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Metalcamp 2007 - Pt. 2

2007-08-01
Stadt / City Tolmin 
Land / Country SLO 
Web www. metalcamp.com
 
Veranstaltungsort:
Location
Tolmin 
Datum / Date16.-22.07.2007  
Bildergalerie / Picturegalerie Metalcamp_2007  
Photos: regurge.at; Sepultura: Pia Sundström 

Here part two of the report about the one-week Metalcamp-Festival:

Friday, July 20 2007

Low-Chi at Talentstage offered nice Thrashmetal with some special effects, after that we had a quick look at the Deathers Sardonic on Mainstage, but it was still too hot and only few people were there. On Talentstage Alltheniko played Old School Thrash; "Suffer Man" from their new album was what I liked best. After that Noctiferia from Slovenia drew more people. Great show that got a lot of applause. Sabaium from Slovenia were the first I really enjoyed, the keyboard added a sinister dimension to their typical Death Metal but sounded too powerful sometimes so it destroyed the song.



Eluveitie on Mainstage offered excellent Folkmetal with typical instrumentation. Despite the heat many banged and danced along to that music. Death Mechanism on Talentstage were most Old School for me. First, they played old Thrashmetal, perhaps comparable with Sepultura´s Morbid Visions, second, they were dressed like back then, skin tight Jeans, bullet belts, old sneakers, that wakes memories :)

Born from Pain were late because of a delayed flight, so I went to see Cripper on Talentstage just because of the cute front woman :), and she could indeed shout to the band´s Thrashmetal. Melodic Deathers Lost Dreams right afterwards might have played the best show for quite a while, but – and I felt so sorry for them – hardly anybody had seen it... (CG)

Dew-Scented from Germany played an intense & fast medley of classic Thrash Metal, that gallops along nicely getting heads banging, and hair flying. Along with plenty of technical guitar solos to keep even the most arduous air guitarist happy, and intense rolling drums that rumble the spine.

Threshold swept the stage with their concoction of melodic progressive Rock/Metal, akin to the likes of Dream Theatre and Symphony X, and were quite a chilled out band to watch, being quite an experimental group there are also electronic moments, and somewhat over the top synthesisers throughout. There were occasional hints Death Metal here and there. The music was hard to follow at times!  (JO)


 
Threshold confused me a bit, because instead of "Mac" the old singer Damian Wilson entered the stage, using notes but despite that he did a good job. Andrew „Mac“ McDermott had just left the band, in order to have more time for his family.

The Hardcore Combo Ragespect on Talentstage fascinated me because of a calm track. It was quite fun to see fans moving to it like in a trance. Finally, to wake them up again, they played Sepultura´s Troops of Doom. Perishing Mankind had sound problems in the beginning, but nobody noticed that. After the bass worked again, they blew off a hot show, excellent as always. (CG)

One of the many Finnish Folk/Viking/Metal bands that are so popular of late, Ensiferum have been around a little longer than for most it would seem, and had a large and dedicated fan base at Metalcamp. Many devotees could be seen throughout the day donning Ensiferum t-shirts and wearing the bands style of face paint. They played to the delight of fans, with enough Metal thrown in to mosh and dance to, and slower more Folk orientated numbers stand back sing along with Markus' clean vocals. (JO)




The Austrians Before the Fall managed just in time to their show, because they had some problems with a passport. Excellent Death Metal, but guitar player Rene was an eye catcher and somehow diabolic: red light on a well-trained body with a pentagram tattoo... They had a comparably big audience at Talentstage, because Ensiferum was playing at the same time on Mainstage. After them Midnightstorm should have bridged the gap until Cradle, but I liked their show so much so I stayed for their whole show.

Mainstage area was full, because so many had come just to see Cradle of Filth . In the first rows screeching teens, in the back the older fans and those who liked to see the bombastic show. That was only possible from there because the stage was so huge and high, so you could not see everything being too far in the front. When Dani started singing, I felt startled because he sounded drunk and out of tune. Being an evil little guy he had to throw stuff from stage as part of his show, so a ventilator hit a security guy, and he also threw a spot that luckily did not hit anybody.



Finally also the fans seemed to realize that something was wrong with Dani and expressed their feelings with explicit gestures. The band seemed to be pissed off, too, and they stopped playing, 30 min earlier than planned. It seems that someone thinks he can get away with anything... no bad feelings towards the band who behaved correctly, only Dani misbehaved!! I am curious if there will be an official statement to this incident.

Nervecell come from Dubai, and this alone was a reason to check them out. And I have not seen such evil Deathmetal in a long time. Also the singer seemed to be incarnated evil, I would not have enjoyed meeting him alone somewhere in the woods :) Live they are simply great, I hope they enjoyed their first Europe gig and that they will be back soon. (CG)

Metalcamp had the honour to have the loudest band on the planet finish up this evenings festivities. Motörhead have been deafening the world now for an unbelievable 32 years, and hopefully for many more to come. The trio sounded as great as ever and blast every ones brains with a fantastic set list. Of course not everyone could hear all their favourites packed into a 2 hour slot, but amongst many songs they played were Iron Fist, Killed by Death, In The Name Of Tradegy, Bomber, Rosaline - a tribute to Thin Lizzy and the late Phil Lynott, and no Motörhead show is complete without The Ace Of Spades which sounded amazing. A real bombardment of ear splitting rock and roll, this was a special show. (JO)


Saturday, July 20 2007

On the last day of Metalcamp getting up had become really difficult. Excellent Prog-Metal by the Austrians Eventide awaited me, I just hope that rumours of a split-up are nonsense. The Talent area looked funny because many fans had put benches in front of the stage to enjoy the show sitting. Well, six days of festival are exhausting. Therefore the Paganmetallers Varg entertained a partly sitting crowd. Unfortunately a guitar string broke right in the beginning, they finished the song though. Yet I had to leave earlier to see Krypteria and female singer Ji-In Cho.



Although I like Krypteria very much on CD, I had problems with them because they are not really a Metal band. The female singer won a casting show, and the other band members might have had more experience with musical than with Metal. They had to play in bright sunlight, still both guitarists wore long stylish suits, the pretty singer leather pants and a red corset. Ji-In obviously wanted to prove to all Metalheads, that she likes Rock music and indeed can sing it, she used the whole stage for her performance, she moved graciously during “Out Of Tears and sang “Sweet Revenge” and “Scream” convincingly with a powerful voice. Very professional, great attitude.

After that the Talentstage offered with Sektor 7 another Hip-Hop Crossover act, but here the Hip-Hop content was too much for me. (CG)

Gravedigger are an old time classic heavy metal band from Germany. A required taste perhaps for many, although the music, stylised by a mixture of Old School, Speed and Thrash Metal, sounded well with a monstrous sound that came across great live, was enjoyable enough, but front man Chris Boltendahl´s grating vocals leave a lot to be desired.

From Scotland, The Exploited were something a little different on this years line up, and Punks smashed their way through the crowd to get to the front of the stage as the show began, to relish in the ferocious outbreak of Speed/Thrash Punk the quintet had to offer. The guys had a much heavier sound in comparison to latter days, which appealed to Punks and Metal heads alike. Singer Wattie Buchan invited an ecstatic fan up on stage to partake in vocals for Sex and Violence, which was fun, but sounded terrible! (JO)

Talentstage offered Layment who made me smile before the show, because the Germans were cracking jokes all the time. Their music was quite appealing, heavy Prog Metal with keyboards. Funny were also their comments to their music "The last Song was about life, the next one about death", or about their home town Herne. (CG)



Sodom are currently celebrating their 25 year anniversary as a band, and that show was special for the members and fans alike, as they were also recording parts of the show for they next live DVD. The teutonic Thrash Metallers played with glee to the impressive gathering, playing a spectrum of songs from their career. It was especially nice to hear Outbreak Of Evil & Sodomy & Lust from their early Black/Thrash days. Between songs Tom Angelripper showed his gratitude to fans for their support over the years, and finished with a lengthy standing ovation. (JO)

On Talentstage played a band with the most unpronounceable name, Penitenziagite from Slovenia, one of my Underground favourites of this festival. Technically perfect Old-School Deathmetal without compromise. Great were also Burden of Grief, experienced Death Metallers from Germany, definitely no longer underground but very professional.

Blind Guardian played unplugged when I came to their show: The guitarist delivered accords, and the crowd sang the complete song, sometimes singer Hansi helped out. It was not an excellent show, but there are no bad Guardian shows anyway, therefore it was at least worth to see. Finally they had three encores, and again "Imaginations From The Other Side" and "Mirror Mirror" were among them.

I am no Black Metal fan, so I did not really know what to expect of Immortal . But I liked the band very much, they have their own style (Immor-Metal!), even headbanging. It looks great when both musicians stand side by side and move their bodies, not just the heads, in sync back and forth. And technically they are awesome, High Speed-Immor-Metal in perfection, but still you can bang your head to it. The songs are very fast but still grooving. The satanic trio had a damn good show, too, with pyros and spitting fire. Moreover, there was a gigantic video-show, showing e.g. Abbath engulfed in flames, and the whole thing morphed into the live pictures. A great finale of this year´s Metalcamp. (CG)



The last band of the festival mainstage were the one and only Immortal, and no better choice could have been made to wrap things up. And icey cold intro welcomed the stars who kicked off with The Sun No Longer Rises which sounded immense. Other songs we heard tonight: Withstand The Fall Of Time, Sons Of Northern Darkness, Tyrants, One By One, Wrath From Above, Unholy Forces Of Evil, Unslient Storms, At The Heart Of Winter and Battles In The North, all executed flawlessly. Abbath is a showman of course, bounding around the stage with his signature posing. No Immortal show is complete without Abbath´s firebreathing with looks simply amazing. A perfect ending to a great festival! (JO)

Summary: 10.000 people from 28 nations spent 5 days in a holiday paradise. Basically it was the most perfectly organised, most peaceful and longest festival I have ever been to. The sound quality on main stage was near perfection, all those video and light shows at night left you open-mouthed. A minus are only the coupon system, too complicated, and the dark paths through the woods. Still I can only recommend Metalcamp, a MUST for every Metalhead! (CG)





Christian Girstmair (CG), Jane Oliver (JO), transl. K. Weber


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