Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Štuk / Maribor / Slovenia
Concert date: 02/14/2009
Attendance: 600
Ticket price: €23.00
Turisas and Dragonforce, a downright winning combo in 2009 teamed up for a tour of Europe, are two bands that have gotten deep under the skin of fairy-tale and fantasy fans. Their most loyal followers are mostly younger listeners who, unlike the generations that grew up reading fables and legends by the crackling hearth of grandma’s parlor back in the day, get their fix of this kind of opiate through the virtual world of computer games.
Maribor’s Štuk, not long ago an important addition for Slovenia when it comes to beefing up the quality concert offer, and one that enriches the scene in Slovenian Styria too, was nicely packed by 8:30 PM, when Finnish Viking metallers Turisas marched onto the stage. The girls and boys in the front row let out screams of near-hysteria when their heroes showed up: Mathias Nygård (vocals), Jussi Wickström (guitar), Olli Vänskä (violin), Netta Skog (accordion), Hannes Horma (bass guitar) and Tude Lehtonen (drums). Turisas are one of the younger bands, a gorgeous addition to the metal circus. Their musical mix is first and foremost a genre variant of power metal with its tentacles reaching out to fold in folk and symphonic elements. Since singer Warlord Nygård, for all his stature and voice, isn’t quite all-powerful, Turisas had all the keyboard and symphonic lines, which the man plays in the studio, on tape. Accordionist Netta Skog, who already helped the band on the 2007 European tour, earned a permanent spot in the lineup after Janne Mäkinen’s mysterious disappearance in Amsterdam a year ago. As for the rest? Animal-skinning fans, faces smeared with blood-red paint, authentic Viking getups made of hides, leather and armor… and on top of that, great metal marching. Anthemic tunes with a victorious rhythmic baton, great folk interplay of harmonic melodizing from the violin and accordion. Fast, tight, compact, hugely energetic and under the superb command of singer Warlord, Turisas spread their wrath and bloodlust as metal marches cut briskly through fields of won battles, like As Torches Rise, To Holmgard And Beyond, The Messenger, In The Court Of Jarisleif, Sahti-Waari and the by now thoroughly beloved cover of seventies disco stars Boney M, titled Rasputin.
The band has stepped up a serious notch in performance compared to their show at Graz’s Orpheum a year and a half ago, when they were opening for Iced Earth across Europe. You could feel far more ease and cohesion in their energetic tightness, and above all that self-confidence and belief in their own music was crowned with a convincing stage act. Thanks to this convincing stage commitment, the whole thing comes off as if Turisas were really living the true “battle metal” principle. Let’s hope only on stage, of course. Warlord, with the raspy voice of some Stallone’s Rocky with a busted nose, sent the crowd into ecstasy especially after praising the local beer, saying they always get stocked with only below-average Heineken and similar brews, next to which even Dutch beer is better. Ah, those crazy Vikings! Grab yourself some fun with them the moment the chance comes up. Their principle of fun fills the concertgoer up completely! Turisas are well on their way to earning “headliner” status on the next tour. All they need for that now is to put out a third studio album as soon as possible! And for a quick reference point: if anyone happened to see Alestorm’s show in front of Grave Digger, I can say Turisas will send them back to the kindergarten nursery with one hand tied behind their back.
Dragonforce are a band that draws inspiration from the typical building blocks of power metal. To cover up all the genericness, though, they take their own road. That is playing subordinated to the maximum speed the human body can still produce. We waited for Dragonforce a bit longer than I expected. At around 10:20 PM the revelry with the band finally began. Dragonforce are a sextet. The drums are pushed to the right side, on the left there’s room for the keyboards, and the front strike line is formed by a foursome of the singer, the bassist and both guitarists. Since the band is known for extreme schoolbook drilling and guitar solos in equal duels between the two guitarists that run two minutes or more, Dragonforce had a small extra stage built on the stage. It’s pushed up to the front edge, and every member who finds himself in a leading position within a song is welcome on it. Of course this additional stage also serves as a springboard from which the members push off sharply into the air and pull off all sorts of stage shenanigans, in favor of acrobatics that further spice up and liven the band’s stage performance.
It’s interesting that Dragonforce are British. Evidently old-fashioned Great Britain has only now discovered that power metal can be marketed too. In a maximally overdecorated and over-artsy getup, sure, but still. ZP Theart on vocals was barely audible right at the start of the show, but they cranked him up to the desired level during the opening Heores Of Our Time. The most interesting part of the lineup, the guitar duo of Herman Li and Sam Totman, has an incredible amount of explosiveness. It’s constant running around the stage, guitars brandished in various poses, the solos are extreme, there’s loads of regripping over the neck, ultrasonic tapping, with the obligatory implementation of devilish hanging off the tremolos. In short, a one-of-a-kind stage circus of who’s gonna be faster, pardon me. Who’s gonna be the fastest. It’s fascinating how the guys manage to remember all of this in their heads, since endless galaxies of extremely fast note sequences fly out of the instruments. At moments the band gets so aggressive in performance that the instruments in the sound picture, especially in the parts where the solos of both guitars and keyboards intertwine, actually start to “fight” each other.
The band enjoys great popularity in Slovenia too, and the crowd’s participation with the band was downright fanatical at moments. Practically the entire hall, truly jam-packed, sang along with the band through the verses and obediently responded to ZP Theart’s commands. The band, which presented its fourth studio album “Ultra Beatdown” (2008) on this tour, opened its show accordingly with Heoroes Of Our Time, and confirmed its power, confidence and popularity with The Last Journey Home, another song from the current album, with which it closed the regular part of the concert. Usually concert closers go to older songs.
Throughout the whole concert we were accompanied by extreme melodiousness, not to say outright symphonic pretentiousness. Of course, part of the deliberate overdoing it with all this displayed pomp and stage theater is the mandatory trademark of this genre, which Brits like Dragonforce have down pat. They are masters of their craft and this time too they convinced with their power in everything. Their principle, which they like to call “nintendo metal”, or in other words, a great musical backdrop for “Pack-Man”, worked superbly. Of course it didn’t go without moments of missed notes, because the sight on stage is unbelievable when Dragonforce show up on it. Firing from every available weapon. No matter the cost. As long as everything is subordinated to extreme speed, to extreme soloing force. Even the required correct playing of the tonalities of the songs’ motifs can occasionally be sacrificed. And it was. Fortunately, though, these misfires, in the grand total, numbered no more than the fingers of one hand. This extreme gymnastics naturally takes its toll, so Dragonforce also included a keyboard solo in the repertoire, where Vadim Puzhanov entertained the hall on stage, looking like a ragged Justin Hawkins (The Darkness) after a failed chemistry experiment, while the others gathered new strength backstage. The keyboard spot was also spiced up by guest Netta Skog from Turisas, who showed up on stage once more with her accordion. Properly civilized, of course, without any pagan Viking outbursts.
The revelry with Dragonforce lasted an hour and three quarters, and the band, encore included, when people totally lost it at the hits Valley Of The Damned and Through The Fire And The Flames, where ZP Theart split the crowd into a left and right half and coaxed separate return noise out of each side of the hall, wrapped up a repertoire of just eleven songs at a high level, extremely charged with energetic voltage, from which the youngsters under the stage had a hard time waking up and returning to reality.
All in all, I can confirm that the concert was excellently pulled off on every level (sound, stage lighting, the liveliness of the bands), and the very good turnout of an engaged crowd contributed its share, adding extra bonus points as a guarantee of the magical atmosphere of this special metal ceremony. With the devilish Dragonforce especially, what added to the exceptional overall atmosphere of this concert spectacle was the fact that Turisas, with their thrilling performance, challenged Dragonforce head-on, and so, as the opening act, in many ways came across as completely equal to the main attraction of the night and, in the unity of focus on their own musical vision, even more convincing.
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist
TURISAS: 1.Victoriae & Triumphi Dominus 2.As Torches Rise 3.A Portage To The Unknown 4.To Holmgard And Beyond 5.The Messenger 6.One More 7.In The Court Of Jarisleif 8.The Dnieper Rapids 9.Sahti-Waari 10.Rasputin 11.Battle Metal DRAGONFORCE: 1.Heroes Of Our Time 2.Operation Ground And Pound 3.Reasons To Live 4.Fury Of The Storm 5.The Warrior Inside 6.Keyboard Solo 7.Revolution Deathsquad 8.Soldiers Of The Wasteland 9.The Last Journey Home —encore— 10.Valley Of The Damned 11.Through The Fire And The Flames
Photo gallery
