Location: Orzinuovi (Brescia) / Buddha / Italy
Date: February 23, 2008
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)
Play It Loud! II Festival 2008, in the little town of Orzinuovi, 30 km from Brescia, with a bunch of living fossils headlining! Impossible to resist! That goes especially for the long stretches of inactivity and hibernation (Elixir, Cloven Hoof, Helstar, Steel Assassin, Sabotage) or the heavy focus on US stages (Manilla Road, Helstar). When the devil has pups, things tend to take their own course and you lose your grip. That’s when it’s best to just go with the flow and let come what may. A good chunk of the people who had planned to come bailed on the trip to Italy for this tempting one-day mini-festival at the last minute (stuffed-up airways, babysitting, and so on). 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 heavy emphasis on homegrown bands. They mostly focus on gnawed-down heavy metal tradition, packed with boiling melodicism. Love for the operas of Giuseppe Verdi, you see, still flows irrepressibly through the veins of the up-and-coming Italian metal generation. This year’s festival promised a much stronger lineup, above all more interesting legendary names of the world metal scene, while still offering plenty of support to the local scene. There was magic in the air.
Luckily, a sturdy member of our crew saved me from a lonely trip, in a swap scenario of “sick Rok for healthy Rok”. Healthy Rok thus took charge of the concert photography and left the metal goat of my caliber free to dissolve into the charm of metal 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. It’s dead easy to find. As soon as you roll into the town of Orzinuovi from the Brescia direction, 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 junction, past the “Buddha Rock Cafe” sign, into the industrial zone. And the temple of sinful delight is impossible to miss. 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.
Buddha Rock Cafe holds about 1,500 to 1,800 people, balconies included. It’s a great venue, with a capacity that just barely stays within club-scene range. One more square meter and you could already talk about a hall atmosphere. The club has a nice interior (the restrooms are definitely not part of that), made for nothing else but a “headbang” switch-off and surrendering to the rush of heavy sounds. Everything was taken care of. Visitors could buy shirts from the most notorious bands, pick from a sea of patches and other metal paraphernalia and bling, and drool over heaps of rare CDs on sale… in short, a true metal holiday. The Italian crowd moved like one body. Leather, quilted denim jackets, army boots, white mid-top Pumas, skin-tight 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 experience anywhere as intensely as in moments like these, always leaves a special mark.
Well then, let’s finally get on stage.
ADRAMELCH:
In their hour-long set, the Italian quintet strung together a mix of classic old-school stuff dressed up in the dimension of early Queensryche, “Warning” era, with a singer at the center 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 delivery, but the stage movement was rather static, and so dull to watch. The singer would benefit from a change of look (when heading up on stage), and the rest of the guys aren’t far off either. Lots of rehearsing in the studio evidently eats up all their time. Still, looks matter just as much when you’re building a name. Technically the guys are perfectly schooled. The sound had problems, with the guitars completely drowning 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 went for the highest lines. Adramelch are one more Italian band confirming the strong renaissance of classic heavy metal in Italy right now, 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:
New Wave Of British Heavy Metal legends were among the attractions of this festival. Two years ago they woke up again in the land of the living! Their comeback album from last year, “Mindcreeper”, confirms that Elixir are still a thirsty-for-blood beast that won’t give up easily. The quintet rides extremely confidently, with experience, really quite routinely. You can read on the guys’ faces how much they enjoy being able to share a stage again. The singer, a man of exceptional charisma, with his hairdo unintentionally reminded me of our own Marko Vuksanović of Avtomobil, with the charm of the mature years and the hair color of Saxon frontman Biff Byford. Classic detonators, true little heavy metal bibles, took a somewhat reserved crowd (after all, these are Englishmen and a slightly lesser-known name) and just thoroughly blasted them into the air and into a gallop! The quintet delivered excellent 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 side by side in perfectly coordinated harmonies throughout. The name Elixir, practically forgotten today and buried deep in dusty metal archives, has come back to life. Elixir have an exceptional charm. Guys! I hope you manage to put your name back on the scene with some serious touring 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 the bill tonight was Sabotage. Anyone remember Morby from Domine? We saw them on January 30, 2000, at K4 in Ljubljana on a package with Riot, Anvil and Agent Steel. Let’s leave the days of past glory alone. Adolfo Morviducci, which is Morby’s real name, has been present on the Italian metal scene with the Sabotage crew since 1981. The lineup of Morby (Domine, ex-Labyrinth), Marco Venutelli (guitar), Henry Caroli (bass), and Dario Caroli (Bud Tribe) on drums was recently beefed up with another guitarist (sadly I can’t dig up the name), so it now works as a revived quintet. Obviously a festival of nothing but reunions, since Sabotage have just signed a deal with the label My Graveyard Production for a brand-new album and a re-release of their 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 bands. This performance carried great symbolic weight for Italian heavy metal. This is a legendary lineup. But wrapped in extremely epic melodicism, even though it draws from the basics of N.W.O.B.H.M. Morby gets better with the years. With his vocals he literally stripped the audience out of their skin. With tremendous fire he got the whole hall moving, both the floor and the balcony. Hands were in the air. The band put on an excellent hour-long execution of their classic material, which the locals had waited for many long years to hear live again. A spirited, fully immersed performance, cut loose at full throttle. The “new-old” Sabotage are a solid, uniformly compact unit. And of course the cherry on top is Morby’s killer operatic vocal, which stuns in the highest registers. The sheer amount of power and melody he pulls out when he’s at the top! In the mid to low registers he’s wicked and dark, which is downright ideal for Sabotage. Excellent show! Guys, get that new record out as soon as you can!
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 ingredients and some darkness here and there, of course didn’t leave the crowd below the stage indifferent. Steel Assassin are legends as well, with a beginning 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 vibe with 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 rolled on. The vocals are aimed somewhat lower, but without any trouble leaping into the highest registers too. In the higher registers the voice gained more screechy throatiness, with more dark tinges and less melody. Steel Assassin had quite a few sound problems. Of the bands we saw, they got by far the worst sound. For the first three songs the bass pushed ugly through all the other instruments, and the vocals were swept away at times, covered by the guitars. Then they fixed the bass too well, so it practically vanished. Both guitars also had a muffled, dull, “squashed” tone, and through Flyin’ V Gibsons the beauty of an otherwise exceptionally cohesive piece of work in no way blossomed, which showed in the dynamics and breathing of the sound. The band definitely didn’t let it bother them. They squeezed out their maximum, just like the acts before them and just like the next ones in the festival’s lineup would. Steel Assassin finally got everything under one roof and are thus another one of the big comeback acts on the scene! The Boston quintet actually remains a big debtor, and we hope they’ll spoil and pamper us as much as possible with their new opus 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’d been waiting for Cloven Hoof impatiently. Another dug-up 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 watch the heated heads in the front rows knowing every line of the petrified eighties classics of this band, forsaken by God not so long ago. There’s no better feeling than when you can handle a crowd so easily as it surrenders itself to you irresistibly. Cloven Hoof by no means saved their energy. Rus, as the leader and main communicator with the crowd, looks incredibly fresh and committed on stage, just like his colleagues. The most hyperactive on stage are Rus and Lee. Bassist Lee in particular radiated incredible fervor, wildly yanking at his bass and running around the stage during the show. Guitarist Ben Read might not be hurt by a slightly less reserved approach. He stood on one single spot the whole show and hardly moved from it. No contact with the crowd, which is a shame. If you’re on guitar 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 took refuge in thickening the sound generously with a wah-wah effect. The band proudly welcomed the release of their new album “The Definitive Part One”, which came out only a week before this festival gig (February 15, 2008), and spiced up the setlist with new material. Cloven Hoof at the “Play It Loud II.” festival. I’m still pinching myself to see if this is real? Cloven Hoof made the most of their hour-long set. They delivered excellent sound, together with some phenomenal classics. An outstanding interplay of punchy riff-driven rides combined with calm epic passages. Rus’s vocals like to skip the mid-range. And when he leaps up into the highest register, he picks up that typical “Halfordesque” shrieking 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! Too bad the announced N.W.O.B.H.M. festival in Athens had to be canceled. Already 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 “heshers” probably the ugly duckling of the festival, since Helstar are those steely “old school speed” metalheads 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 outfit, who wrote themselves into the eighties with their four classics “Burning Star”, “Remnants Of War”, “A Distant Thunder” and “Nosferatu”, deep in the hearts of worshippers of the shamelessly arrogant assault that only the one-of-a-kind Helstar can unleash ultrasonically in their metal wrath. 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). Magic. The Texas boys from Houston wandered onto the stage through an intro of Ennio Morricone’s “A Fistful of Dollars”, and then ruthlessly, by every means available, hit the hall with their explosives. Last year the band released “Sins Of Pasts”, old material played completely anew. It served excellently as a warm-up. A useful move. Well, most of the material from that disc was moved to the live show too. On top of that, “Sins From Past” has two completely new Helstar songs. For their Italian gig the band picked Tormentor from the two, which contains the typical “Nosferatu – A Distant Thunder” era elements. The guys brought the house down 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 so high that the hall turned into a proper mosh pit battleground, where no means of drawing blood were spared. War and total chaos! People were torn to pieces!
Helstar looked by far the wildest on stage of all the bands. Stocky, small, almost Mexican little devils, they kneaded their instruments so eagerly that it was only a matter of time before wooden splinters and sawdust started flying out of them. The Trevino/Barragan duo shone in their tightness, remarkable sense of each other and the way they followed one another. 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. Through all that deliciously possessed riffing, the bass thundered through the mix with a poisonously 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 complete 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, poisonous aggression spewed out by Helstar’s music, he has an extremely warm, sensitive and openly communicative bond with the crowd. James brings down every barrier between crowd and band in an instant, with a single generous smile. A truly exceptional persona! James announced the band’s new album and said Helstar are overjoyed to be back together after all these years. Meanwhile Larry opened a bottle of Heineken that was so shaken up it drenched his guitar and hands completely. Well, it’s not like he drinks Union, so it’s his own fault. The hour in which Helstar showered the crowd with their napalm flew by incredibly fast. This was the moment when I can personally declare the moral winner of the festival. After the Helstar show, people were completely drained, and full recovery from the effects of Helstar’s wrath was no longer possible for the rest of the festival. Unforgettable!
MANILLA ROAD:
It was late. 12:15 a.m.! It was written all over people’s faces that they were slowly running out of steam. Tired from the grind. No way around it. Finally on stage were Manilla Road. The headliners of the night, with a set of an 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 comes out the week after this gig in Italy (February 29, 2008, on the label My Graveyard Records). But on stage stood a quartet! At the mic was Bryan “Hellroadie” Patrick, brother of Harvey Patrick (bass), who’s been nicknamed “crow”. There’s also the slightly younger Corey Christner (drums), and of course the man without whom Manilla Road could close up shop tomorrow! The immortal guitarist, driving ideologue and boss of the band, Mark “Shark” Shelton. In short, the band’s locomotive. We’re in for a march through epic dark metal, as only Manilla Road know it. Patrick is an outstanding addition. Shelton could devote himself completely to soloing and guitar work in general. Patrick is also the better vocalist, able like Shelton to articulate his voice and vary it across epic clean singing, expressive especially in the mid-range, seasoned with detours into high clean “scream” stuff, as well as the brutally raw kind. Extreme wrath, which has nothing to do with random growling. A no less charismatic voice than Shelton’s, tonally wonderfully fitting and compatible with the band’s stylistic direction. No bullshit! New excellent sound. An old-school metal sound, with an adventurous, exploratory rhythm section that constantly seeks room for transitional upheavals, with depth emphasized through an intensely, slightly distorted, rattling bass. A phenomenal platform. Manilla Road are known masters of a dual black-and-white atmosphere. Two approaches are fundamental here, merging into a perfect foldout. One is what they create with ease when they retreat into less melodic riffing led by dark vocals, while the sun shines through only in Shelton’s guitar solos, which are incredibly melodic and fully classical in form. Shelton shone within the solos, when he got completely lost in them, forgot himself and handled the guitar almost roughly. Gloomy motifs suddenly swirl in a completely different direction, into epic melody. Appealing to the Italian crowd, who are crazy about arias!
Mind you, Manilla Road are very boring guys to watch. Close your eyes and they’re excellent. So the whole manifestation is excellent. The creation of atmosphere is something special, taking you off into their own world that you don’t get at any other show. As far as “image” goes, though, they’re proper “orphans” who picked up or swapped their clothes at the first Chinese market they happened to stumble upon. Rok did comfort me that they do it on purpose. The material they played covered a cross-section of the band’s whole career, and the guys also slipped in completely new songs from the album “Voyager” (2008). Looking out at the packed floor in front of the stage, they enjoyed themselves immensely. The crowd greeted their songs hotly, knew every line, and even Patrick admitted they’re the best crowd for miles around. Patrick found plenty of fun in grabbing a video camera mid-show and filming the crazy fans below the stage. The end of the show was especially intense. Patrick announced the deed: “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. Once again heads were flying and rolling across the hall. After an hour and 40 minutes Manilla Road wrapped up the regular part and said goodbye. But Patrick, who had been having an immense amount of fun all through the show, soon appeared on stage again: “Do you want one more?!?!” Nobody in the hall resisted, and the guys parted with Up From The Crypt and, to finish, once more stoked the visibly exhausted crowd for real.
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
The Play It Loud II. festival offered more than just what you come for. First and foremost, you go to recharge your batteries. Then there’s the organization itself. Everything ran like the best-oiled machine. In the 15-minute breaks between two sets, the bands got themselves ready for the show almost entirely on their own. No roadies tuning guitars, basses, mics. The festival organizer’s crew helped them out. All the bands used the same drum kit at the festival, only the cymbals got swapped. The time saved also owed something to the fact that none of the bands has keyboards in their lineup.
The bands on stage clearly noticed this organizational excellence too, one after another thanking the organizer Giuliano from the heart in their stage banter. The place was also full of all sorts of flyers advertising various metal shows on the Italian club scene. That confirmed that different organizers and event promoters had all found themselves in the same place at the same time. An organization we can only hope will spill over to us as soon as possible. The crowd was the real deal, more narrowly specialized than the festival itself. That specialization is a sign of remarkable courage, to actually invite names that haven’t scraped together any great commercial success in their careers, that rather languished on the fringes, quickly fizzled out or fell apart (despite the excellent music they were making). But it’s precisely festivals like this that give people a chance to see them at all. That’s why they play several together on the bill, because that’s a guarantee that more visitors will show up. And the festival more or less keeps its genre unity and thus its strict recognizability, which means there are no big fish in play to take away and kill its authenticity. We’ll always be glad to come here!
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Rok Podgrajšek & Aleš Podbrežnik
