Location: Brescia / Circolo Colony / Italy
Date: 04.02.2014
Primal Fear, a long-lived German power metal stronghold, you could say, have hit the road with hot revival metallers – Sweden’s Bullet – on a joint European “co-headlining” tour called »Eagles & Lions«. Sound familiar? It’s definitely not a tribute to some zoo – the title simply echoes the national symbols of Sweden (the lion) and Germany (the eagle). On this tour Bullet are still pushing their current (latest) studio album »Full Pull« from 2012, while Primal Fear, just a few days before we caught the show in Brescia, Italy, dropped a new studio release on the metal scene called »Delievering the Black«, already their ninth overall for a band founded in 1997.
The two bands’ show in Brescia was the last one booked on the current European tour. The road took Bullet and Primal Fear there from hot Spain and Barcelona, where they played their previous gig on 02.02.2014. The next one was dated in Mannheim, Germany, on 06.02.2014. And it was exactly this gap of a few free days that opened the door to booking one more date, so that the new tour could finally touch down on Italian soil too.
Bullet have four studio albums under their belt and, over their career, can boast the solidity of a lineup that keeps its consistency. Primal Fear, on the other hand, change guitarists all the time, yet it never shows in any wobble in the quality of the songwriting or in the live delivery of the material. And that’s the crux of it, which also reveals the fact that the founding members, the carriers of the style and sound, Ralf Scheppers (vocals) and Mat Sinner (bass, backing vocals), don’t change. The current tour served up a lineup shuffle too. For the tour, guitarist Tom Naumann (actually the original and founding member) stepped in for Magnus Karlsson. That gave us the guitar duo of Tom Naumann and Alex Beyrodt, who already played together in Sinner back in the nineties. Add Mat Sinner to the two of them and you get the dream core of the famous Sinner crew, who put out the best albums in that band’s story between 1996 and 2001. It was precisely in that period that Mat Sinner, together with Ralf Scheppers and (returnee) Tom Naumann, brought Primal Fear to life. In doing so, he pulled Scheppers out of the pit of despair – for Scheppers it had been an extremely hard blow that Juas Priest didn’t want to take him into their ranks after Rob Halford’s departure. The Sinner–Schepers partnership proved extremely effective, and so to this day Primal Fear have released nine excellent studio albums that stick to the proven, effective format – the German philosophy of the heavy metal craft, wrapped around Judas Prisest’s album »Painkiller«. So it’s no wonder that Primal Fear are sometimes called “the German Judas Priest”.
Given that Magnus Karlsson, thanks to constant obligations to his family, finds it harder and harder to make time for Primal Fear tours, Naumann’s return to the Primal Fear camp is actually an ideal solution for the band, if not a downright fairy-tale one. Not only is Naumann the same-age buddy of Mat Sinner’s who shared a sandbox with him and grew up in the same Eslingen neighborhood, he’s also the creator of the best Primal Fear riffs. Like it or not, alongside Scheeppers and Sinner, Naumann is co-responsible for shaping Primal Fear’s style and sound from the starting line onward. It’s not yet clear whether Primal Fear will bring Naumann back into the fold as a permanent member. Judging by what they showed on stage in Brescia, the band is right now as solid and coherent in terms of lineup as it has been in a long, long time.
Onto the stage. Around nine o’clock Bullet started tearing up the sonic space of the Circolo Colony club. They’re furious heavy metal / heavy rock revivalists who build their songs on the famous AC/DC “less is more” logic, adding guitar ornaments run in triplets and concrete solos, which blends their sound with elements of Judas Priest, Thin Lizzy, and Saxon too. The crew, bolstered last year by new guitarist Alex Lyrbo, who replaced Erik Almström, comes across fresh, untamed, hugely committed, and there’s a big craving smoldering in them to revel in presenting their music. Bullet are turning into a superbly tight quintet that instantly impresses with an extremely self-assured way of playing, polished with the sheen of high-octane, riff-driven “bad ass” rattling! All of it is commanded by the high-pitched screaming vocals of the charismatic, short and stocky “teddy bear” Dag “Hell” Hofer. For his new stage show on the current tour, Hofer came up with a kind of “royal cape”, and his stage theatrics come with acting that tries to channel the famous stage performances of bands like Hell. But next to that comparison, Hofer remains a real little “cicibanček” (a toddler, basically) who’ll have to eat a good many more bowls of buttery žganci before he’s ready for more.
The second slot, an hour and twenty minutes, belonged to Primal Fear. The opening moves showed right away that, thanks to their much longer track record, miles on the road, and accumulated experience, Primal Fear are far more convincing stage performers than Bullet – regardless of the two being equal headliners that night. Sonically they delivered that famous fat, razor-sharp riff sound, under which Circolo Colony instantly groaned and squealed on its knees as the venue’s walls cracked. Joining all this were Ralf Scheppers’ siren-like vocals and, in the “undercarriage”, the incredible stampede of Randy Black’s double bass drum pedals, backed by the tearing detonations of the chopped-off rattle of Sinner’s bass.
A meager turnout of 100 people showed that Primal Fear don’t enjoy any special support in Italy, but those 100 turned out to be fiercely devoted fans of the band, which they proved by tossing an Italian flag onto the stage to Scheppers during the show, with the Primal Fear symbols (the eagle & “Metal Commando Germany”) neatly drawn on it. Ralf remains an extremely polished gentleman. He bowed deeply to the gesture, of course, and at the same time sarcastically urged everyone to bring their friends along next time too, which means the singer “diplomatically” voiced mild disappointment over the small turnout for this club gig.
Scheppers sang flawlessly, really. It remains a fact that he’s one of the finest singers in heavy metal. It was impossible to miss, let alone fail to hear. Every single second his vocals were exactly where they needed to be. The man is an outstanding frontman. He took his moves partly from his great role model Rob Halford, except Ralf is a much more dynamic stage performer.. Primal Fear have their stage show worked out down to the last detail. Every centimeter of the stage was fully used during the set. As soon as either Beyrodt or Nauman jumped in for a solo, the rest of the band filled the stage with shoulder-to-shoulder posing and plenty of “headbanging”. In various combinations.
Primal Fear gave their new studio album »Delivering The Black« (2014) plenty of room, even though they opened the show with the classic Final Embrance. The new songs from the new album work great on stage. Especially standing out was the epic One Night In December thanks to its wonderfully catchy chorus, seamlessly followed in the second half of the show by the »New Religion« suite Fighting The Darkness. The standards Nuclear Fire, Angel In Black, Seven Seals, Chainbreaker and Metal Is Forever prove one after another that they’ve stood the test of time and count as an absolute must in the band’s iron-clad repertoire. Honestly, you’d want a few more older classics in the setlist of the current tour, like Church of Blood, Battalions of Hate or Runnig in the Dust, but the tracks from the heavily represented »Delivering the Black«, thanks to their extremely convincing songwriting that keeps the band’s musical vocabulary at a high quality level in the new era too, filled that gap with confidence. What’s more, the band is so confident and so convinced of the quality of the new material that they closed the show with it, picking Unbreakable pt. II for the encore and playing the opening track of the new album, King For A Day, as the very last number.
Primal Fear left no survivors in the club that night. They played an all-or-nothing hand. Meaning they couldn’t give a damn whether there were 5, 100 or 5000 people in the club. They delivered the most they’re capable of and the best they’re capable of. And so they blew away absolutely everyone. Those hundred wild fans gratefully ate out of their hands from the first second to the last.
With Tom Naumann in the current live lineup, the proven Beyrodt/Naumann guitar tandem that reads each other perfectly, and the excellent new studio album »Delivering the Black«, Primal Fear prove they remain a majestic musical fortress of splendid power metal, pure-blooded German in origin. It simply doesn’t get deeper or more authentic than this. They age like a good old wine. The band has plenty of dates ahead. Worldwide. And in the summer they’ll be roaming, among other places, European festivals. Maybe we’ll manage to catch a bit of their noble metal magic again!
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
PRIMAL FEAR:
1. Intro
2. Final Embrace
3. Alive & On Fire
4. Delivering the Black
5. Nuclear Fire
6. Seven Seals
7. One Night in December
8. Angel in Black
9. When Death Comes Knocking
10. Chainbreaker
11. Fighting the Darkness
12. Bad Guys Wear Black
13. Metal Is Forever
—encore—
14. Unbreakable Pt. 2
15. King for a Day
BULLET:
1. Midnight Oil
2. Rush Hour
3. Turn It Up Loud
4. Full Pull
5. Rolling Home
6. Pay the Price
7. Heading for the Top
8. Dusk Til Dawn
9. Stay Wild
10. Dr. Phibes
—encore I.—
Highway Pirates
The Rebels Return
Bite the Bullet
—encore II.—
Rambling Man
