled the set entirely with material from both studio albums, »Heroes of Mighty Magic« (2016) and »Tales of Ancient Prophecies« (2014). A very predictable odyssey through an hour on stage, packed with a whole galaxy of symphonic embellishments that also veered into folk touches. Pompous and bombastic. Ultra-musical and instantly catchy. No never-before-heard musical moves that could “surprise” in any way. Alessandro is a true operatic vocal “Conan”, while the rest of this Swedish mini power metal orchestra is, performance-wise, honed to nitpicky perfection. A band that’s first and foremost tailor-made for burning power metal souls!
Lordi have played Bang Your Head!!! several times already. Both in the hall and on the open-air festival grounds (the main stage). So they’re old friends of the festival, and most of the crowd actually came to the warm-up show precisely because of them. The front rows were packed with “kids,” including screaming little girls. The choir of rubber zombies played the show just as you’d expect. In a glow of bombastic reconciliation between pomp, horror, and an obsession with the devil’s work, the pre-recorded intro burst into flames with the title track of the new album »Sexorcism«, and the party with the Finnish metal attraction was on. The second song, the famous Who’s Your Daddy, a fixture of the band’s setlist, poured oil on the fire right away, while the third act, This Is Heavy Metal (from the album »Babez For Breakfast«, 2010), entertained with theater that no longer boasts such brutal scenes as it did years ago, which Lordi had to cut from their regular repertoire and “menus” under all sorts of pressure. The confetti cannon. A must! It wasn’t missing this time either. With Lordi, the party theater is what counts. Whoever comes to their gig comes to switch off and enjoy the spectacle. That the band has quite a few pre-recorded sound backings, mostly for keyboards, choir vocal harmonies, and vocal help for Mr. Lordi, is no longer news, nor a miracle. Amen once again ran theatrically on one leg from one end of the stage to the other, which remains his trademark, while Mr. Lordi, in all the band’s onstage “mishmash,” of course remains the focal point of every Lordi concert. The band delivered a set that neatly and effectively spanned the group’s discography. They didn’t overdo the new album. Besides the opening title track Sexorcism, they also played the brand-new Your Tongue’s Got A Cat and Naked In My Cellar, and saved most of the numbers from »The Arockalypse« (Hard Rock Hallelujah, It Snows In Hell) and »Get Heavy« (Devil is a Looser, the closing Would You love A Monster Man?) for the last third of the show. An expected course of events, and with it an effective build to an atmospheric crescendo right at the finale of the spectacle. Surprisingly a bit short, though, at least fifteen minutes shorter than announced. Still, there was no shortage of fun. With Lordi on stage it’s always hellish and slippery. For Kiss fans, that doesn’t even need pointing out.
Because the organizer wanted to satisfy the musical tastes of every generation that loyally attends Bang Your Head!!!, the tail end of the warm-up day went to Bömbers. This is a Motörhead tribute band led by the famous Olve Elkemo, better known to everyone by his “infamous” nickname Abbath (“Abbath’s Hill” is, by the way, the well-known run-up spot of this musician at the Metaldays festival in Tolmin, Slovenia). The man is also the former backbone of the black metallers Immortal. So Bömber today, Abbath tomorrow, who indeed played the festival the next day! Bömber shook up the scene with covers of Motörhead. What to say? The older gents I chatted with the next day didn’t take to the whole thing at all and made no secret of their outrage at the show. Olve’s charisma is certainly unmatched. Even though his pose captured Lemmy’s stage movement and his tics very well, vocally Olve is a light-year away from the iron chancellor. His voice fits Motörhead riffs and gets along with them just fine. But when Olve tries to imitate Lemmy’s hoarseness, his imitation very quickly starts “drifting” toward the already very familiar Immortal croak. Still, no point grumbling. The band played a setlist of songs that Motörhead rarely played in their mature years, or no longer played at all. I’ll Be Your Sister, Jailbait, The Hammer, Stone Dead Forever were particularly fun, and so was Motörhead in the closing stretch. The band also spiced the set with the group’s cult classics. They opened the set with Ace Of Spades, and then came Stay Clean, No Class, Iron Fist, Shoot You in the Back, Damage Case, Metropolis (with fingers crossed), Over the Top, Killed By Death, Bomber, and the closing Overkill. Maybe Olve could have fixed his hair a little less during the show, since Lemmy was never a pretty boy. Otherwise, forgivable. In terms of playing, tightness, the “parodying,” or rather imitating itself. The hall emptied out quite a bit during this time. Because most people came for the Lordi show, who are musically incompatible with Motörhead. Well, and the remaining, more mature gentlemen grumbled and left the venue sooner than they would have if someone who reminded them more of Lemmy had been on stage, as Olve with his two sidekicks managed to this evening. There were certainly two more factors that made some people turn up their noses. The first is the great pickiness of the German crowd, and the second is a respectful attitude toward the figure and work of the late Motörhead, which barely allows anyone to “touch” them (even if only with a remote control). Summa summarum. A perfectly decent and quite entertaining theatrical rattling and rumbling, an adventure through the famous golden era of rock’n’roll, the era when the unforgettable Motörhead stomped across the planet.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
