Author: Sebastijan Videc
Photos: Jerneja Jerak
Location: Stadthalle, Graz, Austria
Concert date: November 18, 2013
Ticket price: 42.50€
When I first heard about the Volbeat tour with Iced Earth as the opening act, I figured it had to be a mistake. Iced Earth are veterans, after all, with beginnings reaching back to the mid-eighties, a huge fan base and a discography nobody would be ashamed of. But Volbeat, with barely a decade behind them and just five albums, are a true phenomenon, and so hot right now that even metal old-timers like Iced Earth have to tip their hats. Whatever the running order, it promised to be a top-notch night of fun that wouldn’t be forgotten any time soon.
Traffic jams and the crowds around the venue promised a big turnout, and by the time Volbeat hit the stage the big hall was properly packed; a random worn-out soul could only find a bit of breathing room along the sides. The crowd itself was the most interesting sight: a few bikers and old rockers (guys and gals), a few metalheads (easy to spot by their Iced Earth shirts), and the other three quarters looked like they averaged sixteen springs and couldn’t care less about any rocker or metal image. It honestly felt like we’d walked into a high school party with live music and no rules – which was pretty obvious, since the Austrians clearly don’t understand »Bitte nicht rauchen« signs, and I’ve never seen so much drunk youth in one place – the end of the show looked like a battlefield, with some kid lying in almost every corner, motor functions gone, surrendering to the embrace of the almost icy ground (ironic, right?) and helplessly, involuntarily checking the contents of their stomach. Whether the organizers expected this, I don’t know, but I’ve never seen that many security guards, firefighters and medics at any concert, not even at a festival. When I got into the lobby, a good chunk of the merch was already sold out, and the last bars of opening act Teenage Bottlerocket were drifting out of the hall. I hadn’t seen their set announced anywhere, but a buddy described them as »a bouncy punk rock mash-up of old Green Day and Ramones«.
At quarter past eight the lights went out and a curtain with the artwork of the upcoming Iced Earth album Plagues of Babylon loomed in front of us, while the first bars of the long intro to the title track thundered out of the speakers. The new record is coming out soon, so it was no surprise that the band used the Volbeat shows to promote it and the tour that goes with it. Despite their status, though, just like with so many opening acts before them, the sound turned out to be a problem from the very first bars of Plagues. The guitar lows melted together with the drums into an indistinct roar, the guitar solo was barely audible, and Stu struggled to push his vocals through all that racket. It seemed like only Schaffer’s rhythm was working the way it should. The situation did improve over time, but it left a bitter aftertaste in the relatively short set the band had available. The guys did a stellar job as usual. Dette on drums did a fine job, especially compared to Saini at Metaldays. Besides two new heavy hitters, the Americans played the ballad If I Could See You, which continues their ballad tradition and will no doubt become one of the band’s most wanted slow numbers. The apathetic, underage crowd had no idea who or what was playing on stage, and just watched in amazement as what is probably one of the best heavy metal bands in the world played. Stu still convinces with his voice as well as his role as frontman, and he’s been a more than decent replacement for the much-loved Barlow. But 45 minutes was definitely too short, and the few dozen fans of the band present were comforted only by the fact that the band returns to tour in just two months, with a stop in Ljubljana as well.
The crew needed a good half hour of downtime to set up the stage for the stars of the night, working behind a giant curtain showing the head of a cowboy outlaw with a bandana in Austrian colors tied over his mouth. The band’s image is really worked out down to the last detail, and all the drinks in the lobby were even poured into Volbeat glasses. When the lights went out, a man with a banjo in his hand and a hat on his head walked out in front of the curtain and, on that typical twang of the American Wild West, started playing a melody that doubled as the intro to the show. And it kicked off massively, since at the end of the intro the curtain dropped to the stage with pyrotechnics, while the mighty light show topped off the rush of euphoria that swept the entire hall and didn’t let up until the end of the nearly two-hour set. The hybrid of rock’n’roll and heavy metal that the Danes play is obviously just the right dose of freshness to pull listeners en masse into the genre, which we witnessed in Graz too. A crowd of several thousand literally ate out of the guys’ hands. Since most of the songs are rock’n’roll-short, the selection spanned the band’s entire catalog, covers included. The stage set looked like a scene from the Wild West, with the drummer’s fortress Fort Griffin in the center, and there was no shortage of a graveyard with tombstones for the characters in songs from the latest album, and of course a gallows; Poultsen even clumsily tore off the arm of the hanged man, and the bassist later used the empty sleeve to wipe his forehead. It would be hard to single anyone out on stage, since everyone was successfully trying to squeeze the maximum out of the show, but I still have to mention Rob Caggiano. The ex-Anthrax man brought a fresh breeze into the band, which was more than obvious on the album already, and even more so on stage. His touring mileage shows, and he communicates with the crowd with ease as if he were the frontman, while the solos of older songs have become completely new, more complex but still ear-friendly enough that the metal doesn’t overpower the r’n’r. One of the highlights of the night was surely one of their biggest hits, Sad Man’s Tongue, which is dedicated to Johnny Cash. For the intro they played Cash’s evergreen Ring of Fire, with Poultsen letting the crowd sing the chorus, and then they rolled into their own song. An unbelievable atmosphere, which carried on in the same vein with pyrotechnics that neither In Flames nor Rammstein would be ashamed of. Also worth mentioning is the fair amount of crowd surfing, moshing and annoying throwing of full beer cups around the audience, and among the crowd surfers was even a guy in a wheelchair. Before 16 Dollars the singer urged the guys to lift the girls onto their shoulders, but the response among the teenagers wasn’t exactly big – after all, there weren’t many who could hold a girl on their shoulders for a few minutes. Shortly before the end of the main set, Rob’s brother, as Poultsen dubbed him, Jon Schaffer, joined them on stage – the joke came from the fact that both are long-haired guitarists with scarred faces and both wore a black cap at the show. Together they played Pool of Booze, Booze, Booza. Schaffer and Poultsen became close friends on the American tour, when Volbeat played as the opening act for Iced Earth, and that’s where the idea came from for Poultsen to appear on one of the Iced Earth tracks, and now the story is repeating itself in reverse. The encore kicked off with pyrotechnics again – this time wings rose up from behind the stage, with a skull sporting an Elvis hairdo on them, and when they hit Caroline Leaving, the lower part of the structure began to burn, and there was no shortage of fire elsewhere on stage either. For some the show was over too soon, for others it dragged on too long, but the fact is that several thousand people satisfied their hunger that night for both heavy metal and the days of rock’n’roll and pin-up girls.
Setlist
Iced Earth
1. Plagues of Babylon
2. Dystopia
3. Dark Saga
4. My Own Savior
5. If I Could See You
6. V
7. Peacemaker
8. Watching Over Me
9. Iced Earth
Volbeat
1. Doc Holiday
2. Hallelujah Goat
3. Radio Girl
4. The Mirror And The Ripper
5. The Nameless One
6. Guitar Gangsters & Cadillac Blood
7. Sad Man’s Tongue
8. Lola Montez
9. Heaven Nor Hell
10. 16 Dollars
11. Dead But Rising
12. The Garden’s Tale
13. Pearl Hart
14. A Moment Forever
15. Fallen
16. My Body
17. Pool of Booze, Booze, Booza
18. I Only Want To Be With You
19. The Hangman’s Body Count
—encore—
20. Caroline’s Leaving
21. Maybellene I Hofteholder
22. Cape Of Our Hero
23. Still Counting
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