Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Bluesiana Rock Cafe / Velden Am Woerthersee / Austria
Concert date: 24.09.2009
Attendance: 20
Badhoven are melodic hard rockers from Graz (Austria). They follow in the footsteps of the eighties legacy, but with a modern take on today’s sound. Polished, tight riffs sit on top of a cannon-heavy rhythm section, keyboards fill in the atmosphere in the background, and the central figure driving the band’s live shows is, of course, a powerful melodic vocal.
Badhoven grew out of the lineup Black Rose in the mid-nineties and renamed themselves at the turn of the millennium, after finding out that there were at least seven bands in the world called Black Rose. As Black Rse they put out two promising hard rcok albums in the nineties, and as Badhoven they carried on with their debut Behind The Masquearde (2001), which got plenty of positive reviews around the world. Their music started getting played all over Europe, and they also stirred up quite a bit of dust on the radio waves of South American countries like Brazil, Argentina and Peru.
The turning point for Badhoven came in April 2008, when Belgian guitar virtuoso Wim Roelants decided to join the band permanently for live shows. He had cut his teeth with well-known musicians and acts during his career, such as Phil Campbell (Motörhead), Virgil Donati (Steve Vai), Dario Lorina (Warrant), Uriah Heep and Ritchie Kotzen (Mr. Big). That allowed Badhoven to climb up to a new step in their own evolution, especially in terms of dynamics and the live variety of the songs. The band played its first show in this lineup on 16.04.2008 at the Vienna club Planet Music, as the opener for Graham Bonnet, the singer of the legendary Rainbow and Alcatrazz.
A longer biographical intro was necessary, since hardly anyone in Slovenia knows Badhoven, though I hope I’m wrong..
The guys Kurt C. (vocals, guitar), Wim Roelants (guitar), Gerhard Paar (keyboards), Erwin Lichtenegger (bass guitar) and Gerd Sojka (drums) were actually playing Bluesiana for the first time in their career. Hard rock gigs are not an everyday thing at this club. The first surprise came right away, as the guys hit the stage a little after nine. Concerts at Bluesiana start at half past nine, never earlier, and if anything later. What wasn’t surprising, though, was that they were playing to an empty club, which is a pretty sad fact: Austrians just don’t come out to support their home bands.
Badhoven split the show into two parts. The first was fully electric. In it they ran through some of their best-known original songs, where you could feel the influences of Whitesnake and Scorpions. For Austrians, who count for nothing on the world stage of melodic hard rock, Badhoven are a pretty nice change of pace. The guys were superbly tight, played with confidence, had a solid, compact sound and were in good form on the night. Of course, the little club was soon bursting at the seams, because Badhoven were a bit too loud. Right after All Or Nothing, Belgian guitar virtuoso Wim Roelants showed off his mastery and properly warmed up his fingers on the guitar neck, and then Badhoven launched into a new song with a quickly catchy, melodically infectious chorus, Change Your Life. The first part was over after barely 40 minutes. Despite only five songs, Badhoven stretched the running time, thanks in part to a longer keyboard solo spot from Gerhard Paar after Behind The Masquerade, who really showed that he owes a lot to the old school too, with Jon Lord at the head of it. Besides, the band itself clearly enjoys playing the material, and the solos were spiced up even further, as were the solo intros and outros.
A 20-minute break followed, then an acoustic set, where the guys ran through four songs that they had also played on electric, now in an “unplugged” manner, which added some extra variety to the evening in the now completely empty Bluesiana.
For the finale they came back electrically armed, aiming to get people on their feet and carry the show to its peak. Sadly, this time there was no sign of that, since there were only four of us “maniacs” thrashing around in front of the stage. Even so, we could be sure we were watching an excellent band that can stand up to comparisons with bigger bands, including the pioneers of hard rock, and with other major names, especially from the USA and Great Britain.
The guys took the empty club like men, with no tears shed. They stayed routine and showed they have a solid character and that setbacks like poor attendance don’t knock them off track. They topped off the show with the billion-times-heard Smoke On The Water, starting it off by playing the main motif of the Deep Purple classic Mistreated first. By eleven in the evening, the hanging out with the band was over.
If nothing else, I got a feel for Badhoven and an answer to the questions that had been nagging me before the show. I’d been eaten up by serious skepticism, weighed down by the notion that Austrians just can’t play melodic hard rock. At Bluesiana, Badhoven denied that in every respect. With the excellent, “Van Halen”-schooled Wim Roelants, they basically shot down that kind of idle musing on the spot! In short, Badhoven are a band that deserves the attention of melodic hard rock fans. Always. Check them out if you ever get the chance.
photos: Robi Lipej
Setlist
—electric pt 1.— 1. All Or Nothing 2. Change Your Life 3. Money 4. Behind The Masquerade 5. Touch Of Madnes —acoustic— 6. Black September Rain 7. All Or Nothing 8. Change Your Life 9. Behind The Masquerade —electric pt. 2— 10. Black September Rain 11. Believe 12. Bad Bad Badhoven —encore— 13. Wasted Time 14. Time Doesn’t Matter At All 15. Smoke On The Water
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