Bang Your Head!! Festival Warm-Up Goes Full N.W.O.B.H.M. Relics! (2010)

Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik

Location: Volksbank Messehalle / Balingen / Germany
Concert date: July 15, 2010
Attendance: 2
Ticket price: €25.00 (presale) / €30.00 (day of show)

Another year had rolled around, and the sacred duty known as visiting the Bang Your Head!!! festival in the German town of Balingen had to be fulfilled! This year’s festival was pushed to mid-July because of the soccer World Cup! Normally BYH!!! goes down every year on the last weekend of June. For this year’s edition, the organizers cooked up an interesting “warm-up” night dedicated to the spoils of that traditional, pioneering “New Wave Of British Heavy Metal” sound.

So the organizers lined up the bill as a tasty combo of three legendary dinosaurs, Saxon, Blitzkrieg and Demon, and added the local lads Roxxcalibur in front of them, who have a reputation as an excellent cover band. Picking Roxxcalibur turned out to be a bullseye. The band caught a layman like me off guard with a candy-store repertoire (read: setlist) that I wouldn’t have expected even in my wildest dreams.

The band is made up of proven devotees of the N.W.O.B.H.M. movement. Roxxcalibur is built from members of Viron, excellent German old-school revivalists who call their own style “new wave of German heavy metal” and, once you hear them, you realize they’re not wrong at all, plus Savage Grace, who played later on the second day of BYH!!!, and Thunder Rider. On top of that, singer Alexx Stahl also handles vocals in the Deep Purple tribute band Demon’s Eye. One look at these gentlemen’s faces and it’s easy to see these are guys raised on the legacy of a huge musical treasure chest. Superbly tight and led by the excellent Alexx, they delivered a one-of-a-kind good time, a stroll through a colorful palette of covers by bands like Cloven Hoof, Trident and JJ Powerhouse, all the way to Grim Reaper, Vardis and Witchfinder General. The guys crowned a show of great sound and execution with a tribute to Ronnie James Dio and slammed in the Black Sabbath classic Neon Knights to close it out.

Of course, my heart was pounding with far more impatience in anticipation of the real “N.W.O.B.H.M.” legends, Blitzkrieg. The band, formed in 1980 in Leicester, England, has a heavily reshuffled lineup these days. Of the original members only Brian Ross is left, who is also the singer of Satan. Today’s Blitzkrieg is built around Brian on vocals, guitarists Ken Johnson and Guy Laverick, and brothers Paul (bass) and Phil Brewis (drums), who previously played together in Disposable Heroes.

The mystical winged insect revived its mission with the fired-up The Phantom, taken from the current studio album “Theater Of The Damned” (2007). It was clear right away that Brian has kept all of his vocal abilities intact. After many years of defying the music business, his voice has stayed totally unspoiled, and he kept his power and vehemence even through the acrobatics. The charismatic, curly-haired frontman, with his confident presence, gave the band onstage a real whiff of doom, black magic and evil. Crisp, sharply pointed guitar riffs dictated an uncompromising experience with metal veterans who radiated all the stage appeal and potency. The sound was dialed in beautifully. The harmonies in thirds, as well as the guitar solos, were clear and distinct. Interestingly, the band played only two songs from the cult debut “A Time Of Changes” (1985): the devastating Pull The Trigger and the inevitable Blitzkrieg, which absolutely everyone in the hall recognized, even those who didn’t know the band well until then, since Metallica popularized the song among metal believers with their cover on the “Creeping Death” EP. Otherwise, the set was dominated by material from the current album “Theater Of The Damned”. What else is there to say except that you can’t get more old school and authentic than what we got at the Blitzkrieg show. Hats off for a perfectly served bomb, guys, and I hope your gigs become a regular thing again. And Ronnie? On this occasion he got to enjoy The Mob Rules up in heaven!

Compared to their peers Blitzkrieg, Demon are a much more established and recognizable name among the survivors of the N.W.O.B.H.M. scene, thanks to the consistency of their releases, which came one after another especially in the eighties. The band took root in the minds of people in this part of Germany especially after their show in Tübingen in 1997, where the third Bang Your Head!!! festival was once held. In Balingen they played the festival for the second time, and last time five years ago, but had to cut their set drastically because of a terrible storm. So this year they brought quite a few debts to the crowd along to Balingen on their backs. They were given an hour and ten minutes. Plenty of time, then, to prove themselves and make amends.

Demon, now a sextet where the only original member left in the lineup is singer Dave Hill, took the whole thing very seriously, and right on the dot the show opened with the recorded intro Full Moon, from the debut studio album and cult classic “Night Of A Demon” (1981). And from there? No problems for Demon. The anticipation swelled when the band burst out into the open with Night Of A Demon. By then the hall was filling up fast, and the crowd proved by singing along to the choruses that they had by no means forgotten about Demon.

Interestingly, Hill was a bit harder to hear in the mix throughout the show, but all in all the band’s sound onstage added up to a satisfying experience that demanded total surrender to the band’s classic repertoire. Demon lean a touch more on the rock pioneers of the seventies, and Hill’s voice is, after all, less obscure (or more “bright,” if you like) than Brian Ross’s in Blitzkrieg. The feeling of soaking up the energy pouring off the stage got even more intense when the band stuck with the debut and sprayed the airwaves with another classic, Into The Nightmare.

Compared to Blitzkrieg, Demon look a lot more “worn” (read: thinning on top), but all the more mustachioed for it. As for stage outfits, I wouldn’t send them anywhere but an afternoon darts tournament in some London pub, but in the end what matters most in all this is the music. And there Demon couldn’t miss with their setlist. They ramped up the atmosphere with the combined “Taking The World By The Storm” (1987) classics Blue Skies In Red Square and Commercial Dynamite, poured oil on the fire with the first single Liar, spoiled the crowd with Sign Of A Madman (“The Unexpected Guest”, 1982) and then, of course, right before the end, hit them with their most recognizable classic, Don’t Break The Circle (“The Unexpected Guest”, 1982), which drew by far the most noise out of the crowd.

Since this year’s Bang Your Head!!! festival was held in memory of Ronnie James Dio, bands worked at least one Rainbow, Black Sabbath or Dio song into their sets, or at least dedicated one of their own songs to Ronnie. Demon slammed in the Rainbow cover Starstruck. With their excellent show and a one-of-a-kind classic repertoire, they threw down a head-on challenge to the biggest surviving N.W.O.B.H.M. band on today’s club scene, and I’m talking, of course, about the headliners of the warm-up show, Saxon!

Of all three British bands on the warm-up bill, Saxon are the strongest today and by far the most popular in Germany. Simply because they keep putting out new studio albums, which they tailored completely to German tastes in the nineties. And things for Saxon are such that without the support of the German crowd, after the commercial shipwreck of “Destiny” (1986), they surely wouldn’t have survived. Given that the night was dedicated to the “New Wave Of British Heavy Metal” movement, Saxon also spat on their hands and put together a setlist made up mostly of classics from their cult albums of the first half of the eighties. That killed two birds with one stone. They shut down any chance of Demon “stealing” the show, and instantly bent the crowd to their will, so that it bleated along faithfully and went wild in front of the stage through the whole set.

I’ve been following Saxon for a long time, but out of the five shows I’ve seen in Germany, I’ve never experienced this much chaos at a gig in this part of Europe. There was shoving in the front rows and even aggressive scuffles between fans that took security several tries to break up. The helpful security guys also pulled a few people out of the crowd who “ran out of air” and collapsed in front of the stage, and, as is tradition, “fished out” the wild crowd surfers.

For this show Saxon brought the cult Dallas 1PM back into the set, which I hadn’t heard live since 2001, when I first saw the band in Vienna. They also brought the fantastic And The Bands Played On back into the setlist, which they don’t play often these days either, plus the anthem Dogs Of War (“Dogs Of War”, 1995). Even though The Eagle Has Landed made the set, the band didn’t make good on the promise that they’d come to Balingen with a lit-up steel eagle construction. They dressed the stage with a “Battalions Of Steel” backdrop, which was the bare fact of promoting the current studio album. The guys kept just two new songs in the set, and that was a very good thing.

Two thousand people raved unwaveringly that night through the phenomenal sound of the legendary band, who magnified the routine of a highly professional approach. That approach once again dictated the band’s superb tightness and well-oiled machine feel. Saxon just keep roaming from tour to tour, and that activity keeps them strong and in top form. That goes, of course, for Biff Byford’s voice too. Though the mixing desk always lends him a bit of help. The goofy vocal at the start of Crusader is one such moment, and I still wonder whether that famous whistle in Motorcycle Man is a recorded sample, or whether Biff is just always in such a good mood that he precisely whistles through his thumb and index finger every time. It sounds exactly the same, every time.

The band, carried high on the wings of the German crowd that night, crowned its brilliant stage presence in 2010 with an especially heartfelt rendition of the classic Denim And Leather, dedicated both to Ronnie James Dio and to the crowd. In terms of the magic and intensity of the band-crowd connection, the night delivered a compactness with no room for mistakes or dips in the quality of the performance. At moments the whole hall joined in the singing, faithfully waving their hands in the air on Biff’s cue. At times the scene looked like an endless sea of raised fists.

The night’s carousing was nowhere near over once Saxon said goodbye and left the stage. Over the bar counter, to the coquettishly erogenous beats of a soundtrack of genuine hedonistic vices, “bribable bunnies” in scanty outfits soon began swaying their hips. They poured whiskey straight from the bottles into the mouths of paired-up metal heads. While liquor of the alcoholic variety was being swallowed, looking was the most you were allowed to do, as some individuals later told it, who got carried away just a bit too far by the background music of the AC/DC taunter “Touch Too Much”. A one-of-a-kind night, a one-of-a-kind warm-up with one-of-a-kind music, worthy of kicking off the traditionally exhaustive lineup of the Bang Your Head!!! festival, which has now hit a rock-solid 15 years.

photos: Aleš Podbrežnik

Setlist

SAXON: 1.)Heavy Metal Thunder 2.)Dogs Of War 3.)To Hell And Back Again 4.)Live To Rock 5.)Dallas 1 PM 6.)Motorcycle Man 7.)And The Bands Played On 8.)Demon Sweeney Todd 9.)Strong Arm Of The Law 10.)The Eagle Has Landed 11.)20,000 Ft 12.)747 (Strangers In The Night) 13.)Wheels Of Steel 14.)Princess Of The Night —encore— 15.)Crusader 16.)Solid Ball Of Rock 17.)Denim And Leather DEMON: 1.) Full Moon (recorded intro) 2.)Night of the Demon 3.)Into the Nightmare 4.)Blue Skies In Red Square / Commercial Dynamite / Blue Skies In Red Square 5.)Blackheath 6.)Blackheath Intro 7.) Sign of a Madman 8.) Liar 9.) Remembrance Day 10.) Standing On The Edge 11.) Life on the Wire 12.) Don’t Break the Circle 13.) Starstruck (Rainbow cover) BLITZKRIEG: 1.) The Phantom 2.) Dark City 3.) Theatre Of The Damned 4.) Unholy Trinity 5.) My Life Is My Own 6.) Escape From The Village 7.) Pull the Trigger 8.) Tortured Souls 9.) The Mob Rules (Black Sabbath cover) 10.) Blitzkrieg ROXXCALIBUR: 1.) Running for the Line (JJ Powerhouse cover) 2.) Gates Of Gehenna (Cloven Hoof cover) 3.) Rainbow Warrior (Bleak House cover) 4.) Lady of Mars (Dark Star cover) 5.) Destiny (Trident cover) 6.) Seven Days of Splendour (Jameson Raid cover) 7.) Witchfinder General (Witchfinder General cover) 8.) See You in Hell (Grim Reaper cover) 9.) Emergency (Girlschool cover) 10.) If I Were King (Vardis cover) 11.) Neon Knights (Black Sabbath cover)

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