Location: Balingen / Messegelände (Volksbankmesse hall) / Germany
Date: Thursday, July 11, 2019
And here it was, the new Bang Your Head!!! festival. Where else but Balingen, Germany, once again. Well, this year’s July weather forecast turned downright extreme, and not just the forecast, the actual weather too. Record-breaking heat waves like the world has never seen, crossed with days of pouring rain. And it was right into one of those cyclone waves that this year’s Bang Your Head!!! got scheduled. All in all, the festival was pretty wet, frankly too wet, but that’s how it goes. The weather picks us, not the other way around.
Anyway. We skipped this year’s warm-up, which hasn’t happened once since we started coming to this beloved festival. So here we were at the first festival day, and at eleven o’clock old festival acquaintances Stormwarrior were already on stage. It’s unbelievable how time flies. Stormawrrior are celebrating 21 years of existence this year. When they showed up on the scene with their debut, they were total power metal greenhorns, but faith and stubbornness do their thing, and Lars Ramcke, the big chief, guitarist and vocalist of the band, can now boast six studio albums under his belt, the latest of them, »Norsemen«, coming out this November. Lars Ramcke has picked up a few gray hairs and a wrinkle or two, but he’s the same on stage. What you see is what you get. He was never known as a singer with technical polish, but the style Stormwarrior play doesn’t demand that anyway. The Viking lyrics about heroes were there and the band held up fine. The clouds had gathered, gray was stretching across the sky, and the clouds kept getting heavier and heavier. It was gloomy. In fifty minutes the band played no fewer than five tracks from the studio debut »Stormwarrior« (2002), three of them (Signe of the Warlorde, Sons of Steele, The Axewielder) right at the very start. Defenders of Metal was there too, along with Iron Prayers, which closed the show. The band surprised quite a few people with the ancient »Possessed by Metal« EP/demo track Heavy Metal Fire, and the set was rounded out by tracks from the albums »Heading Northe« (the title track) and »Northern Rage« (Odinn’s Warrior and Lindisfarne). The quartet made good use of the opening-band slot, sounding mature and experienced. Ramcke has reliable mates beside him in Yens Leonhartz (bass), drummer Björn Daigger and guitarist Jörg Uken, and Stormwarrior also stirred up fond memories of their long-ago appearance at the Metal Mania Open Air festival in Komen, Slovenia, back in 2008.
At half past twelve the stage was taken over by Sweden’s Sorcerer, who played Slovenia’s Metaldays festival last year. They’re almost legends of Swedish metal, who started out in 1988 but, before breaking up early, never managed to release a single album, just a few recordings that found their way onto various compilations. Then in 2010 they got back together, and in 2015 and 2017 two studio albums finally came out, »In The Shadow of the Inverted Cross« and »The Crowning Of the Fire King«. The band is old-school metal from head to toe, the stage outfits fit the bill too, but they weave deathly riffs into their compositions that sound like they’re rising from the grave, so the doom element is clearly noticeable throughout. Hmm.. still clearly a long way from fellow Swedes Candlemass, who played here two days later, but still. So, no power metal “elf-fiddling”! Just old school. Fossilized. Vocalist Anders Engberg remains original. Both vocally and as a member! An excellent set from the veterans, who delivered six really long, epic doom heavy metal marches: Ship of Doom, Sirens, The Crowning of the Fire King, Exorcise the Demon, The Dark Tower of the Sorcerer and the especially “lost” (and found) The Sorcerer, with which, just like a year ago in Tolmin, they wrapped up their very successful set in Balingen.
And then it started raining. Really raining. Already during Sorcerer. The rain got even heavier, and Audrey Horne took the stage. Exactly the right ticket for switching off and having fun. Audrey Horne are a Norwegian outfit from Bergen, definitely a band with a touch of parody, mixing elements of old-school metal and even melodic hard rock. The quintet is made up of the incredibly entertaining vocalist Toschie, guitarists Ice Dale and Thomas Tofthagen, drummer Kjetil Greve and bassist Espen Lien. Before Audrey Horne, the members played in bands like Gorgoroth and Enslaved. Reminiscent of black metal, then? Only in the superb playing. Really excellent musicians. Tight down to the millimeter and incredibly well rehearsed. The rain kept getting heavier, but Toschie and the crew didn’t lose any sleep over it. The vocalist arrived on stage dressed as a football referee, in a windstopper jacket, and kept the mood extremely upbeat and cheerful the whole time. During the second-to-last song, Waiting For The Night, he even jumped off the stage, climbed over the barrier and went out among the people, who bleated the catchy chorus along with him. The band opened the show in style. In keeping with the current album »Blackout«, they lined up This Is War, Audrevolution and Blackout in a row. Otherwise they only went back two albums in their discography, to »Youngblood«, which gave us Pretty Little Sunshine ,Straight Into Your Grave, Youngblood and Redemption Blues, joined by two numbers from »Pure Heavy«, Out Of The City and the previously mentioned Waiting Fot the Night. A great party that not even the rain could spoil.
The rain kept coming. Deep into the show of our friends Brainstorm, whom we caught at the end of January at Orto Bar in Ljubljana. It’s hard to go wrong with Brainstorm. In Ljubljana, vocalist Andy B. Franck had been struggling with a throat infection, which didn’t show all that badly in the performance, but this time he stood on stage perfectly fresh and healthy, so he went all out. And Brainstorm? They’d picked out a get-up of white shirts. They weren’t handing out ice cream from the stage, of course, but real power/thrash metal riff slaps stuffed with the epic bombast of big chorus melodies. As expected, most of the repertoire came from the current album, the excellent »Midnight Ghost«. The band opened with the new Devil’s Ghost, then tugged at the nostalgics’ heartstrings with Words Are Comin’ Through, taken from the 13-year-older album »Liquid Monster«, one of the most highly regarded releases in the band’s catalog. From »Midnight Ghost« we also got Jeanne Boulet (1764) Revealing the Darkness The Pyre and Ravenous Minds, with which the guys closed the show. There was Shiva’s Tears, the obligatory classic from »Soul Temptation«, and the band spiced up the set with another »Liquid Monster« classic, All Those Words, and added the title track of the album Firesoul. Brainstorm are, as always, a poisonously well-oiled machine that convinces wholeheartedly every time. Great sound, great vibe. Excellent company. The Ihlenfeld/Loncaric duo was, as always, in the right place at every moment. The two guitarists combined their solos brilliantly, and let’s not overlook the immensely dynamic and fiery rhythm section, handled by the excellent drummer Dieter Bernert and the no less excellent bassist Antonio Ieva. In short. Brainstorm conjured up what they do best and what makes them unique. A proper brainstorm, which thoroughly tousled the soaked heads at the festival, and next to it the rain that was already falling turned into a tiny, barely noticeable little imp. Another superb performance from the band, as expected.
The Night Flight Orchetra are a kind of parody of the AOR days. The band wouldn’t be anything special these days and would be quickly forgotten, if it weren’t made up of interesting names who clearly got tired of years of sticking it out in the realms of extreme metal. The lineup on stage is a big one! Vocalist Björn Strid, who soon after this show visited Slovenia’s Tolmin with his Soilwork, was dressed in the style of Survivor singer Dave Bickler. Ray-Ban shades, beret, white outfit. Leaning on the mic stand, he strolled into the opening of the show very casually. Also here is another Soilwork member, guitarist David Anderson. On bass, Strid and Andersson are joined by Sharlee D’Angelo, the experienced former Mercyful Fate and King Diamond bassist, who, just like Strid and Andersson, traveled to Tolmin a few days later, where he played with his band Arch Enemy. The lineup is rounded out by drummer Jonas Källsbäck, keyboardist Richard Larsson, percussionist Sebastian Forslund and two curvy backing singers, known in the band as the Airline Annas, namely Anna Brygård and Anna-Mia Bonde, who “played” with purple phones during the show in flight-attendant outfits. The band presented the freshly released studio album »Sometimes The World Ain’t Enough«, opening the show with the title track, which was immediately joined by Turn To Miami. Andersson played the naughty boy, lit up a cigarette during the third song, Midnight Flyer, and kept the soloing excellent, striking all sorts of poses, up to the most hilarious ones, without a single slip, which only confirms how good a guitarist he is. A genuinely fun parody. The Night Flight Orchestra constantly recall the days when AOR ruled the charts, and it isn’t hard to hear the inspiration from Journey, Survivor, Boston and Night Ranger. From »Amber Galactic« they also played Gemini and Something Mysterious, and the show was closed by a pair from the album »Internal Affairs«, 1998 and West Ruth Avenue. Little talking, lots of fun. Even though the fun is precisely in how they act childish in imitating a certain era of rock, on the other hand they play superbly and there’s nothing to criticize, and in this kind of musical setting Strid can also show off his normal voice and singing.
Then came the special moment of the first festival day. Not only did the rain stop for a while, but at twenty past five in the afternoon the stage wasn’t taken by the Swedish sleaze rock revivalists Hardcore Superstar, but by their no less Swedish power metal countrymen from Gothenburg, Dream Evil. A Swedish Primal Fear, can we say? Something like that. The organizer pulled off this last-minute swap because Hardocre Superstar had all their gear stolen while traveling, specifically while changing planes. Because of that the band was running late to Balingen. So they swapped slots with Dream Evil, who were originally supposed to play in the hall ten minutes before eight. Dream Evil are excellent power metallers. Formed shortly before the turn of the millennium, led by the well-known producer Fredrik Nordström, of the founding members the lineup still includes the great singer Niklas Ilsfeldt and bassist Peter Stålfors, while the lineup is rounded out by drummer Pat Power (properly Patrik Jerksten), who replaced the notorious Snowy Shaw in 2006, and the returning guitarist Markus Fristedt. The famous Gus G, who played with Ozzy Osbourne for ten years and whom we recently saw in Ljubljana with Firewind, also once played in this band. Dream Evil put together an excellent setlist, made up almost entirely of material from the first two albums, »Dragonslayer« (2002) and »Evilized« (2003). Fans of the band really couldn’t have imagined a better repertoire. The set went off without any particular hitches, the sun came out during the show, Niklas, whose singing tone vaguely recalls Ralf Scheepers (Primal Fear), sang phenomenally and the show developed very dynamically. The band played the following setlist: Immortal, In Flames You Burn, Crusaders’ Anthem, Save Us, The Prophecy, Heavy Metal in the Night, Fight You ‘Till the End, Made of Metal, Children of the Night, The Chosen Ones, Chasing the Dragon and the closing The Book of Heavy Metal.
During Dream Evil’s set, the neighboring Volksbankmesse hall also woke up. There, at half past five, Danish rockers I’ll Be Damned kicked off the indoor partying. They arrived in Balingen with a slightly altered lineup. Matthias Smidt helped out on drums, temporarily filling the shoes of full member Adnersa Gyldenøhr, while the band was also appearing on stage for the very first time with its new singer, Stig Gamborg, who, funnily enough, left the band at the end of this July, so I’ll Be Damned are looking for a new singer again (you can get in touch with them). Still, they managed to pull the show off. The band often recalls their countrymen D-A-D (Disneyland After Dark), although they don’t knock quite so firmly on the door of parody as those “rascals.” In the music you feel southern rock influences, riffs backed by a bluesy veil, but at the same time I’ll Be Danmend play very sharp, pointed and fiery. On top of that they bring melodic punch and infectious choruses. A real party band. When songs like Fuck The World (Be Happy), Drainage, Fever or You Are Young seduce you, you know this band is not messing around. Not an optimal show given the necessary, temporary adjustment of the lineup, but certainly a band that promises a lot for the future.
The next set we caught was in the hall again. The Norwegian trio Keep Of Kalessin, an extreme metal outfit with roots in Norwegian black metal. The band’s lineup is Arnt “Obsidian C.” Grønbech (guitar, vocals), Robin “Wizziac” Isaksen (bass, clean vocals) and new member Wanja “Nechtan” Gröger (drums). A band with serious tenure, but also with a few breaks in activity along the way. Keep Of Kalessin focused on playing newer material, concentrating on the last two studio albums, »Epistemology« and »Reptilian«. The band has moved quite far away from the black metal purism of its first era. Obsidian C handled the growling duties, which don’t reach the level of his predecessor Thebon, but while also serving as lead guitarist he still sounds totally confident. There’s also an additional fourth member on extra guitar, who likewise takes some load off Obsidian. Bassist Wizziac occasionally adds clean vocals to Obsidian’s, and the band made up for the lack of early material in the second half of the show, when it played two tracks from the excellent album »Armada«, Crown of the Kings and The Wealth of Darkness. We skipped most of the show, since it overlapped with Soulfly on the main stage.
Soulfly! After last year, the famous Massimiliano A. Cavalera, Max Cavalera for short, is back in Europe with his crew. The set wasn’t much different from last year’s in Tolmin, except that the band slipped songs from the new album »Ritual« into the repertoire (the opening The Summoning and Under Rapture, and Ritual and Dead Behind the Eyes toward the end). Over the last two years the band has also been sort of celebrating thirty years since the debut »Soulfly« came out, which also got more attention. So the band played Primitive and Bleed from it (the latter combined in the second half with Plata O Plomo from the album »Enslaved«, 2012), plus Tribe and No Hope = No Fear and the obligatory Eye For An Eye, where the urging to jump naturally hit its peak (Jumpthefuckup). Fire wasn’t missing either, with the band tacking Porrada on to it (»Prophecy«, 2004). Toward the end there was room for Back to the Primitivre (»Primitive«, 2000), and from »Dark Ages« the band played I And I and Babylon. In short. It’s nice that the band doesn’t tie itself to Max’s Sepultura roots, which it could easily do and did for years. Max Cavalera seems a little tired on stage, his guitar at times doesn’t deliver what it should either, and you have to wonder whether he’s getting some extra help from the mixing desk, if not some pre-recorded line. Vocally he’s certainly getting generous help from the sound engineers, but that’s hardly surprising, since his voice hasn’t been at a satisfying level for some years now. Still, Max is surrounded by a crew of top-notch musicians, namely his son Zion Cavalera, bassist Mike Leon and the incredible Mark Rizzo, who has been in the lineup with Max since 2003 and has actually become the main draw of current Soulfly shows. Polished sound, lower tunings, mighty avalanche-like thunder, rumbling, brilliant precision and outstanding energy. Rizzo is the factor of required explosiveness and constant action, to which Cavalera can today only bow, and who with his excellence actually keeps the band standing. Max’s approach remains the same as always. Tons of egging on to mosh pits, circle pits, walls of death and of course nonstop jumping (Jump, jump, jump….). A bit fewer curses this time, but that’s his style. Even though the band treated itself to some fun, when it licked its way into a jam on Slayer and got the crowd going with Black Magic, the show leaves the impression that it could have been even more destructive, that it could have been played and approached at an even higher level and with even more power. Like I said. Marc Rizzo! The great savior! Again.
At ten to eight in the evening we finally got the show in the hall from the Swedish sleaze rock revivalists, fans of a proper tattoo, Hardcore Superstar, who, as already mentioned, had a big problem. Someone stole their gear at the airport, so they made do with borrowed equipment. From the start of the show you could feel the big confusion surrounding the band’s performance. These simply weren’t the real Hardcore Superstar, and the band was visibly frazzled and tense. Still, the crazy, always totally wound-up vocalist Joakim “Jocke” Berg pulled every trick in the book to draw the crowd’s attention away from, or redirect it from, the band’s constant sound problems on stage, with guitarist Vic Zino by far drawing the shortest straw, unable to get his guitar tuned to the required sound level. Jocke even jumped into the crowd, which lifted him up on their hands, trying to keep the dynamics of the show going. The band went through Moonshine, Electric Rider and We Don’t Celebrate Sundays, moved on to Liberation, and then they collectively made the decision to stop the show. Simply put, the borrowed gear the band was trying to save the show with didn’t hold up, and the quartet’s heads weren’t in it either, which is perfectly logical. Hardcore Superstar are hugely popular in Germany and a lot of people were seriously bummed that day because of the cut-short show. Still, before the festival was even over, on its third day, the organizer confirmed the first batch of acts for 2020, and Hardcore Superstar are among them, so next year they’ll get a chance to properly make up for a slip-up that was hardly their fault.
It’s half past eight in the evening and everything is set for the headliner of the festival’s first day to step onto the main stage. This year that honor fell to the one and only Michael Schenker and his new formation Michael Schenker Fest. Schenker is considered an iconic guitarist and one of the greatest and most important, if not the most deserving of all, since his approach to composing and especially to shaping solos in mid eight passages became an inspiration and a model for generations. This is a man who through his work moved heavy metal, and hard rock too, up a few notches and concretely helped its further development and spread. With his formation, Schenker is sort of returning straight to the very beginning of his creative path with MSG and more. The show at Bang Your Head is a real little celebration of his career, where the extraordinary musician took us through all the eras of his work, led by his Scorpions and UFO days. Schenker invited three original MSG singers to his Fest, Gary Barden, Robin McAuley and Graham Bonnet, and added a fourth to those three, who worked with Michael Schenker during the Mcihael Schenker’s Temple Of Rock period, the former Rainbow and Yngwie J. Malmsteen’s Rising Force vocalist Doogie White. Four singers, then original MSG bassist Chris Glen, keyboardist and guitarist Steve Mann from the McAuley Schenker Group era, and on drums? In place of the late Ted McKenna, Bodo Schopf stepped in, who played in the McAuley Schenker Group between 1986 and 1990. McKenna, who passed away in mid-January this year, was sorely missed by Schenker during the show, and the guitarist dedicated his performance at the Bang Your Head!!! festival to his memory.
To start off, Michael Schenker tiptoed out quite modestly like a little mouse to his mic stand on the left and took up his stage position. The crowd came alive, and after a short intro speech the man opened the show himself with a rendition of the Scorpions song Holiday (from the album »Lovedrive«). He took on the singing himself too, and said at the start that Scorpions had never managed to properly thank him, because he wrote it for them. A shortened version was followed by more serious business. The other musicians jumped on stage, and Schenker launched into the famous Doctor Doctor (UFO). The hair and skin stood on end at the famous sound of the great one-of-a-kind, which at first came from his Gibson Flyin’ V and gradually flowed into one of the most striking riffs of the rock era, and Bonnet, Barden and McAuley slowly appeared on stage. Each of them sang one verse of the song. A marathon show was in the cards. Michael Schenker had a full two and a half hours and he really delivered a proper spectacle. The first part saw a real caravan of MSG songs, led by Into the Arena, Ready to Rock, Attack of the Mad Axeman, Rock My Nights Away, where Gary Barden in particular took a bit more of the spotlight at the start, with McAuley and Bonnet joining him now and then. In the next stretch too the crew kept up its concert rondo with a series of MSG songs Armed and Ready, Dancer, Searching for a Reason, Desert Song, Night Moods, Assault Attack and Captain Nemo, where things evened out and Bonnet too often stepped to center stage. The MSG cremation of the crowd was interrupted by renditions of the newer Messin’ Around and another Scorpions classic from the »Lovedrive« era, Coast To Coast. In the third part of the concert odyssey with Schenker, there followed numbers from the McAuley Schenker Group era (Bad Boys, Save Yourself, the outstanding Anytime, Love Is Not A Game), interrupted by the newer Heart and Soul in between. The marathon-sized show tipped deep into its third third, Doogie White jumped on stage, the band moved on to some Temple Of Rock numbers: Lord of the Lost and Lonely, Vigilante Man, Before The Devil Knows You Are Dead, Live And Let Live, while the band also salted the set with the brand-new The Girls With The Stars In Her Eyes and the hugely infectious Ressurection track Take Me To The Church, which was followed by one of the best numbers on the album »Ressurection« overall, the epic Warrior, where once again all the singers got their moment (Bonnet got the chorus). In the closing stretch the band played Rock Bottom. A UFO classic, then, where the singers once again split the roles, with McAuley and White proving that they were by far the ones who carried the vocal form to a considerably higher level in the final acts of the show than their buddies Gary Barden and Graham Bonnet. Even more so. Barden made a rookie mistake when he took the second verse of the UFO classic Rock Bottom, forgot it halfway through and fell silent, luckily the crowd quickly jumped in on the chorus.
For the encore the band played no fewer than five UFO classics, which White and McAuley again kept alive in large part. Schenker surprised quite a bit with the inclusion of Only You Can Rock Me and Too Hot To Handle, followed by three more UFO classics, Shoot Shoot, Natural Thing, and Lights Out! The incredible two-and-a-half-hour show came to an end. No special theatrics, no pomp, no extra stage clutter or racket. Schenker simply said goodbye. No special theatrics, and he walked off with everyone else, the last one off the stage.
Crazy in every way. The four-singer idea works brilliantly. Whether in the constant splitting of verses between the singers, or in involving all four voices in the performance of individual numbers. Vocally, McAuley and White are definitely the best preserved, followed by Bonnet, while Barden fell short especially in the high notes and lagged behind by half a tone a few times. Schenker of course also let Mann step into the spotlight a few times. During Anytime the two played an excellent mid eight together and doubled the harmonies in thirds, etc… Excellent sound, the superb and unique wizard Michael Schenker and his crew. A brilliant performance and plenty of unforgettable moments of great nostalgia that evening, for the golden era of rock.
In the hall, Venom Inc. had an hour and twenty minutes, and their set overlapped entirely with Michael Schenker Fest. What’s more. It started half an hour later and ended forty minutes before the end of the festival headliner’s show. A real shame. A pinch of the classic NWOBHM pioneering era was thus put at risk, as far as taking it in goes. But still. We had to see them. Mantas, Demolition Man and Jeramie Kling (the latter from the US melodic death metallers The Absence), who replaced Abaddon last fall. The trio is excellent as always! They always deliver a fantastic show. That’s how it was in Tolmin in 2017 and last year in Graz, when they played with Suffoction, and this time in Balingen was no different. You can feel that Tony Dolan and Mantas are from “another world” and belong to the generation that blazed the trail for the later rhymes of metal. They’re loaded with raw attitude, and because of that vibe they often recall Motorhead, even though musically they’re not the least bit similar. Perhaps because of Dolan’s stage poses, with the mic turned downward on top of everything, like Lemmy. The band didn’t skimp on energy. That evening it slapped the crowd around with Venom classics. It was definitely hard to follow the show from up close, because of the booze-fueled heads creating a real beer skating rink as they crashed into one another. With the exception of four »Ave Satanas« songs, namely the opening Metal We Bleed, War, Time To Die and Forged In Hell, the band whipped the crowd with a phalanx of Venom classics: Rip Ride, Live Like An Angel (Die Like A Devil), The Seven Gates Of Hell, don’t Burn The Witch, Warhead, Lady Lust, Witching Hour, and when the long-awaited Black Metal rang out, you knew the show was tipping into its closing peak, crowned one after another by Bloodlust, In League With Satan and the only one missed up to that point, Countless Bathory of course. In every respect another crazy performance. Mantas excellent on guitar, over the years he’s developed into a superb guitarist and not just a muscleman, Dolan, as always excellent on vocals and piercing on bass, and the new drummer Kling fit in great alongside them. The trio remains razor-sharp and dangerously jagged. And so was the show. In keeping with the character and lineup of the band, which we must not confuse with Cronos’s version.
After the Michael Schenker Fest show ended, the action moved to the hall. There, Vision Of Atlantis played last, symphonic power metallers from Austria, who brought a multi-piece orchestra with them to Balingen just for this special occasion, hauled a pile of pyrotechnics onto the stage and so put together a real concert ceremony. The purpose? Recording a DVD. That’s what you get when you combine Nightwish with myths of Atlantis. There’s only one original member left in the lineup today, drummer Thomas Caser, but the band definitely took off in 2013, with the arrival of the charismatic French vocalist, or mezzo-soprano, Clémentine Delauney, who since last year has been joined in the lineup by male vocalist Michele Guaitolija. The quintet is rounded out by bassist Herbert Glos and guitarist Christian Douscha, who joined the band the year before last. The revamped Vision Of Atlantis really put on an excellent show in Balingen, thinking of every last detail. A very well-rehearsed performance with no room for mistakes, and arrangements that already go hand in hand with orchestral elements got that dot on the “i” live, with an orchestra accompanying the band. The band also presented two brand-new songs from the upcoming album »Wanderers*, A Journey to Remember and Heroes of the Dawn, which were joined by older ones, Return, The Deep & the Dark, New Dawn, Book of Nature, The Last Home, Memento and Return to Lemuria. In every respect the band’s arrival in Balingen with an orchestra is one of the highlights of its career. They crowned their set with great pedantry and a committed performance.
So the first day was wrapped up. The second followed, with Steel Panther as the headliners! But more on that in the next review!
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
