Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Ljubljana / Cvetličarna (VPK Mediapark) / Slovenia
Concert date: January 19, 2004
Attendance: 700
Ticket price: 4,500.00 SIT
Right, enough of that whining! Let’s pump our veins full of pure hellish energy, the rawest, angriest metal growling and grinding from Grave Digger!
Undercode were first on stage. The Croatians visited us once before, in November, I think in 2002, as support for Paul Di’Anno & Killers. That was the night I got a headache at a gig that nearly drove me nuts, for the first and last time in my life. And not because of them, but because of the energy flow of the hall at Metelkova and those awful pillars. Undercode came out at full steam. The drummer stood out, that little devil was panting like a locomotive, and he especially made his mark in the second-to-last number, with military-march rhythms (sadly I don’t know the title), where he conjured up a proper fantastikus on the double bass pedal while rattling the skins of his drums so that it echoed like an Indian war march. The guys were a spot-on choice to open. They mixed hints of modern thrash into the elements of classic heavy metal. A bold, uncompromising, punchy attitude, and they’re developing a sound that’s their own. Hot Croatian temperament. No brakes, no holding back. Just power smack in the middle of your crazy forehead! The sound was excellent. The guys came across as correct and professional. Tuned in, relaxed and totally wild. Naturally the crowd really jumped for the first time to Grinder, a Judas Priest classic. The band closed the set with a Manowar cover called Gods Made Heavy Metal, which properly woke the hall up and got the metal noggins swaying, although personally I’d have preferred to hear even more of their original repertoire live. An excellent, energy-packed, heartfelt and spontaneous performance.
Magus Noctum canceled their show because of the drummer’s illness.
So Requiem marched on stage after Undercode. Apparently they were celebrating ten years of existence. Red-hot hard rock. Of course, by far the best of everyone on stage was singer Sergej. Not so much for his stage presence as for the incredible vocal acrobatics he’s capable of, which bring huge dynamics, juiciness and tasteful contrast to Requiem’s music. The high passages were sung clean and at full power. I don’t know the song titles, or Requiem’s back catalog, but what I heard leans heavily toward Rainbow. One number in particular carried lines similar to Stargazer, another even to Black Sabbath of their later era (somewhere between the albums “Headless Cross” 1989 and “Cross Purposes” 1994), with a simple but scorching riff, topped with melodic vocals and contrasting keyboard layers. I’m ashamed to say it, but I have to admit I follow the Slovenian scene almost not at all. The sound was fantastic, and so was the atmosphere. Seeing the twins who once played for Lene Kosti, and Milan Krušič, the singer and driving force of Lene Kosti, watching his old partners from the audience, I couldn’t help thinking about yet another reunion of that legendary metal band that we all miss so much. That evening was really something special. I met lots of people I hadn’t seen in ages. We were all in great spirits. A gig in Slovenia is a completely different story from Vienna, Munich or Graz. Home turf, relaxed, friendly… Okay, the organizer didn’t exactly provide a farmhouse stove, žganci and sauerkraut, but mostly positive vibes radiated through the dark rooms.
And then Grave Digger. For the average visitor and fan who found themselves in the VPK hall that night with nothing but a ticket and a stamp on their wrist, this was undoubtedly a metal dream. Through the sounds of the recorded intro, H.P. Katzenburg appeared on stage, dressed and made up as the final dispenser of justice – death, Grave Digger’s mascot. He took his position behind the keyboards to the right of the drums. The fog thickened properly on stage, and four more silhouettes joined in. The crowd exploded, and Grave Digger hit us with Rheingold. Tight from the very first note, sonically flawless. Grave Digger are the band that found the perfect formula of cohesion, where absolutely every member of the group expresses themselves equally in the music. Except for the keyboards, of course, which mostly serve as decoration. The combination of Jens Becker’s cranked-up, fat bass, Stefan Arnold’s filigree yet utterly devastating torpedoing on the double bass pedal, the crushing mass of riffs from machine-gun guitarist Manni Schmidt (apparently Michael Schenker is his idol), and the indispensable, unique, recognizable-from-a-mile-away, raw, enraged vocals of Chris Boltendhal worked impulsively, magically tight, perfect. They delivered fantastic sound through the entire show. The crowd went even crazier when Grave Digger continued with the notorious The Dark Of The Sun and, via Son Of Evil, moved into one of the show’s first peaks, the surprise The Battle Of Bannockburn.
The setlist was excellent and balanced, with songs mixed in contrast, so the dynamics kept rolling in waves through the whole show, partly thanks to that. No ballads. Roughly 40% of the entire repertoire was material from the newest album “Rheingold” (2003) – 6 songs, then three songs each from “The Grave Digger” (2001), “Excalibur” (1999) and “Knights Of The Cross” (1998), two from “Tunes Of War” (1996), and one each from “The Reaper” (1993), “Heart Of Darkness” (1995) and “Heavy Metal Breakdown” (1984). They’d also written the song Yesterday from the debut “Heavy Metal Breakdown” on the setlist, but they didn’t play it. Personally I dug their songs of horror, terror and death, like The Grave Dancer with its excellent “in three-four” punchy main riff, the mid-tempo, highly atmospheric The House, and the wrecking balls Son Of Evil and The Grave Digger. They really floored me with the fantastic epic, a lost song from “Tunes Of War” that conceptually links the two albums “Knights Of The Cross” and “Tunes Of War”, called The Battle Of Banockburn, which tells of Scottish king Robert the Bruce’s victory over a numerically far superior English enemy. Red-hot riffing and a full-on, balls-out blast. I loved watching Manni bathe in his own sweat. It’s unbelievable how much sonic space his guitar covers, even during solos. You can’t even tell when the guy stops riffing, the band’s sound stays steely and possessed through his solos. The crowd was loudly involved the whole time and radiated incredible energy. The interaction between the band and the audience was fantastic. About 600 people (VPK holds 1,000 human heads in total) jumped around stoutly, tumbled about and gave themselves over to the pleasures of the legendary German band’s metal sound. On top of that they carefreely indulged in the joys of spilled beer, so the security guys had quite a bit of work, hauling out of the hall quite a few dead-drunk metal wrecks who simply couldn’t bear the burden of alcohol derivatives any longer. That alone makes being part of a metal gig in Slovenia a special experience. The share of staggering people, who had ever more trouble taming the disobedience of the static and dynamic stabilizers of their mechanoreceptor organs, grew in the hall by the minute.
Chris and company couldn’t get over how devoted the Slovenian fans were, or how well they knew the band’s lyrics. Whenever Chris asked the crowd for a response, a thunderous roar swept the hall and shook it to its foundations. Chris deliberately left some verses to the crowd, like the chorus of Lionheart, the closing line “Murder, murder!” in Knights Of The Cross, or later, in the encore, the verses of the grandiose anthem Rebellion (The Clans Are Marching). There wasn’t a moment when the band faltered even for a second on stage, because that night they rode on the wings of a devoted crowd that is truly starving for events like this here. The band gave the energy back to the crowd. They came out at full force, with the strict intention of staging proper metal devastation and lifting the roof off VPK. Chris looked like the devil himself on stage, snarling and glaring from under his brow with real menace, like a seasoned sinner, whenever it was called for. His performance was excellent. Manni Schmidt, the Indian, slaved away like an animal and, as the carrier of most of the melodies, had fantastic support in the Becker/Arnold rhythm section. Working even harder, drummer Stefan kept artfully twirling his drumsticks between songs, and I especially liked his superb weaving of the double bass pedal into the transitions, among which the one right before the chorus of Excalibur gets me every single time. Jens Becker was without doubt the surprise of the evening out of the whole foursome. The usually shy, withdrawn artist, who modestly keeps to the background on stage and skillfully reins in his emotions, let himself go with the energy this time. He spontaneously gave himself over to the magic of the gig, kept moving from one end of the stage to the other, egged on the crowd and his comrades on stage, and even flashed a few smiles at the audience, which is a real rarity for him. He found himself in the center of attention for the first time as The Battle Of Bannockburn wound down, with the excellent motif he wrote for that song, and the second time of course at the grandiose close of the regular set in the epic poem Twilight Of The Gods, when he and Manni staged an extraordinary fade out. That Jens is a master of the riff he already showed with Running Wild. Remember his excellent, highly atmospheric instrumentals Over The Rainbow (“Blazon Stone”, 1991) and Highland Glory (“Death Or Glory”, 1989). Grave Digger attacked the stage with everything they had, especially in Under My Flag, The Grave Digger, Knights Of The Cross, Morgane Le Fay, Maidens Of War and The Grave Dancer, all of which were head-rippers. The intensity didn’t let up at a single point, and for those of you who survived this atomic assault, if you didn’t get a direct shot in the vein this time, you surely never will.
After the regular set came the first encore. The hit Rebellion (The Clans Are Marching). The crowd went nuts with excitement, and the hall came alive through the singing of every single verse. Another explosion, and the metal heads were spinning again. The second encore began with Chris announcing they’d play a song that’s especially close to their hearts and that they all love playing, called The Roundtable. A mid-tempo song with a killer riff, it was personally without a doubt one of the peaks of the show for me, but the absolute peak was the finale. Heavy Metal Breakdown, madness and racing, the crowd singing along with the band in sync the whole way, Chris demanding energy in the pause and getting it through the loud, wild cheering of the audience, Grave Digger hitting the main motif of the song one last time, at once the most daring and the most devastating. The get-together was winding down, the guys staged a tight, masterful closing fade out that echoed through the hall, which was flooded by a wave of enthusiasm from the crowd. Grave Digger thanked the crowd, and I somehow got the feeling that we Slovenians had convinced them what a crazy and loyal audience we are, and the guys didn’t hide their satisfaction. Once again my neck and vocal cords were swollen for quite a while.
Setlist
1. The Ring (intro)
2. Rheingold
3. The Dark Of The Sun
4. Son Of Evil
5. The Battle Of Bannockburn
6. Valhalla
7. Under My Flag
8. The Grave Dancer
9. Maidens Of War
10. The House
11. Lionheart
12. Excalibur
13. Sword
14. The Grave Digger
15. Knights Of The Cross
16. Morgane Le Fay
17. Twilight Of The Gods
—first encore—
18. Rebellion (The Clans Are Marching)
—second encore—
19. The Roundtable
20. Heavy Metal Breakdown
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