Location: Balingen / Messegelände / Germany
Date: Thursday, July 15, 2010
Performers:
10:00 – 10:40 THE NEW BLACK
10:50 — 11:30 ENFORCER
11:40 — 12:30 GRAND MAGUS
12:40 — 13:30 FORBIDDEN
13:40 — 14:30
SABATON 14:40 — 15:30
LOUDNESS 15:45 — 16:40
ANVIL 16:55 — 17:55
JON OLIVA’S PAIN 18:10 — 19:20
DORO 19:20 – 20:20
DARKANE (indoor) 19:40 — 20:50
KROKUS 20:50 — 22:00
ARTILLERY (indoor)
21:20 — 23:00 HAMMERFALL
23:00 — 00:30 DARK TRANQUILLITY (indoor)
The stormy warm-up night was behind us, with Saxon, Demon and Blitzkrieg on the bill, true treats for every fan of the classic metal sound handed to the world by the N.W.O.B.H.M. And so the first day of the 15th Bang Your Head!!! festival rolled around. I was deep in the struggle to catch my breath under the ice-cold shower of the VIP campsite right next to the festival when, at 10:00 sharp, the alternative crew The New Black started making a racket on the festival stage. These Germans, who somehow mixed elements of metal with the twisted moves of a fashionably trendy groove sound tagged “alternative”, played guinea pigs and confirmed that the festival stage was ready for any challenge. Through the fast-moving, melodically catchy Everlasting, then Welcome To Point Black, More Than A Man and Ballad Of Broken Angels, the guys successfully played the part of the band that opens a festival. By the sound of it, a confident performance backed by quality sound, led by a manly, mid-range alternative vocal that would easily feel at home in “grunge” waters. All good for the band, but I still think bands within such genre frameworks have no business at a festival of the Bang Your Head!!! caliber. Their music is simply meant for the teenage girls who frequent the MTV-style menu of assorted Euro festivals like Nova Rock or FreQuency.
ENFORCER: 10:50 – 11:30
Things then got seriously ripe and serious when the young old-school N.W.O.B.H.M. revivalists Enforcer from Sweden stepped onto the stage. Only at that moment did Bang Your Head!!! actually wake up to its mission. The young Swedish metal hopefuls released their second studio album, “Diamonds”, this May. Midnight Vice, which opens with an old-school “prelude” in the vein of U.F.O. classic Doctor Doctor, immediately showed what kind of dough Enforcer are made of. That Scandinavia is a mecca of fantastic musicians who have no shortage of talent or hunger to prove themselves is nothing new. In Enforcer the metal world has yet another brilliant addition. They revive the mission of the old-school British bands of the first half of the eighties. In other words, something we’ve momentarily forgotten amid the overwhelming flood of extreme bands in metal in 2010. And that’s a good thing, and very much welcome.
Tight playing, riffs decked out in harmonies led by thirds, constant riff-twitching, active playing and running around the stage, shoulder-to-shoulder headbanging inherited from Judas Priest, and of course Spandex everywhere, pulled firmly tight around the crotch! Even the haircuts were cut in proper retro metal-veteran style. The brilliant tightness and, for such young years in the game, the confident command of a huge stage brought the first of the many nice surprises still hiding in this event right at the start of the festival!
GRAND MAGUS 11:40 – 12:30
Next to take the stage were representatives of the Scandinavian metal school, the Swedes Grand Magus. Their approach is the total opposite of the lively character of their predecessors on stage, since the trio from Stockholm bets on the depressive magic of stoner metal. Grand Magus played representative songs from their last three albums, while the older material from their first two studio releases has evidently been struck from their live repertoire by 2010. Opener Kingslayer served up double bass pedal and a consequently faster rhythm, moving away from the notion of traditional doom metal and comparisons to their famous countrymen Candlemass. The Grand Magus formula is simple, since having just one guitar leaves them little room to maneuver, yet they skillfully fill out the whole sound picture. Heavy metal riffs with a hint of blues melody are seasoned with a mid-tempo rhythm section, and the vocals of the band’s leader, Janne “JB” Christoffersson, who wore a Rainbow shirt at the show, sit perfectly on top of that foundation, his vocal color made for the melancholy sound of Grand Magus. Occasional hard rock riffs and backing vocals (for example in Hammer Of The North), which for a moment pull even toward harmonic melody, unusual for the genre, are the traits that set the Swedes apart from the generic quality of some other stoner metal acts. With no chatter between songs, the Swedes charged through their repertoire and wrapped up with the assault The Shadow Knows, and just like that their time ran out (too) fast. Grand Magus showed themselves in a good light, and with a quality performance they surely grabbed the attention of every fan of dirty heavy metal.
FORBIDDEN: 12:40 – 13:30:
The varied lineup continued with Bay Area thrash metal veterans Forbidden. They first played here two years ago, in 2008, the year of their reunion. During this rebirth of these thrash metal greats, the seeds of a fifth studio album were planted, and the band went through yet another lineup change: Glenn Alvelais was replaced by guitarist Steve Smyth, who came to Forbidden from Nevermore and has also worked with another set of Bay Area scene titans, Testament.
When you’ve got albums like “Forbidden Evil” and “Twisted Into Form” in your pocket, there’s no point saving ammo, right? The quintet, who sweated buckets in the unbearable midday heat, kicked off with Infinite (“Twisted Into Form”) and stayed with that album for the first three songs. Is there anything better than watching the fanatical work of both guitarists, Locicero and Smyth, tearing along their fretboards at supernatural speed, smoking from the whole array of smashed tonalities and the wildest soloing combos? If there’s one thing we can truly revel in when it comes to Forbidden, it’s the guitar solos (“Good morning!” to fans of Heathen and Testament). Russ Anderson, who probably suffered in the sun more than anyone else in the crew, didn’t use the “cat walk” even once this time, and more or less rocked back and forth in the shade for 50 minutes on the main stage, wearing sunglasses. Being a redhead, he surely knows it’s not great for him to expose himself to the midday sun. Russ sang with confidence, not as powerfully as you’d expect, but perfectly satisfactorily.
Heads were getting properly torn off, but there were fewer thrashers in front of the stage. This year BYH!!! didn’t offer as strong a thrash metal harvest as last year. Forbidden certainly didn’t skip a tribute to Ronnie James Dio. They tackled the phenomenal Black Sabbath classic Children Of The Sea. Smyth and Locicero swapped guitars beforehand and squeezed a detonating, destructive sound out of them in the riff, reviving in the best possible way the sonic signature of the “riff master” Iommi. Forbidden closed their set in high style with Chalice Of Blood, which drew the most noise back from the crowd. In one of the pauses Anderson pointed out that the band had just signed a deal with Nuclear Blast Records for their fifth studio album, and Forbidden also unveiled a brand-new song, Adapt Or Die, which by the sound of it undoubtedly earned its place in the repertoire. That song is also a very promising preview of the new album, which, if it develops in the direction of Adapt Or Die, will surely be one of the highlights of thrash metal releases.
SABATON: 13.40 – 14.30:
“Sabaton in Every Village” could be the slogan for the Swedish “steelmakers” from 2005 to today! These power metallers, who chase popularity among metalheads through war-themed tomfoolery, are incredibly successful at a time when the world is anything but friendly to power metal! Sabaton formed right at the turn of the millennium! That’s just right to have tasted the cherry on top of the whipped cream of the fruit sundae called the “power metal revival”. Their stubbornness has certainly paid off. There’s hardly any point wasting words on how popular their music has become in metal circles. Just remember the last tour, when Sabaton opened for HammerFall and dangerously challenged them with their confidence every night (in the supporting role they’d been given).
By then the band had gathered by far the biggest crowd in front of the stage, going wild in the heat with them. Sabaton used the big stage in every way. The sextet, whose stage kinetics come overwhelmingly from singer Joakim Broden, a little human tank in his gear, sporting a hilariously fun combo of Top Gun Ray-Bans and a Native American mohawk, also hauled real pyrotechnics onto the stage.
Through the anthemic tunes of Cliffs Of Gallipoli, Primo Victoria and Screaming Eagles, the guys carried their devoted fans on wings, the same fans who later that first day formed by far the longest line, waiting feverishly for the band’s autographs. Also worth mentioning is the soccer game Joakim played with fans using an inflatable ball. Creatively probably the least interesting band of the festival, and also in terms of mileage on the clock (interestingly, that goes for the day’s headliners HammerFall too), but however you slice it, the energy was positive and the show was great fun and a joy, where the guys from Falun once again reaped high sympathy from the crowd. And from fans of all age brackets, from true metal “newbies” to those graying with maturity, the metal gurus. Sabaton crowned their intense and more than successful set in Balingen with the expected anthem Metal Machine / Metal Crüe!
LOUDNESS: 14.40 – 15.30
If someone had told me I’d see Loudness with my own eyes in this life and, on top of that, taste them with my ears at the same time, I’d have thought they were a complete lunatic. And it’s incredible how the world turns. Loudness ended up being the band that made this year’s Bang Your Head!!! festival all the more attractive to me. Only a handful of festival appearances in Europe for Loudness, and the first of them took place right in Balingen.
Loudness today are actually in the lineup that recorded all the major albums of the eighties, with the exception of the drummer position. In that spot, Akira Takasaki (guitar), Minoru Niihara (vocals) and Masayoshi Namashita (bass) brought in Masayuki Suzuki after their original drummer Munetaka Higuchi died of liver cirrhosis last year.
Even though the density of hair per square centimeter of scalp is lower now, no longer allowing the big teased hairdos with which our Loudness boys vehemently brought girls to their knees all through the eighties, and the “gym jogging meets baseball outfit” (that goes for Yamashito and Takasaki) has replaced the old Spandex, lipstick and all that chain-laden kitsch, Loudness came to Balingen to prove that their potency and noisiness haven’t left them yet! Loudness!!! Niihara, who put on just jeans and a hat, kept his remarkable range. A throaty high vocal! Just like in the best of times! And in Balingen he didn’t let it slip at a single point.
So? Loudness couldn’t have played a better hand. They played practically the whole set from albums of the eighties with Niihara on vocals. That is, their golden and most fruitful period, by far the most revered among those in the know. A melodic hard rock school that at times, with its reborn riff stance, shamelessly dabbles in the gains of the traditional school of heavy metal, conjured up, through one-of-a-kind classics like Crazy Nights, Crazy Doctor, Esper, Heavy Chains, Let It Go, S.D.I. and of course the closing “bomb” Loudness from the studio debut “The Birthday Eve” (1981), a Loudness appearance as one of the most magnificent performances of the festival’s first day.
And the presence on stage? Takasaki is insanely wild! Even though he’s a fairly static guitarist who rarely takes a step or two from his spot, his fingers go berserk on the guitar. He uses only three fingers, and solos with them at incredible speed and precision while keeping amazing control over what he’s doing. Case in point: the white-hot instrumental middle section of S.D.I., where Takasaki runs a proper little school of virtuoso tricks in coaxing out the wildest, most unimaginable guitar acrobatics. A real little guitar wizard, who crowns the high spice of his solos with a brilliant use of the tremolo! Loudness remain a name worth every sin. They also slipped in the one and only “Mike Vescera era” song, In The Mirror. Guys pushing the age of Abraham thus laid out a real paradise for all the old-school nostalgics, of whom there’s of course never a shortage at BYH!!! Hats off! A school of Japanese perfection, which evidently, in its indestructible construction, can’t fail or rust! If only they could find the time and money for a European tour of their own! One more thing. Niihara didn’t hide an injury to his right leg as he moved around the stage. I don’t know whether it’s permanent damage or not, let’s hope everything with the singer will be fine as soon as possible.
ANVIL 15:45 – 16:40
Ready for a dose of good old metal from when the genre was still in diapers? Here come Anvil! Anvil’s set was one of the more interesting offerings of this year’s Bang Your Head!!! festival. The Canadian trio played early in the afternoon, roughly in the middle of the overall lineup, but had metal’s history unfolded differently, Anvil could easily have played last, as the day’s headliners, a spot that would have gone to, say, Slayer, had the festival hosted them. This very subject, how the tide of history unjustly washed Anvil up somewhere on the far edge of metal’s family tree, is the theme of the documentary “Anvil! The Story of Anvil,” released a good year ago, which (at least for a while) put the Canadians back on the map on a somewhat bigger scene. I’m convinced the touching story of a once very influential band touches every viewer, so every visitor who had already seen that documentary surely headed to the front of the stage at that hour as a show of support.
The Canadian trio consists of two original members, both active since 1978, vocalist/guitarist Steve “Lips” Kudlow and drummer Robb “Geza” Reiner, with the lineup rounded out by grim-faced bassist Glenn Gyorffy, who’s been around for a decade and a half. The show revolves around Lips, the central figure of the Anvil story. The cheerful, smiling guitarist is in charge of keeping contact with the crowd and of the banter, and he remains the target of all eyes even during the songs themselves, since constant soloing is an integral and recognizable part of their music. The man shows off his fast fingers the whole time, which makes the show attractive but also costs it some punch, even though punch is exactly the point of Anvil’s essence and their trademark. Most of the set dates from the first half of the eighties, and those present were treated to Winged Assassins, 666 and Mothro, among others, indispensable classics where a speed metal tempo meets the hefty riffs of dirty rock’n’roll. A departure from the standard sound came with a song from a newer album, Thumb Hang, which Lips dedicated in his intro to the immortal Dio, since Black Sabbath’s “Heaven & Hell” (1980) was supposedly the main inspiration for that goodie with its distinctly slow, doomy melody. After they played their most recognizable song, Metal On Metal, it was clear that the interesting encounter with one of the first acts in the history of metal from across the pond was over.
JON OLIVA’S PAIN 16:55 – 17:55
After the primal Anvil rush, it was time for melody. After last year’s visit to the BYH!!! warm-up night, this time the master of blending melodic approaches with heavy metal, Jon Oliva, was a guest of the main stage. The former Savatage leader released a fourth studio album with the band early this year, “F estival”, which he’s presenting live this summer at a few European dates. Insofar as he puts it in the set at all, that is, since we know that Savatage classics have had the starring role at Jon Oliva’s Pain shows ever since the band’s inception. It was no different this time.
The get-together was opened by the first song of the aforementioned current album “Festival”, Lies, and the follow-up, the “Handful of Rain” classic Chance, drew the first wave of enthusiasm from the Savatage fans, who always make up the vast majority of the crowd at Oliva’s shows. Jon is in good vocal form, and his sharp shrieks straight from the throat can still raise the hairs on your neck in Sirens! Oliva spends most of the time sprawled in a chair beside the piano at center stage, and in moments when he wasn’t coaxing sounds from it he occasionally strolled to the edge of the stage. Only then could you see the mighty (to put it mildly) frame of his body, which has been spreading in every direction since the tragic death of his brother Criss Oliva in 1993 and which just doesn’t seem to end. Just like Grand Magus that morning, Jon also wore a shirt in memory of Dio, with whom he was friends and collaborated for many years. Believe was played with a dedication to Dio, so the Dio classic Rainbow in the Dark was a surprise, though, truth be told, only within the hour of stage time the five on stage were allotted. There was little time in the repertoire for the band’s own material: besides the opening song, only Death Rides a Black Horse and Festival made the menu. The bottom line of the show points to conclusions we already know: the unique chemistry of Savatage tunes always meets a warm reception, which Jon Oliva with his charismatic vocals only charges with even more energy, while the other four, despite a professional approach and a delivery worthy of a big stage, are left with only crumbs.
So once again we can ask: When the hell are we going to get a Savatage reunion?
DORO 18:10 – 19:20
Doro Pesch is probably the best-known woman in the world of metal, where she’s been present for almost three decades. She certainly doesn’t lack toughness. She began her career with German heavy metallers Warlock, and at the end of the eighties went solo, still reaping the successes of that path. Over the years Doro has won over fans whose proverbial loyalty proved one of the key factors at this festival, since the faithful Germans backed their idol in great numbers. In general the German crowd is known for unconditionally following homegrown acts at events like this, so the crush at the site, which could be compared to the one during the headliners HammerFall a few hours later, is far from a surprise.
Her Excellency, as Warlock fans would call Doro, remains a live experience that every heavy metal gourmet will enjoy. Exceptional stage presence, a charismatic personality and, last but not least, looks are the magnets Doro counts on. She’s well aware of her femininity, so she loves to play that attribute up and make German metalheads with “Bundesliga” hairdos and tons of patches on their backs drool. Clad in skin-tight leather, Doro posed the whole time at the end of the “cat walk”, just a meter from the crowd, and during instrumental parts ran over to members of the backing crew and posed with them too. Doro simply knows how, and in this she’s a champion. As expected, the backbone of the set was a string of evergreen Warlock hits, to which she added her own Running From the Devil, Burn It Up or Always Live To Win, to name only the most famous. The heavy metal queen herself joined the caravan of Dio imitators by playing Egypt (The Chains Are On), though she deserves more praise for the choice than for the performance! Worth singling out is drummer Johnny Dee, who pounds his artillery with military precision and nicely switches between single and double bass pedal, bringing more kinetics to the songs. Despite all the praise, it’s annoying that the setlist is practically the same as at last year’s Wacken Rocks South festival (report here), with the chorus of the Warlock classic All We Are dragged out endlessly, and at times downright over-the-top flattery of the audience between songs.
KROKUS 19:40 – 20:50
Meanwhile the indoor shows had already begun, a novelty in this year’s Bang Your Head offering. Both evenings, three bands played in the hall, so the lineup was quantitatively the strongest so far. First up indoors were Swedish death/thrash metallers Darkane, but I decided without a shred of hesitation to stay in front of the main stage, where Krokus were playing, the fathers of Swiss hard rock and one of the main reasons I went to the German festival. Krokus had their golden years in the first half of the eighties, and today they’re doing everything they can to win back popularity, but hard rock has been in decline for quite a while. They recently put out a fresh album, Hoodoo, and with this above-average release in their pocket they’re now touring Europe.
ARTILLERY: 20.50 – 22.00
The veterans showed they’re not to be messed with! They were among the few representatives of the more traditional hard rock tradition at the festival, so the duty to follow the show from the first breath to the last was all the greater. Opener Long Sticks Goes Boom immediately hinted at the kind of sweat-soaked road we’d be on for the next hour and a bit. Concise, punchy AC/DC-type riffs, occasionally featuring slide technique, from the Von Arb – Kohler guitar duo, with a touch less bluesy mischief and a flirtation with a harder, heavy metal sound, have been constants of Krokus’s music-making ever since they set out at the end of the seventies. Besides their own songs from all creative periods of the band, the Swiss played a nice number of covers, starting with American Woman, through the eternal classic Born To Be Wild, to the grand finale with the Rainbow standard Long Live Rock’n’Roll. Understandably, those songs got the loudest reception, though Krokus can generally boast solid support on German soil, which is practically a tradition for Swiss bands in Germany. The energy of the show rested on the already pretty gray-haired vocalist Marc Storace, who diligently made use of the “cat walk”, while the aforementioned guitar pair Von Arb & Kohler fired off arrows of infectious riffing, and the tight delivery was the job of Krokus’s old cats in the rhythm section, bassist Chris Von Rohr and drummer Freddie Steady, who commanded from the back and reliably steered the ship into a harbor draped in thousands of silver confetti.
Artillery are thrash metal legends. They were actually brewing it together back when it was barely showing its first outlines. Deep in the eighties. Riff-oriented, fast tempo changes, several tempos combined within one song! Technically surely no easy bite! In their career they’ve released some excellent albums, but somehow never managed to break through among the more notable names of the scene at the time. Longer hiatuses followed, until the legendary Danes got back together and in 2009 released an excellent studio album called “When Death Comes”, by the way only their sixth overall. The guys played it generously in Balingen, just as they did on their visit to Ljubljana in September 2009. Friendly-looking gentlemen who give the impression that nothing could pull them out of their armchairs while reading the daily paper in the afternoon carry a completely different character inside. Peter Thorslund, with the look of a kindly uncle, bears an incredible resemblance to No Means No drummer John Wright.
The boxy floor plan of the Volksbank hall dispelled all fears of a distorted sound picture. No. Artillery presented their music with excellent sound support, where absolutely every element of their venomously furious thrash metal content could be heard clearly. The core of the band is three original riders, brothers Morten (bass) and Michael Stützer (guitar) and Carsten Nielsen (drums), plus longtime member and guitarist Peter Thorslund and newcomer on vocals Nico Adamsen. The latter was of course the biggest mystery on stage. With his chameleon-like character, coaxing out melodic, clean passages as well as delivering aggressively extreme forms of guttural roaring that demanded a lot of breath and facial contortions (especially puffing out his cheeks), while dizzyingly chasing even the highest sequences, young Nico more than justified his position as Artillery frontman.
He topped off his charismatic figure with a military helmet and glasses, which would put him among the biggest zealots of the Sodom catalog, and he confidently led the band through a good hour of available time. The band, which besides the new numbers Rise Above it All, When Death Comes, Upon My Cross I Crawl, The End and 10.000 Devils didn’t forget to fire off some classic marches (among them By Inheritance, Terror Squad, Khomaniac, The Almighty), decided to dedicate a most interesting Black Sabbath cover to Ronnie. Computer God (“Dehumanizer”, 1992) ended up in the repertoire. I have to remark, though, that this move wasn’t the smartest, since it split the show in two. Up to that song, the band’s assault was almost flawless in unleashing extreme energy! The Sabbath classic unintentionally calmed things down, and the band was then short on minutes to carry the end of the show in an energetic flux that would reach the explosive, highly vibrant level of uncompromising punch of the opening part. The band is extremely tight, and during the show you never felt they missed a note or tripped up in the rhythmic base of their stage message. Artillery are thus a unit you absolutely must see in 2010 whenever they’re passing near your neck of the woods.
HAMMERFALL: 21.20 – 23.00
The Lord works in mysterious ways! Or so they say. Still, some moves bring to mind that saying from the first sentence. HammerFall, main headliners of Bang Your Head!!! festival. Nice one. Where do the doubts come from now? HammerFall are constantly on tour and active in releasing studio albums, so the live stages of Europe are always full of them, and so are the CD players. Evidently it just so happened that this summer there was no suitably big band, say one that started its career at the turn of the seventies into the eighties, looking for gigs at Europe’s summer festivals. For a band of the Iron Maiden caliber, Bang Your Head!!! is simply too small. “No” to Motorhead too, “no” to Accept as well, and (luckily) “no” to Manowar (if I may be a little mean, Sabaton were already the top of the heap, heh heh…)! Anyway, the decision was made and HammerFall arrived on stage at exactly the appointed hour.
They kicked off the show under the banner of their new studio release, or rather I’d say their current studio release, “No Sacrifice, No Victory” (2009), with which we welcomed them last April in Maribor, Slovenia, too. HammerFall are a quintet of excellent musicians, seasoned old foxes. Lately they’ve been strengthened by the out-of-the-ordinary guitar virtuoso Pontus Norgren, who previously played in The Poodles and held, among other things, the post of guitar tech for Y. J. Malmsteen. The original “Glory To The Brave” bassist, the diminutive Fredrik Larsson, returned to the lineup. Give these guys a big stage and you can be sure you’ll get more than a generous helping of the HammerFall song roulette into your carefree “mug”, one you won’t recover from for quite a while. So let “power metal” rule the stage!
The first horsemen of the “Euro power metal revival” surprised us soon after the start of the show when, after a long, long time, they brought back into the setlist the opening track from the studio debut “Glory To The Brave” (1996), called The Dragon Lies Bleeding. The performance of that song was also one of the most interesting moments of their set. HammerFall always shine in stage performance, in how the quintet moves, takes up positions on stage and uses the stage space. The bigger it is, the more HammerFall spread out on it. That’s how the guys keep the crowd in check so that it joins in with them even more eagerly. Cans headbanged wildly on stage during instrumental passages, Dronjak and Norgren repeatedly stood side by side shoulder to shoulder playing harmonies in thirds, and Larsson didn’t skip out on that either. On stage HammerFall had an additional “improvised” stage, which they freely ran along to Johansson’s drums and back, and they also used their stage activity by having the guitarists repeatedly sprint all the way to the far left and right edges of the festival stage.
Cans is an exceptional frontman who knows exactly what to say in the breaks to keep the crowd close. His banter isn’t pretentious or showy, but always has the right amount of humor and interesting tidbits. Among them this time was that HammerFall had already played Bang Your Head!!! in 1997. Back then it was still held indoors, in the town of Tübingen. The then-promising “greenhorns” HammerFall opened the festival itself (the main headliners of the evening, on a bill of seven acts, were the Germans Gamma Ray).
HammerFall drew between 8,500 and 9,000 people in front of the stage, and the fan pit area showed by far the most devotion to the band during the show. The Swedes of course thought of a generous dose of pyro effects too, with both fire (detonations) and the crackle of rocket sparks, and the stage was repeatedly wrapped in a proper curtain of smoke. The band’s performance deserves top marks, both for the sound and for the high spirits the guys brought to life. Only Joacim had some annoying trouble with his wireless mic, right at the start during Punish And Enslave. The worry that a band as experienced as HammerFall wouldn’t be up to a big stage turned out to be sheer nonsense. In the second encore the guys played the Rainbow song Man On The Silver Mountain, and joining the band on stage as a special guest for the occasion was none other than Dark Tranquillity singer Mikael Stanne. And not without reason. He was, after all, the original HammerFall singer. This way Stanne, with his sharp, lower-pitched vocals, could already warm up his vocal cords before Dark Tranquillity’s set, which followed right after the HammerFall show in the Volksbank Messe hall.
DARK TRANQUILLITY 23:00 – 00:30 (indoor)
Barely ten minutes had passed since vocalist Mikael Stanne’s surprise jump onto the main stage when the Swedes Dark Tranquillity, with At the Point of Ignition, already set off on a ninety-minute journey through their studio discography, with an emphasis on the album “We Are the Void”, released in February. The only truly still-active representatives of the famous Gothenburg school of melodic death metal, the one that put Gothenburg on the world metal map, threw down the gauntlet with catchy songs to a party-hungry crowd with a taste for more aggressive rhythms. Dark Tranquillity found their recognizability in the keyboard accompaniment of Martin Brändström, whose presence throughout a song can be hugely appealing for all fans of hunting for melody in the more extreme metal genres, and his melodies often play the lead role in song intros and outros. Recommended even for those who usually steer clear of melodeath sounds! The band found itself superbly on the indoor stage, since without a doubt the energy of a band used to club shows would have evaporated into the stars on the main stage, and the cherry on top was the sound from the mixing desk, which took good care of the keyboard-guitar symbiosis so important in the world of melodic genres. Charismatic Stanne once again proved his versatility, with transitions from deep growl to clean vocal lines causing him not the slightest trouble. The fans surely got their money’s worth, although, truth be told, given the Swedes’ reputation I expected a bigger crowd in front of the stage. The reason is probably that Bang Your Head!!! is aimed primarily at heavy metal followers, so Dark Tranquillity ended up at the very top of extremity in the whole lineup and consequently drew less interest from the audience than they would have at some of the other festivals.
Author: Urban Bolta (Grand Magus, Anvil, Jon Oliva’s Pain, Doro, Krokus, Dark Tranquillity)
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik (intro, Enforcer, Forbidden, Sabaton, Loudness, Artillery, HammerFall)
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
ENFORCER setlist:
1. Midnight Vice
2. Mistress from Hell
3. On The Loose
4. Katana
5. Roll The Dice
6. Diamonds
7. Scream of the Savage
8. Walk With Me
9. Take Me to Hell
10. Evil Attacker
GRAND MAGUS setlist:
1. Kingslayer
2. Like The Oar Strikes The Water
3. Silver Into Steel
4. At Midnight They’ll Get Wise
5. Wolf’s Return
6. I, The Jury
7. Hammer Of The North
8. Iron Will
9. The Shadow Knows
FORBIDDEN setlist:
1. Infinite
2. R.I.P.
3. Step By Step
4. Through The Eyes of Glass
5. Adapt or Die
6. Children of the Sea
7. Chalice Of Blood
SABATON setlist:
1. Ghost Division
2. Panzer Battalion
3. Coat of Arms
4. Saboteurs
5. Cliffs Of Gallipoli
6. The Price Of A Mile
7. Screaming Eagles
—encore—
8. The Art Of War
9. Primo Victoria
10. Metal Machine / Metal Crüe
LOUDNESS setlist:
1. Crazy Nights
2. Crazy Doctor
3. Esper
4. Heavy Chains
5. In the Mirror
6. Let It Go
7. S.D.I.
8. Loudness
ANVIL setlist:
1. March of the Crabs
2. 666
3. School Love
4. Winged Assassins
5. This Is Thirteen
6. Mothra
7. Heaven And Hell / Thumb Hang
8. White Rhino
9. Metal on Metal
JON OLIVA’S PAIN setlist:
1. Lies
2. Chance
3. Jesus Saves
4. Sirens
5. The Dungeons Are Calling
6. Death Rides a Black Horse
7. Edge of Thorns
8. Gutter Ballet
9. Believe
10. Festival
11. Rainbow in the Dark
12. Hall of the Mountain King
DORO setlist:
1. You’re My Family
2. I Rule the Ruins
3. Earthshaker Rock
4. Running From the Devil
5. Burning The Witches
6. Egypt (The Chains Are On)
7. Für Immer
8. Burn It Up
9. Celebrate
10. Metal Racer
11. Always Live To Win
12. Breaking The Law
13. All We Are
KROKUS setlist:
1. Long Stick Goes Boom
2. American Woman
3. Rock’n’Roll Handshake
4. Tokyo Nights
5. Fire
6. Burning Bones
7. Screaming In The Night
8. Easy Rocker
9. Bedside Radio
10. Heatstrokes
—encore—
11. Hoodoo Woman
12. Born To Be Wild
13. Long Live Rock’n’Roll
HAMMERFALL setlist:
1. Punish And Enslave
2. The Dragon Lies Bleeding
3. Crimson Thunder
4. Hallowed Be My Name
5. Renegade
6. Last Man Standing
7. Blood Bound
8. Heeding The Call
9. Rebel Inside
10. Any Means Necessary
11. Stronger Than All
12. Riders Of The Storm
—encore I.—
13. Secrets
14. Let The Hammer Fall
—encore II.—
15. Man On The Silver Mountain
16. Hearts On Fire
DARK TRANQUILLITY setlist:
1. At The Point Of Ignition
2. The Fatalist
3. Focus Shift
4. The Wonders At Your Feet
5. Final Resistance
6. Misery’s Crown
7. Punish My Heaven
8. Iridium
9. Shadow In Our Blood
10. The Lesser Faith
11. Dream Oblivion
12. Lethe
13. Lost To Apathy
14. ThereIn
15. The Grandest Accusation
16. Terminus (Where Death Is Most Alive)
