Performers: Manowar, Arch Enemy, Kamelot, Holy Hell, Virgin Steele
Location: Tolmin / Sotočje / Slovenia
Date: July 11, 2010
What can you even say when the World Cup final and Magic Circle Festival collide – basically an extension of Tolmin’s annual Metal Camp? Who’s gonna win? The Spanish? The Dutch? Or Manowar? Manowar? Yep. The metal Conans Manowar. In Slovenia. After wrapping up this year’s winter run, the “Death To Infidels Tour”, they naturally wanted some summer shows too. And this year’s Magic Circle Festival landed right in Tolmin. Awesome. Especially when they announce a few power metal acts as openers that you don’t exactly see every day. That goes above all for Virgin Steele, some of the finest songwriters in the game and also the most overlooked “savage power” metallers. Add the symphonic melodic perfectionists Kamelot, and spice it all up with the top-notch mix of extreme, melodic and punchy that the Swedes Arch Enemy deliver.
This report will be a bit shorter, since I only made it down to the front of the stage 20 minutes before five in the afternoon, when Virgin Steele took the stage. So I wasn’t destined to catch Crosswind from Greece or the Germans Metalforce. Virgin Steele haven’t done a proper European tour since 2001, when we could catch them in Austria as the opener on HammerFall’s “Renegade” tour. Virgin Steele have obviously realized that touring is a total loss for them because of the commercial failure, so between 2002 and 2010 they only popped up in Europe now and then. At festivals. Here and there. Even the 2006 album “Visions Of Eden” went completely unnoticed, and Virgin Steele didn’t even go on tour to promote it. It doesn’t add up. The fan base is too small. Savatage even broke up over exactly that.
When Virgin Steele kicked off with Immortal I Stand, a few puzzles popped up. Is that guitarist on stage Edward Pursino, or isn’t it? It is, it is. If nothing else, that distinctive nose gives him away. Pursino has shaved off his mustache and beard and sports a “nice young lad” haircut. Years just go by quietly, and the forehead keeps growing and growing. But the black Gibson SG still hasn’t left him. Besides the devilish DeFeis, the stage also held drummer Frank Gilchreist and guitarist Josh Block (the latter played bass on the 2001 European tour). Did I forget to list someone? Yes. The bassist. Virgin Steele play live without a bassist. They don’t need one in the studio either. It’s a rare case, but one we know even from the progressive great-grandfathers Van Der Graaf Generator. On top of all that, DeFeis decided to be just the singer, and Virgin Steele played the whole set with the help of a keyboard backing track. In a way it makes sense that for just four, maybe five shows in Europe it’s not practical to haul all the gear along, but still. It’s strange watching Virgin Steele play to a backing track. You can console yourself that the track is, one way or another, the “studio David DeFeis”, but you’d have to be at least a little drunk to keep your indifference about it.
In one hour, Virgin Steele did show that they haven’t forgotten how to serve up the goods on stage, and with a classic setlist that also included Wine Of Violence, Symphony Of Steel, Kingdom Of The Fearless, Noble Savage, Defiance and, as expected, the closing Burning Of Rome (Cry For Pompeii), they made some 400 shirtless metalheads happy! They were fighting off the terrible afternoon heat. Toward the end of the show the sky turned dangerously cloudy and you could smell a proper storm coming. But only smell it.
David fired up the crowd good and proper a few times, with the charisma and stage presence that power metal “à la Virgin Steele” demands – a band with a unique artistic figure on planet Earth – but above all his excellent performance confirmed that the singer has kept his chameleon voice completely intact. If we weren’t convinced before, we were by the perfect delivery of the heavy chorus in Noble Savage. And yet, damn it. Who’s going to play keyboards, if not DeFeis? So we were missing something. And yes. Those of us who saw the band on stage in 2001 know it’s capable of playing without a backing track. Precisely because of that keyboard shortfall, this was the kind of Virgin Steele gig that’s ripe for sinking into oblivion as soon as possible.
The dominance of American bands continued when Manowar’s protégés Holyhell took the stage. The American power metallers, who build many of their marches on the rhythmic foundations of their “steroid-built” role models, and add mild gothic touches via the vocals of singer Maria Breon, came across as much paler and more stereotypical. And that’s without a keyboard backing track! Holyhell should definitely have played before Virgin Steele on the festival bill. Monotonous little power metal songs were dosed with a generous helping of posing, in which you’d have a hard time finding anyone that day who could match the band’s guitarist Joe Stump. A few of the guitarist’s solo escapades quickly made it clear that this is a neo-classically trained musician, mainly inspired by Y. J. Malmsteen. The band also put a cover of Dio’s Holy Diver in its repertoire. Nice that they thank the late vocal eminence this way, but the rhythm section tripped up a few times during the execution. Maria’s singing somehow wasn’t up to the level of the original either.
Kamelot can boast a string of excellent CDs that are the very definition of a great blend of power metal catchiness, anthemic hooks and epic pomp. In short, richly arranged songs with authoritative, melodically “spot-on” polished choruses. The band, as the only one at the festival, also brought plenty of pyrotechnics. This American band from Florida surprises with a European sound. So its output is, of course, much more successful in Europe than in the US. They opened the show with Rule The World from the current studio album “Ghost Opera”, and backed up its promotion with the title track.
Despite the good mood of the crowd below the stage and a hefty dose of stage theater, the impression of the show was spoiled by Roy Khan’s vocals, which couldn’t quite keep up with some sequences in the choruses, so he had to adapt his vocals and stay in the lower registers. Kamelot otherwise pulled off their set with total confidence, and among other things added The Great Pandemonium, Center Of The Universe and The Haunting (Somewhere In Time) to the setlist, closing the show with March Of Mephisto.
Arch Enemy were the ugly duckling of the festival! Let’s call them melodic death metallers. The embodiment of an excellent balance of extreme and melodic, tuned to perfection, tight as hell, a band where the brilliance of each member of the quintet amplifies the others to the max. And this time, even Tolmin’s Magic Circle Festival couldn’t escape that phenomenon. It’s hardly difficult when you’ve got Carcass man Michael Amott in the band, his younger brother Christopher, Mercyful Fate bassist Sharlee D’Angelo, the fantastic Daniel Erlandsson on drums and, on top of that, a wild filly who “barks out” all the growl vocals – the bestial Angela Gossow. They say poison comes in small bottles. In Angela’s case that’s definitely true – at least as far as her stage presence goes.
The band opened their solid, coherent set with The Immortal! The stage in the sign of strobe flashes! Sound excellent. Up to this point the bands really hadn’t served up anything special in terms of sound, but with Arch Enemy both guitars were clearly audible all show long. All the solos. Left guitar and right guitar. All the harmonies in thirds. Through the guitar work, the bass line forced its way vehemently through with a metallic rumble, and Erlandsson amazed yet again with his drumming technique. It was a pleasure to watch him in the solo spot. Angela, dressed in military gear as always, didn’t skip her typical stage routine of whirling her hair around either! And of course the growls, reinforced at the ends of songs with echo effects – the girl held her own on stage fantastically through the whole hour. The Amott brothers once again enchanted the guitar connoisseurs with their playing, especially the precision, as embodied by the song Ravenous. The band is at the peak of its powers, and that’s reflected in the stage power of the exceptional working chemistry and bond that has grown between the musicians.
When Angela tried to challenge the crowd below the stage to start a “circle pit” during the show, she just couldn’t get it going. So she dedicated Dark Insanity to everyone who doesn’t like “moshing”. The crowd was simply made up mostly of “power” metalheads. Still, the front of the stage was already full. Definitely thanks to the Manowar fans, who wanted to lock down the best possible spot to watch the show before their heroes even hit the stage.
Like I said. Arch Enemy didn’t run into any mass craziness below the stage this time. Even so, their flawless execution strung together I Will Live Again, Revolution Begins, The Immortal, Dead Eyes See No Future and Bury Me An Angel, among others. Angela needed a few breaks between songs to catch her breath. The instrumental Snow Bound came in very handy, flowing into the end of the show, when the band hit the gas with Nemesis. Only right at the end did people below the stage really wake up, when hands finally went up en masse during We Will Rise. Arch Enemy’s show was a notch above all the other acts in quality, Manowar included. That’s indisputable. Like they’d landed from another planet. In the performance itself, the two elements – extreme, full-force aggression in the playing and an innate sense for adding tasty melodies (usually masterfully harmonized by the two guitar wizards) – were handed over with seemingly feather-light ease. With uncompromising shows like these, Arch Enemy might even earn themselves a special place in the music encyclopedia or, if you like, the textbook!
The World Cup final wrapped up at just the right time, with the Spanish destroying the Dutch three minutes before the end of the second extra-time period, heh, heh, heh… And all the football-loving metalheads finally “scraped” themselves down to the front of the stage. It’s 11 p.m. and a solemn intro chant kicks in! Flags go up. The fans go nuts. Some 4,000 of them, no more. A little for a festival and for Manowar. This time the Italian fans were the ones saving it.
The new Call To Arms hits! Looooud!!!! Too looooud!!! Can you hear it? Nope. The sound was “muddy”, with DeMaio seriously cranked up in the mix. The stage looked like a fortress at the sight of the gigantic stack of monitors “clad” in steel! As befits Manowar. Even after Hand Of Doom, it didn’t look like the sound picture would get any better. Eric Adams had his day and laid down his vocals at the required level. Even with the trademark screams, which didn’t let him down at a single point.
A Manowar show is an adventure into the thick of war. For the band and the crowd. Some will never return from this war, as the song Hand Of Doom says a bit later. Kings Of Metal gave hope that the boys wouldn’t play mostly newer songs, but the situation turned around pretty soon after it with God Or Man from the “Thunder In The Sky” (2009) EP, which is one of the successful songs and sounded hugely fiery on stage too. By that song the sound had also been fixed thoroughly, and you could tell Logan and DeMaio apart by ear. Next comes a quiet announcement of the new studio album “Hammer Of The Gods”, titled Die With Honour, which doesn’t stray in style from what we’d already heard in the setlist.
The people below the stage, spellbound, thrust their hands up over their heads in the shape of a hammer, greeting the band on stage while the flags flutter. But that was a much, much scaled-down version of the Manowar shows they know in, say, Germany. This time it was mainly the Italian fans of the band, who were swarming all over the venue, saving the situation. They also made by far the most noise during the show.
Every band member was guaranteed a solo spot too. Adams’s was especially fun, as he forced the crowd to follow some of the most impossible vocal positions and give their vocal cords and airways a rock-solid cleaning out. In one of the rare breaks reserved for theatrical speeches, DeMaio called on the people to sing a birthday toast – who’d have guessed, to the birthday boy Eric Adams and the Holyhell singer Maria Breon!
Through the newer Thunder In The Sky, Sleipnir and Loki God Of Fire, the show tips toward its end. Of course, “one-of-a-kind” theater with Joey DeMaio wasn’t missing here either. After “exuberant emotional outpourings” and “unveilings of deep insight into the main principle of life”, at the command of the chief – the dunce – come the uniform screams of “Fuck You” from the crowd, echoing across the Tolmin hills. Of course the theatrical pouring of beer over his face and maybe even into his mouth… The ballerina DeMaio even decided to show off some “manliness”, if we take that gesture as a form of “machismo”, that is.
For the encore, Manowar take on Black Sabbath’s Heaven And Hell in honor of Ronnie James Dio, where Adams comes in with the least throatiness of his whole Tolmin show. It’s played the Manowar way, and toward the end a double bass drum pedal joins in too. DeMaio, though, more than obviously missed one of the transitions…
With Black Wind, Fire And Steel, Manowar say goodbye after an hour and 45 minutes. This one classic is not enough to wash away the bitter aftertaste of ignoring their golden catalog. The band has apparently decided to play only songs written after 2000 from now on. That’s pretty sad, since the stuff from the eighties is cult, not to mention the unforgettable classic “Triumph Of The Steel” (1992). DeMaio snapping every last string on his bass amid canned thunder and lightning, is nowhere near a proper band-aid for that nagging subconscious itch telling you the whole thing adds up to one big “meh”. Still, very pretty fireworks, boys. But at the Bang Your Head!!! festival this year, they’ll be even prettier!
Let’s wrap this up like so. If you’re a Manowar fan, you have to like whatever Manowar do. So you’ve got no right to an opinion. If DeMaio and company snap and start playing trip hop tomorrow, you’re a true metalhead only if you listen to trip hop. What’s certain, though, is that a handful of a few thousand heads enjoyed themselves and partied with the band, and that the material was delivered at the required level of quality. Of course, it has to be added that the sound gets heavily manipulated throughout the show. One moment they crank DeMaio up past everything so it can even look funny, when you see the bass drowning everything out, even the vocals, while “ballerina” Joey stares off into the distance, confident and haughty…. Adams, who sang very well in Tolmin otherwise, gets a huge amount of echo effect propping up his vocals. So if you’re real fans, you’ve got to catch Manowar in Germany. Tolmin offered a pale shadow. Then again, a lot of the blame for the weaker turnout also lies with the band itself, which no longer wants to play the classic material. Still, even that is better than listening to Adams’s Nessun Dorma “recital”.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
