Location: Graz / Stadthalle / Austria
Date: 18.11.2013
When I first heard about the Volbeat tour with Iced Earth as the support act, I figured it had to be a mistake. Iced Earth are veterans, after all, with roots going back to the mid-eighties, a huge fan base and a discography nobody would be ashamed of. But Volbeat, with just over a decade of history and only five albums, are a true phenomenon, and right now they’re so hot that even metal elders like Iced Earth have to bow to them. Whatever the running order, a top-notch night was in the cards, one that wouldn’t be forgotten any time soon.
Traffic jams and the crowds around the venue pointed to a big turnout, and by the time Volbeat hit the stage the main hall was properly packed; a worn-out soul could only find a bit of breathing room along the sides. The audience was a sight in itself: a few bikers and old rockers (both guys and gals), a few metalheads (easy to spot by their Iced Earth shirts), and the remaining three quarters looked like they averaged about sixteen springs and couldn’t care less about any rock or, heaven forbid, metal image. It honestly felt like we’d walked into a high-school party with live music and no rules. That was pretty obvious, since the Austrians clearly don’t understand the “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 nearly frozen ground (ironic, right?) while helplessly and involuntarily checking out the contents of their stomach. Whether the organizers saw this coming, I don’t know, but I’ve never seen this many security guards, firefighters and medics at any concert, not even at a festival. When I got to the lobby, a good chunk of the merchandise 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 of mine described them as “an oompah-style punk rock mix 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 from 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 support acts before them, a sound problem showed up from the very first bars of Plagues. The guitar bass melted into the drums in an indistinct rumble, the guitar solo was barely audible, and Stu struggled to push his vocals through all the noise. Only Schaffer’s rhythm seemed to be 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 superb job as usual. Dette on drums, compared to Saini at Metaldays, nailed it. Alongside two new heavy hitters, the Americans also introduced the ballad If I Could See You, which continues their ballad tradition and will undoubtedly become one of the band’s most requested “slowies”. The apathetic underage crowd had no idea who or what was playing on stage, and just stared in amazement at what is probably one of the best heavy metal bands in the world right now. Stu still convinces with his voice as well as his role as frontman, and he’s been a more than worthy replacement for the beloved Barlow. But 45 minutes was definitely too short, and the few dozen Iced Earth fans in attendance took comfort only in 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 break to get the stage ready 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 served in Volbeat cups. When the lights went out, a guy with a banjo in his hand and a hat on his head strode out in front of the curtain and started playing a melody on that signature twang of the American Wild West, which doubled as the intro to the show. And it kicked off massively, because at the end of the intro the curtain dropped to the stage with a burst of pyro, and the mighty lightshow topped off the surge of euphoria that swept the whole hall and didn’t let up for almost two full hours. The hybrid of rock’n’roll and heavy metal the Danes play is obviously just the right dose of freshness to pull listeners into the genre en masse, and we saw that in Graz too. A crowd of several thousand heads literally ate out of the guys’ hands. Since most songs are rock’n’roll-short, the setlist covered the band’s entire catalog, covers included. The stage set looked like a scene from the Wild West, with the drum fortress Fort Griffin in the center, and there was no shortage of a graveyard with tombstones for the characters from the songs on the latest album, and of course a gallows; Poultsen even clumsily tore off the arm of the hanging poor soul, and the bassist later used the empty sleeve to wipe his forehead. It’d be hard to single anyone out on stage, since everyone was giving it their all, but I still have to mention Rob Caggiano. The ex-Anthrax guitarist brought a fresh wind into the band, which was more than obvious on the album already, and even more so on stage. All that touring mileage shows, and he talks to the crowd with ease like he’s the frontman, while the solos of the older songs turn into something 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 definitely one of their biggest hits, Sad Man’s Tongue, which is dedicated to Johnny Cash. As an intro they played Cash’s evergreen Ring of Fire, where Poultsen let the crowd sing the chorus, and then they rolled into their own song. Truly incredible atmosphere, and it carried on in the same vein with pyro that neither In Flames nor Rammstein would be ashamed of. There was also no shortage of crowd surfing, moshing and annoying beer-cup throwing, and one of the crowd surfers was a guy in a wheelchair. Before 16 Dollars the singer asked the guys to put the girls on their shoulders, but the response among the teens wasn’t exactly huge – after all, not many of them were able to hold a girl up for more than a few minutes. Shortly before the end of the main set, they were joined on stage by Rob’s brother, as Poultsen called him, Jon Schaffer – the joke came from the fact that both are long-haired, bearded guitarists 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 opened 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 pyro again – this time wings rose from behind the stage, with a skull sporting an Elvis hairdo on them, and when they smashed into Caroline Leaving, the lower part of the structure started to burn, and there was fire everywhere else on stage too. 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 for heavy metal as well as for the good old days of rock’n’roll and pin-up girls that night.
author: Sebastijan Videc
photos: Jerneja Jerak
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
