Hammerfall On
this fine Danish summer day, Swedish Hammerfall initiate the
festivities at the new one-day outdoor event, Giants of Rock. Like too
many likeminded outfits, Hammerfall apparently haven’t realised that
we still have Iron Maiden, Helloween and Dio among us. However
energetic, the Swedes only materialise as a petty copy of said bands,
although they make an effort to look really silly in so doing.
Hammerfall are somewhat irrelevant in my view. 59 Accept Due
to a severe bout of dehydration, Lemmy is forced to cancel the show in
As
we move into the early evening, Accept take the approximately 20.000
metalheads present through classics such as “Fast as a Shark”, “Monsterman”,
“London Leather Boys”, “Son of a Bitch”, “Princess of the
Dawn” and as a final encore über-classic “Balls to the Wall”.
The only flaws of the set are the two endless sing-along parts that
some German bands still find obligatory. One is fine, two are a pest,
especially when the band doesn’t have full playing time as is
typically the case at festivals. 80 Slayer As
always, Tom Araya is amiable and relaxed on stage as he addresses the
crowd. This evening he has taken on biblical looks as he’s sporting
a full beard, stained with white hairs that bear witness to the fact
that he along with messieurs Hannemann, King and Lombardo have been
around for some time now. As announced by Araya, the set today is
going to be short but sweet. And sweet it is. Concentrated and focused as I haven’t seen them in a while, Slayer tear through one hour’s worth of some of their best material, starting out with “South of Heaven”. Graced with the best sound of the festival, the thrash legends churn out “Silent Scream”, “Bloodstained”, “Postmortem”, “Mandatory Suicide”, “Dead Skin Mask”, “War Ensemble”, “Bloodred”, “Seasons in the Abyss”, “Disciple”, “God Send Death” and “Angel of Death”. Slayer are the thrash kings, no more, no less. Quote
of the evening: 90 Rammstein There
is little doubt that Rammstein are the main attraction this evening.
And they live up to all expectations. The effort made to entertain is
enormous as fire is spurted, shot and thrown all over the place.
Throughout the set, the stage is teeming with roadies dressed in shirt
and tie who equip the musicians with the various pyro-technical
accessories, Till is dressed up as a bloodstained chef during “Mein
Teil”, swinging his microphone-knife. The keyboarder Christian
Lorentz, man, he’s just out of this world. Has to be seen. No moment
without entertainment. And
the sceptics who might fear that the music disappears in the circus
are put to shame; even though Till Lindemann’s voice disappears a
couple of times it is only due to the sheer bombast and heaviness of
the German sextet’s industrial inspired metal and it doesn’t
really matter. The
journey through material from all four Rammstein albums appropriately
begins with “Reise, Reise” and moves on to “Links 2 3 4”,
“Sonne”, “Feuer Frei!”, “Sehnsucht”, “Du hast”,
mega-hit “Mein Teil”, “Keine Lust”, “Morgenstern” (a
monster riff live!), Stein um Stein” and the encores “Rammstein”
and “Amerika”. A good hour and a half is what we get from
Rammstein on this hot evening in 95 Attended by Thomas |