Author: Urban Bolta
Venue: Backstage Werk / Munich / Germany
Concert date: May 22, 2014
Attendance: 800
Ticket price: €36 (advance) / €40 (day of show)
It’s rare for two gig nights to go down in the Bavarian capital on the same evening, both worth sacrificing a slice of vacation and a few coins for, at least for us Rockline folks. But that’s exactly what happened last Thursday, when Saga and Magnum played the Munich club Circus Krone (report here), while barely a mile away, in the Backstage Werk hall, Swiss heavy rock veterans Krokus were playing too. A trio of eager Slovenian fans made the pilgrimage to the latter.
Krokus are among the finest representatives of the old European school of heavy metal, really its first continental wave, since it was Krokus who paved the way for many a successful younger band, with Gotthard at the head of the line. At the turn of the eighties Krokus simply backed up their AC/DC lingo with a thick barrage of guitars and managed to write themselves in among the giants of their place and time. On the wings of the power ballad Screaming in the Night they even conquered the American market in the mid-eighties. The success was big enough that thirty years after the golden era Krokus still fill mid-sized clubs in countries where rocker tradition is strongest. Which means you can hardly expect the Swiss veterans to ever roll any closer than Munich, so the decision was made: their show on the new tour was not to be missed.
Arriving at the scene of the crime, we were once again convinced that in Western Europe the rocker mentality doesn’t die when you step into adulthood, as is customary in our neck of the woods. The crowd was mostly gray-haired ladies and gentlemen; only about ten percent of us were people who hadn’t yet crossed the three-decade line. If back home only the likes of Deep Purple manage to lure the old farts out into the open, then the way rock culture is seen abroad is just different. Every single day.
After randomly bumping into Chris Von Rohr and Mark Kohler in the parking lot behind the hall before the show and exchanging a few words, we headed in, and at eight in the evening Backstage Werk started shaking under the weight of the opening act Crystal Ball. Those with a well-kept memory might recall that exactly ten years ago Crystal Ball played Ljubljana’s Cvetličarna as openers for Udo Dirkschneider, but of course a lot of water has flowed under the bridge since. The Swiss still follow the philosophy set in stone when the band started, walking the thin line between hard rock and heavy metal, heavy on guitar riffs and mighty choruses that can’t help but call up the Accept-style march of recent years. Overchewed song structures and sticking to the same template forever were made up for by infectious melodic vocal play which, with extra egging-on from frontman Steven Mageney, got the crowd to occasionally mumble along to the easy-to-learn choruses. For the closing number, the punchy Hellvetia, Mageney marched onto the stage with a Swiss flag in hand. Yes, one way or another the evening was marked by Switzerland’s red and white!
The clock struck quarter past nine when, after a canned intro, Krokus marched onstage and hit with the red-hot anthem Long Stick Goes Boom, a prime hymn of European Aussie rock, if that term even exists. Next came a few minutes devoted to the current album »Dirty Dynamite« with Hallelujah Rock ‘n’ Roll and Go Baby Go. With the new record Krokus stepped a bit closer to the classic blues tradition, but at their core they remain dirty and wickedly likable, just like decades ago!
With Mandy Meyer’s return to the fold, Krokus now play with three guitarists. Meyer stays fully switched on and, despite his short tenure in the band, takes on numerous solo excursions, saving the energy of his boss, the already well-worn gray-haired uncle Fernando Von Arb. Rhythm guitarist Mark Kohler stood on the left the whole time, calmly doing his job, so the stage entertainment fell on the shoulders of the aforementioned rowdy Meyer, prankster number one, bassist Chris Von Rohr, and the band’s central figure, Marc Storace. The three-guitar attack, though in places totally superfluous given Krokus’s simple rhetoric of ruffled rock’n’roll dynamite, redefined the massiveness of the guitar riff. One of the highlights of the instrumental playfulness came with the outro of Fire, where Krokus proved that the old-school UFO / Thin Lizzy harmonies are still very close to their hearts! Von Rohr spiced up the outro with a comical vocal bit, like the one Angus Young pulls off during Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, and throughout the whole show, with his grimaces and other musical extras, he was the main man for breaking up the stage monotony.
The presence of the cult record »Metal Rendez-Vous« (check out that cover, a must!) in the set was also extremely strong: Tokyo Nights, Bedside Radio and Heatstrokes squeezed shouts of approval even out of the proverbially cold German crowd. If the first part of the show lingered in the background, then with the opening guitar motif of the big hit Screaming in the Night (»Headhunter«, 1983) Von Arb showed who’s boss. The magic of the moment swept the hall, and the distance between band and audience was finally demolished. From there it only went up! Vocalist Marc Storace has a hard time defying the years, which became more and more obvious toward the end, but luckily he’s kept afloat by the fact that with their »Bon Scott« approach Krokus have beefy vocal lines written right into their DNA, which still let Storace play an active role in the screeching acrobatics, and grab listeners by the balls! The 62-year-old frontman doesn’t like to talk much, but he makes up for the seeming shyness with a charismatic personality and simple moves, so he’s certainly down-to-earth! In the home stretch Krokus hit the gas and served up a lesson in Motörhead-style rawness with the rippers Eat the Rich and the closing Headhunter, and in between they slotted in what’s probably their best song of the recent era, the charmingly explosive Hoodoo Woman.
Krokus didn’t hide their delight at the response of the packed-out (I’m not sure it was sold out too) club, and of course the sweat dripped not just on but also below the stage. Krokus stripped the magic of rock’n’roll down to its primal heavy rock sawdust with ease, so the satisfaction was complete! Even in old age they’re among the most honest storytellers of the iron cannonade among the genre’s giants, so a good hour and a half flew by in a flash, way, way too fast!
Setlist
KROKUS:
1. Long Stick Goes Boom
2. Hallelujah Rock ‘n’ Roll
3. Go Baby Go
4. American Woman
5. Tokyo nights
6. Fire
7. Rock City / Better Than Sex / Dög Song
8. Screaming in the Night
9. Hellraiser
10. Bedside Radio
11. Heatstrokes
12. Eat the Rich
13. Easy Rocker
——————-
14. Hoodoo Woman
15. Live for the Action
——————-
16. Headhunter
17. Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)
Always Look on the Bright Side of Life (outro)
CRYSTAL BALL:
1. Break of Dawn
2. Walls Fall Down
3. Dance with the Devil
4. He Came to Change the World
5. Power Pack
6. Back for Good
7. Powerflight
8. Anyone Can Be a Hero
9. Hellvetia
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