Location: Orzinuovi (Brescia) / Buddha / Italy
Concert date: 23.02.2008
Attendance: 2302
Ticket price: 1100
Play It Loud! Festival II. 2008, in the little town of Orzinuovi, 30 km from Brescia, headlined by a few living fossils! Impossible to resist! That goes especially for bands coming off years of inactivity and hibernation (Elixir, Cloven Hoof, Helstar, Steel Assassin, Sabotage) or ones that mostly stick to stages in the USA (Manilla Road, Helstar). When the devil has pups, things tend to go their own way and you lose control. That’s when it’s best to go with the flow and let come what may. A good chunk of people dropped out of the trip to Italy for this tempting one-day mini-festival at the last minute (blocked airways, security, etc.). They’ll be kicking themselves. But hey, there’ll be another chance! Someday. “Play It Loud festival II.” was organized by the label My Graveyard Productions, and this year too it put a strong emphasis on local bands. Those are mostly focused on gnawed-down heavy metal tradition, packed with boiling melodicity. That love of Giuseppe Verdi’s operas still courses unstoppably through the veins of Italy’s up-and-coming metal generation. This year’s festival promised a far stronger lineup, above all more interesting legendary names of the world metal scene, while still offering outstanding support to the home scene. Magic was in the air.
Luckily, a solid part of our crew rescued me from going it alone with a “sick Rok for healthy Rok” swap. Healthy Rok took charge of the concert photography and left the metal to a goat of my breed, free to melt into the magic of the music.
The Italians are incredible organizers. Hats off. More on that in the closing paragraph. Buddha Rock Cafe is the place where “Play It Loud II. 2008” went down. You’ll find it easily. As soon as you drive into the town of Orzinuovi from the direction of Brescia, you see a big sign on your right with an arrow pointing left. You have to turn at the first opportunity, right at the first turnoff, past the “Buddha Rock Cafe” sign, into the industrial zone. And the City of Sinful Pleasure won’t slip past you. Of course we were late! We arrived around 4 p.m., by which time the locals Berserker, Tarchon Fist, Frozen Tears and Alltheniko had already done their thing at the festival.
Buddha Rock Cafe holds around 1500 to 1800 people, balconies included. It’s a great venue, with a capacity that just barely reaches the edge of the club scene. One more square meter and you could already talk about a hall atmosphere. The club has a neat interior (the toilets are definitely not counted in that), made for nothing other than headbanging and surrendering to the tumult of heavy sounds. Everything was taken care of. Visitors could buy shirts of the most notorious bands, pick from a sea of patches and other metal paraphernalia and trinkets, and feast their eyes on heaps of rare CDs available for purchase… in short, a real metal celebration. The Italian crowd moved as one body. Leather, sewn-on denim jackets, army boots, white mid-high Pumas, skin-tight “carrot” jeans… That’s the stuff. And of course they were diligently pouring alcohol down their throats. That loyalty of the metal crowd to the bands, which you don’t see anywhere as intense as at moments like these, always leaves a special mark.
Well, let’s finally get to the stage.
ADRAMELCH:
Over a one-hour set, the Italian quintet strung together a mix of classic old-school material dressed in the dimension of early Queensryche in their “Warning” era, with a singer up front who deliberately imitated Geoff Tate, both in looks (a fistful of brilliantine, slicked-back hair, dark glasses) and in singing style. The guitar duo shone in the harmonies, the band was tight and fiery in execution, but the movement on stage was rather static, and therefore dull to watch. The singer would benefit from a change of look (when heading on stage), and the other members aren’t far off either. Lots of studio rehearsal obviously eats up all their time. Still, image matters just as much when you’re building your name. Technically the guys are perfectly equipped. The sound had one problem: the guitars completely drowned out the vocals, which the singer pointed out from the stage several times, wrapping his wrists around his ears just to hear himself when he hit the highest lines. Adramelch are yet another Italian band confirming the current strong renaissance of classic heavy metal in Italy, with an epic symphonic touch. A nice show.
Adramelch setlist:
1. I’ll Save The World
2. Cluny Calls
3. Zephirus
4. Broken History
5. Tides
6. Dreams
7. Was Called Empire
ELIXIR:
Legends of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal were among the attractions of this festival. Two years ago they woke up again in the land of the living! Last year’s comeback album “Mindcreeper” confirms that Elixir are still a blood-thirsty beast that won’t give up easily. The quintet rides extremely confidently, with experience, in fact very routinely. You can read on the guys’ faces how much they enjoy sharing a stage again. The singer, a man of enormous charisma, with his hairdo inadvertently reminded me of our own Marko Vuksanovič of Avtomobil, with the charm of a mature-years hair color like Saxon frontman Biff Byford’s. Classic detonators, true little heavy metal bibles, blasted the initially somewhat reserved crowd (after all, the Englishmen on stage are a slightly lesser-known name) straight into the air and into a gallop! The quintet delivered outstanding sound, a great deal of stage dynamics and fire. Elixir couldn’t care less about a double bass drum pedal. Both guitarists are equal soloists, riding each other’s harmonies in perfect sync the whole way through. The name Elixir, practically forgotten today and buried deep in dusty metal archives, came back to life. Elixir have exceptional charm. Guys! I hope you manage to put your name back on the scene with some serious tour soon.
Elixir setlist:
1. Star Of Beeshan
2. Trial By Fire
3. Don’t Trust The Preacher
4. Mindcreeper
5. Son Of Odin
6. Pandora’s Box
7. Sovereign Remedy
8. Death Toll
9. Knocking On The Gates Of Hell
10. Treachery
SABOTAGE:
The last Italian band on tonight’s bill was Sabotage. Does anyone remember Morby from Domine? We saw them on January 30, 2000, at Ljubljana’s K4, on a package with Riot, Anvil and Agent Steel. Let’s leave the days of glorious past alone. Adolfo Morviducci, as Morby is actually named, with the Sabotage crew, has been on the Italian metal scene since 1981. The lineup of Morby (Domine, ex-Labyrinth), Marco Venutelli (guitar), Henry Caroli (bass), and Dario Caroli (Bud Tribe) on drums was recently reinforced by one more guitarist (sadly I can’t dig up the name), so it works as a revived quintet again. Obviously a festival of reunions, since Sabotage have just signed with My Graveyard Production for a brand-new album and a reissue of the first two albums, “Hoka Hey” and “Behind The Lines”. For many in the hall, one of the most anticipated events of the festival. Sabotage are one of the oldest Italian metal outfits. This performance carried great symbolic weight for Italian heavy metal. It’s a legendary lineup. Yet wrapped in extremely epic melodicity, even though it draws on N.W.O.B.H.M. foundations. Morby gets better with the years. With his vocals he literally skinned the audience alive. With extraordinary fire-stoking he got the entire hall moving, both the floor and the balcony. Hands were in the air. The band put on an excellent one-hour execution of their classic material, which the locals had waited many long years to see live again. A spirited, committed performance, cut at full tilt. A solid, uniformly compact unit, the “new-old” Sabotage. The cherry on top is of course Morby’s killer operatic vocal, which stuns in the highest registers. Just how much power and melody he squeezes out when he’s at the top! In the mid to low registers he’s wicked and dark, which is simply ideal for Sabotage. A great concert! Guys, get that new record out as soon as possible!
Sabotage setlist:
1. Hot Zone
2. Mothers
3. Riding Through The Dark
4. Anguish
5. I Believe
6. Promised Land
7. Victim Of The World
8. Nightkiller
STEEL ASSASSIN:
The Americans were hot too. Their take on dirty, classically sharpened heavy metal, with worn-out, old-school elements and a darkness here and there, of course didn’t leave the crowd below the stage indifferent. Steel Assassin are legends too, with beginnings dating back to the late seventies. Sadly the band wasn’t destined to blossom. The members scraped by as musicians, working on various projects, and only in December 2007 did they put out their first official studio album, titled “War Of The Eight Saints”. Of course the atmosphere around Steel Assassin wasn’t as intense as when Sabotage played. The lineup has John Falzone on vocals, who came from Triphammer, and an excellent guitar duo of Kevin Curran / Mike Mooney, rounded out by a polished rhythm section of Phil Grasso (bass) and Greg Michalowski (drums). So the evening of quintets simply carried on. The vocals sit somewhat lower, but without trouble jumping to the highest registers too. In the higher registers the voice gained more screechy, throaty quality, with more dark tinge and a smaller dose of melody. Steel Assassin had quite a few sound problems. Of the bands we saw, they got by far the short end of the stick when it comes to sound. For the first three songs the bass cut ugly through all the other instruments, and the vocals were at times carried off or covered by the guitars. Then they fixed the bass too well, so you practically couldn’t hear it anymore. Both guitars also had a muffled, stuffy, “beaten-down” sound, and through the Flying V Gibsons the beauty of an otherwise extremely cohesive piece of work never really blossomed, which showed in the dynamics and the breathing of the sound itself. The band definitely didn’t let it bother them. They squeezed out their maximum, just like their predecessors, and just as the next acts on the festival bill would after them. Steel Assassin finally got everything under one roof and so are yet another of the big comebacks on the scene! The Boston quintet has in fact remained a big debtor, and we’ll forgive them if they spoil and pamper us with their new output as much as possible in the coming years.
Steel Assassin setlist:
1. Spartacus
2. Hawkwood
3. Curse Of The Black Prince
4. Attila The Hun
5. Sword In The Stone
6. Crusader
7. Barabbas
8. Hill Of Crosses
9. Merchants Of Force
10. Executioner
CLOVEN HOOF:
I was impatiently awaiting Cloven Hoof. Another unearthed N.W.O.B.H.M. champion. A real treasure! A quartet! Rus North (vocals), Lee Payne (bass, backing vocals), Ben Read (guitar) and Jon Brown (drums). It was incredible to see the heated heads in the front rows who knew every line of the petrified eighties classics of a band that, not long ago, was God-forsaken. There’s no better feeling than when you can handle a crowd so easily as it surrenders to you unstoppably. Cloven Hoof by no means saved their energy. Rus, as the leader and main communicator with the crowd, comes across, like his bandmates, as incredibly fresh and committed on stage. The most hyper on stage are Rus and Lee. Bassist Lee in particular radiated incredible ferocity, wildly plucking and running around the stage during the show. Maybe guitarist Ben Read wouldn’t suffer from a slightly less reserved approach. Throughout the concert he stood on one single spot and barely moved from it. No contact with the audience, which is a shame. If you’re in the guitar position in a heavy metal band, active movement is a must, and only Tony Iommi can be excused from it. Ben of course played the third harmonies through an effect and in the solos resorted to generously thickening the sound with a wah-wah pedal. The band proudly greeted the release of its new album “The Definitive Part One”, which came out only a week before this festival appearance (15.02.2008), and seasoned the setlist with new material. Cloven Hoof at the “Play It Loud II.” festival. I’m still pinching myself to check it’s real! Cloven Hoof made maximum use of their one-hour set. They delivered excellent sound, along with some phenomenal classics. An outstanding weave of punchy riff-driven rides combined with calmer epic passages. Rus’s vocal likes to skip over the mid registers. And when he leaps up into the highest, he picks up that typical “Halfordesque” screaming of the purest breed. The return of Cloven Hoof to the scene is one of the nicest pieces of news right now! Metal pioneers are rising from their graves! A shame that the announced N.W.O.B.H.M. festival in Athens had to be canceled. Confirmed to play there were Tygers of Pan Tang, Jaguar, and the heroes of “Play It Loud Festival II.” Cloven Hoof and Elixir.
Cloven Hoof setlist:
1. Inquisitor
2. Nova Battlestar
3. Astral Rider
4. Kiss Of Evil
5. Gates Of Gehena
6. King For A Day
7. Mistress Of The Forest
8. Road Of Eagles
9. Mutilator
10. Layin’ Down The Law
HELSTAR:
For classic heavy metal fans, they were probably the festival’s ugly duckling, since Helstar are the steely old-school speed metallers who tirelessly dabble in the elements of the noblest thrash pioneering and know no formulaic melodic beauty whatsoever. The band knows only one gear. The one that hasn’t been invented yet. Sixth. I was dying to finally see this phenomenal band, which wrote itself deep into the hearts of worshippers of shamelessly arrogant assault in the eighties with its four classics “Burning Star”, “Remnants Of War”, “A Distant Thunder” and “Nosferatu”, an assault only the one-of-a-kind Helstar can deliver in their ultrasonic metal rage. The band assembled in that “Remnants Of War” form: James Rivera (vocals), Larry Barragan (guitar), Rob Trevino (guitar), Jerry Abarca (bass) and Russell DeLeon (drums). Magical. The Texan boys from Houston wandered onto the stage through the intro of Ennio Morricone’s “For A Few Dollars More”, then hit the hall mercilessly and with every means available with their explosives. Last year the band released “Sins Of Pasts”, old material played completely anew. It served well as a warm-up beforehand. A useful move. Most of the material from that record was carried over live too. On top of that, “Sins From Past” already holds two brand-new Helstar songs. In Italy the band picked Tormentor for their show, which contains the typical “Nosferatu – A Distant Thunder” era elements. The guys tore it up with the classics Evil Reign, Angel Of Deathe, Tyrannicide, Dracula’s Castle, Harker’s Tale, Run With The Pack, King Is Dead, Rhapsody In Black, which flowed into the definitive Helstar classics Baptized In Blood, Burnig Star and Scorcher. Madness. The intensity was such that the hall turned into a proper mosh pit battleground, where no means of drawing blood were spared. War and total chaos! People were being torn to pieces!
Helstar looked by far the wildest on stage of all the bands. Stocky, small, almost Mexican little devils kneaded their instruments so intensely that it was only a matter of time before wood chips and sawdust started flying out of them. The Trevino/Barragan duo shone in their tightness, their remarkable awareness, and following each other. Crazy bassist Jerry Abarca burned by far the most energy on stage of all the Helstar members. He filled the whole stage. The sound was fantastic. Amid all that nobly possessed riffing, the bass guitar thumped through the sound with a toxically voluminous cut. Jerry’s double riff fifths detonated clearly too. The true personification of Helstar, the front figure, the unmistakable James Rivera, delivered his performance with total confidence. His singing took your breath away. The man hasn’t lost a speck of his power and vocal capacity. On stage James is not only an incredibly charismatic personality but, despite the dark, toxic aggression spewed out by Helstar’s music, he has an extremely warm, affectionate, openly communicative rapport with the audience. James brings down every barrier between crowd and band in an instant, with a single generous smile. A truly exceptional person! James announced the band’s new album and said Helstar are overjoyed to be together again after all these years. Meanwhile Larry opened a bottle of Heineken that was so foamy it soaked his whole guitar and hands. Well, what do you expect, he should’ve drunk Union, his own fault. The hour in which Helstar scattered their napalm over the crowd flew by incredibly fast. That was the moment when I can personally declare the moral winner of the festival. After the Helstar show people were totally drained, and full recovery from the effects of Helstar’s wrath was no longer possible until the end of the festival. Unforgettable!
MANILLA ROAD:
It was late. 00:15! You could clearly read on people’s faces that they were running low. Worn out from the grind. No question. Finally Manilla Road were on stage. The headliners of the concert, with a bundle of 1 hour and 40 minutes. I was surprised, because I’d expected a trio. The trio that recorded the newest album “Voyager”, which hasn’t even come out yet. It’s released a week after this show in Italy (29.02.2008, My Graveyard Records). But a quartet stood on stage! Behind the microphone was Bryan “Hellroadie” Patrick, the brother of Harvey Patrick (bass), who’s been given the nickname “crow”. There’s also the somewhat younger Corey Christner (drums) and of course the man without whom Manilla Road could close up shop tomorrow! The immortal guitarist, development ideologue and boss of the band, Mark “Shark” Shelton. In short, the band’s driving locomotive. A march through epic dark metal awaits us, the way only Manilla Road know it. Patrick is an extraordinary addition. Shelton could devote himself fully to soloing and guitar work in general. Patrick is also the better vocalist, who like Shelton can articulate his voice and vary across epic clean singing, expressive especially in the mid registers, spiced with detours into high clean “scream” shots, as well as brutally taken ones. Extreme rage, which has nothing to do with random growling. No less charismatic a vocal than Shelton’s, wonderfully fitting in color and compatible with the band’s stylistic direction. Flawless! Another excellent sound. An old-school metal sound, with an adventurous, exploratory rhythm line that constantly seeks room for transitional upheavals, with emphasized depth through an intense, slightly distorted, rattling bass. A phenomenal platform. Manilla Road are known masters of dual black-and-white atmosphere. Two approaches are basic here, merging into a perfect gatefold. One is the one they create with ease when they fall back on less melodic riffing led by a dark vocal, while the sun shines through only in Shelton’s guitar solos, which are incredibly melodic and of completely classic form. Shelton shone within the solos when he got totally immersed, forgot himself, and handled the guitar almost roughly. Gloomy motifs suddenly spin off in a completely different direction of epic melody. Appealing to the Italian crowd, which is crazy about arias!
Otherwise Manilla Road are very boring guys to watch. When you close your eyes, they’re excellent. So the manifestation is excellent. The creation of atmosphere is something special, it takes you off into its own world that you don’t experience at any other concert. As for their “image”, though, they’re real “orphans” who picked up or swapped their clothes at the first Chinese market that happened to be at hand. Rok did console me that they do it on purpose. The material they played covered a cross-section of the band’s entire career, and the guys also slipped in some brand-new songs from the album “Voyager” (2008). Looking at the packed floor in front of the stage, they enjoyed themselves immensely. The crowd greeted their songs hotly, knew every line, and Patrick even admitted to them that they’re the best audience around. Patrick found lots of fun in taking a video camera mid-show and filming the crazy fans below the stage. The close of the concert was especially intense. Patrick announced the act: “It is time for you to get lost!” As if the whole crowd in the hall had been waiting for Road Of Kings and Necropolis. People exploded together in the hall, they were moshing to Manilla Road, you can’t believe it. Heads were flying and rolling across the hall again. After a good hour and 40 minutes Manilla Road finished the regular part and said goodbye. But Patrick, who had been having an immense amount of fun all through the show, soon reappeared on stage: “Do you want one more?!?!” Nobody in the hall resisted, and the guys smacked out Up From The Crypt as a farewell and, to finish, once more seriously set the visibly spent audience on fire.
Manilla Road setlist:
1. Masque Of Red Death
2. Death By The Hammer
3. Hammer Of The Witches
4. Witches Brew
5. Riddle Of Steel
6. Ressurection
7. March Of The Gods
8. Mystification
9. Divine Victim
10. Guitar solo
11. Flaming Metal System
12. Blood Eagle
13. Voyager
14. Road Of Kings
15. Necropolis
—encore—
16. Up From The Crypt
Play It Loud festival II. offered more than just what you come for. First and foremost, you go to recharge your batteries. Second is the organization itself. Everything ran like the best-oiled machine. In the 15-minute breaks between two sets, the bands pretty much got themselves ready for the show. No roadies tuning guitars, basses, microphones. The festival organizer’s crew helped them out. All the bands used the same drum kit at the festival, only the cymbals were swapped. The time saved also came down to the fact that none of the bands has keyboards in its lineup.
The bands on stage visibly noticed this excellent organization too, one after another thanking the organizer Giuliano from the heart in their addresses. The venue was at the same time full of all sorts of flyers advertising various metal shows on the Italian club scene. That confirmed that various organizers and event promoters had found themselves in the same place at the same time. Organization that, let’s hope, spills over to us as soon as possible. The crowd was the real deal, more narrowly specialized than the festival itself. That specialization is an expression of exceptional courage, to actually invite names who didn’t scrape up any commercial success in their careers for their body of work, who rather languished on the fringes, quickly faded or fell apart (despite the excellent music they created). But festivals like this are exactly the chance to see them at all. That’s why several of them play together on the bill, because that’s the guarantee that more visitors will come. And the festival more or less keeps its genre unity and with it a strict recognizability, which means there are no big fish in play that would take away its authenticity and kill it. We’ll always gladly come here!
Lineup
MANILLA ROAD (USA) HELSTAR (USA) CLOVEN HOOF (UK) STEEL ASSASSIN (USA) SABOTAGE (ITA) ELIXIR (UK) ADRAMELCH (ITA) TARCHON FIST (ITA) FROZEN TEARS (ITA) ALLTHENIKO (ITA) BERSERKER (ITA)
Photo Gallery
