Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Nina Grad
Location: Ljubljana / CUK Kino Šiška / Slovenia
Concert date: 03.12.2011
Attendance: 700
Ticket price: €25.00
HammerFall is the kind of musical enterprise that hit the scene at exactly the right time, in exactly the right place. Back in the second half of the nineties, when the market was drowning in the din and clatter of popularized, unmelodic roaring, they slyly slipped their debut “Glory To The Brave” (1997) onto it. And all of us suddenly, gratefully remembered metal’s primeval roots, shaped by the N.W.O.B.H.M. bands led by Iron Maiden and Saxon, the biblical metal messiahs Judas Priest, a whole phalanx of classic old-school speed metallers from the US (from Crimson Glory and Liege Lord to Metal Church and so on…), and thoughts turned once again to the German power metallers from Helloween, Rage, Grave Digger to Running Wild etc… Thanks to HammerFall’s arrival, melodic metal bands across the planet united, and a real invasion of general heavy metal revivalism followed, which gave us plenty of new power metal groups, poured fresh defiance into the older ones, or even jolted them out of years-long slumber and back into action. Nobody on the metal scene today disputes how important HammerFall’s role was in their early phase.
While the iron was hot, they quickly forged four albums that are now considered their classic era (up to and including “Crimson Thunder” from 2002), and from then on there was no fear that their name would ever fade, let alone wither away, on the metal scene. To this day the Swedish revivalists have released eight studio albums in total, the latest, “Infected”, just this spring. If they visited Maribor on the tour two years ago for the album “No Sacrifice, No Victory” (2009), this time they found their way back to the Slovenian capital. It’s their second visit in total (the first was on 29.11.2005, a joint tour with the Finns Stratovarius).
HammerFall are generous guys. So for this tour they drafted in a young band of seasoned musicians, fellow countrymen from Gothenburg, Sweden, Death Destruction, who put out their self-titled studio debut this year. Sure, genre-wise they’re five solar systems of the Milky Way away, but so what. Why bite the hand that feeds you? Even more so once you find out that HammerFall bassist Fredrik Larsson is also a member of Death Destruction, and there’s really no point in any of it anymore. The lineup brings together members from genre-wise very different backgrounds! The aforementioned Larsson (HammerFall, which is why the guy played Kino Šiška twice that night), Jimmie Strimell (Dead By April) and Jonas Ekdahl (Evergrey) cultivate a genuinely interesting blend of those backgrounds. The vocals are screamed, meaning “modernist” in design, and the musicians put together a forceful picture of their musical vision on stage, which they themselves call groove (core) metal. Aggressive, springy, dynamic and running on high-octane suspension! A most welcome opening 25 minutes for everyone who wanted to crack their skulls open right away!
The program rolled on unblemished. After 15 minutes the stage was taken by the sextet Amaranthe, a Swedish-Danish alliance. If Death Destruction went down smoothly, the same can’t be said in full for Amaranthe. This musical experiment gave birth to a self-titled debut this year and presents itself on stage with no fewer than three vocalists: a female voice, a “core” male voice and a clean male voice. In this musical mishmash I’d almost settle on slapping the melodic death metal label on it at one moment, and at the next on calling it a cheap version of power metal, riddled with character gaps and short on charisma. The cherry on top of the question mark hanging over the band’s stage credibility was the screaming legionnaire Richard Sjunnesson (The Unsigned, ex-Sonic Syndicate), with his styled hair and a Manowar shirt. Amaranthe are thus a tough, undefined bone that got stuck in the throat of many a metalhead who visited Kino Šiška that night!
Luckily, the bill also included the legendary American old-school speed metal veterans from San Francisco, Vicious Rumors. HammerFall hold the band in deep respect, since it was precisely Vicious Rumors and their classic output that shaped HammerFall’s early sound, and Vicious Rumors already played Ljubljana once this year. That was in the second half of May, when they presented their current studio album “Razorback Killers” (2011) as part of their own headlining tour. The lineup went through a minor adjustment before the autumn European tour with HammerFall: guitarist Thaen Rasmussen came back, having strummed strings for Geoff Thorpe and company between 2005 and 2007.
Vicious Rumors, who had 40 minutes of concert repertoire at their disposal, wasted no time on ceremony, gritted their teeth and went straight for the throat. With the classic Digital Dictator. Never mind that the guitar sound was smeared, it didn’t bother anyone one bit, because the band simply looks unbeatable on stage. They killed us at Orto bar this May and they killed us again this time at Kino Šiška. The band was hugely pleased by the packed hall. Geoff Thorpe didn’t forget to thank HammerFall in one of his announcements for inviting them on this tour (paraphrasing part of Geoff’s sentence: “… a tour of our lifetime…”). With vocalist Brian Allen, Thorpe hit the nail on the head, since with “Razorback Killers” they’ve come closest to the magic of the Carl Albert era. Allen, who embodies the vocalist on helium and packs in himself the most poisonous heights of screaming melodic “Halfordesque” wails that mercilessly tear at the ears and the cerebral cortex, stunned with a power that didn’t buckle for a single moment in those short but sweet 40 minutes. The cathartic experience of the explosive Larry Howe on drums, the unbending chieftain of the band Geoff Thorpe, the quickly settled-in returnee Rasmussen, topped off with Allen’s excellent performance, delivered the expected scenario. Vicious Rumors are simply better musicians and a better band than HammerFall. They created the most authentic ambience in the very cradle where American metal was conceived. Even before the Bay Area thrash metal era emerged! Razor sharp, technically demanding, aggressive and seasoned with just the right amount of melody! Played to perfection. Classic hammered out upon classic, a script written for the die-hard fans of the band with only one new song, the otherwise superb Let The Garden Burn, where Geoff Thorpe, in a ripping duet with Allen, finally gave his own vocal cords a thorough workout.
That night Vicious Rumors walked out of the ring as the quiet moral winners of the evening. Simply because of their defiant, enduring authenticity! Let’s just hope their show got as far under the skin as possible of everyone in the hall for their set who was waiting first and foremost for HammerFall and didn’t know the band until that day. This is a band that deserves all the support and metal loyalty, for its excellence, faith and defiance. They skinned us alive!
The night’s main standard-bearers, HammerFall, are men who can boast a pedigree of great ease and freedom from pressure. What they do runs in their veins. And they always do things the way they know best. That’s why everything they take on is so convincing and high-quality. The packed Kino Šiška greeted the band with a roar at half past ten in the evening, when the quintet launched into the opening song (a rather gloomy musical sermon by HammerFall standards) from the new album “Infected”, called Patient Zero. The opening euphoria was stoked right away by the classic of the iron repertoire Heeding The Call, and at that moment the whole hall, from the front rows all the way back to the mixing desk and the entrance doors, was on its feet with hands raised high in the air! It’s incredible how much support the fans give this band! The view over the sea of young, freshly baked metal souls was great, which fills us with great hope for the future of strengthening the general metal faith on Slovenian soil! This was a concert that brought together HammerFall’s followers in Slovenia across a wide arc. From those who first caught the band on stage on its “Legacy Of Kings” tour in 1998, to freshly baked power metal flag-bearers!
And the setlist was excellent. Concretely put together and, despite five new songs, focused on the early albums of HammerFall’s career. In that regard, heaven and paradise on Earth opened up for the band’s fans in the hall right after the new Dia De Los Muertos, since it was followed by HammerFall classic after classic until the end of the night. Steel Meets Steel and Dragon Lies Bleeding especially livened up the repertoire, along with the particularly anthemic Riders On The Storm, Legacy Of Kings and Let The Hammer Fall, and, closing out the regular part, the standout song from the album “Chapter V.”, called The Templar Flame. The interplay between audience and band was simply incredible, and confirms the recent successes of metal concert events at Kino Šiška with Amon Amarth and In Flames. Even singer Jochim Cans couldn’t get over it and at one point even said that the Ljubljana crowd was the best on the whole tour, the best HammerFall have had so far. How much of that was deliberate hype and how much truth, only Joachim knows, but still, I’d easily believe him this time, if he really meant it.
The band is fully “well-oiled”. With Pontus Norgren, who among other things once worked as Malmsteen’s guitar tech, HammerFall have recently hit the nail on the head, and the partnership with the first HammerFall icon, the lanky Oscar Dronjak, works phenomenally on stage. Add to that the excellent form of Joachim Cans on the day, who delivered a truly high-quality vocal performance in Ljubljana and chirped his way through the entire repertoire at an outstanding level (like a born frontman who kept the crowd firmly beside him throughout, and as a vocal talent in his own right), and on the other side the rock-solid rhythmic partnership of Larsson/Johansson, and the Templars’ victory is guaranteed. Anders Johansson, in his drum fortress on a riser raised above everyone, amused himself in all sorts of ways during the lighter numbers. Hence the occasional delay between songs, but it was totally painless for the ear. At one point Anders spiced up his work by sticking a drumstick in his mouth and pounding the left ride cymbal with the fist of his free left hand.
The band specially rewarded the crowd’s euphoria by opening the encore with the classic Glory To The Brave, where the people were once again stunned by the unified roar accompanying Cans’s vocal parts. A less interesting moment near the end of the concert came with the clichéd, new and quickly forgettable One More Time, while the expected closing anthem Hearts On Fire completely fixed that impression, and once again brought the unique metal atmosphere at Kino Šiška back to life for the grand finale. The sound was very good throughout the concert, not perfectly balanced (the drums pushed slightly to the front), but very, very satisfying.
The Templars’ triumphant return to Slovenia wrapped up after an hour and three quarters and conjured up one of the best concert experiences with HammerFall on stage, if not the very best since I’ve been following the band live over the last ten years (as far as their “indoor” shows go). Simply put. When fan fervor and the band’s presence fuse into the magic of a one-of-a-kind interweaving of chemical bonds. And once the band feels that, it floors the gas, even if it’s slathered in all the routine salves! And this HammerFall show was among those events of unforgettable metal celebration that we can only wish for more of on our soil in the future!
photos: Nina Grad
Setlist
HAMMERFALL:
1.Patient Zero
2.Heeding The Call
3.Any Means Necessary
4.B.Y.H.
5.Blood Bound
6.Let’s Get It On
7.Last Man Standing
8.Renegade
9.Always Will Be
10.Dia De Los Muertos
11.Riders Of The Storm
12.Steel Meets Steel
13.Legacy Of Kings
14.Let The Hammer Fall
15.The Dragon Lies Bleeding
16.The Templar Flame
—encore—
17.Glory To The Brave
18.One More Time
19.Hearts On Fire
VICIOUS RUMORS:
1.Replicant / Digital Dictator
2.Minute To Kill
3.Murderball
4.Down To The Temple
5.Abandoned
6.Let the Garden Burn
7.Hellraiser
8.Soldiers of the Night
9.Don’t Wait For Me
Photo gallery
