Last night was Paganfest, easily the best metal festival I’ve ever attended (which, to be honest, isn’t saying very much, as the U.S. isn’t exactly big on festivals). It was a good time. As the venue website declares:

HEIDENFEST

* Nur fürs Paganfest: Met- Ausschank (Trinkhörner sind erlaubt)

[translation]

PAGANFEST

* Only for Paganfest: Mead bar (drinking horns allowed)

That’s got to be the greatest exception ever. Drinking horns were indeed allowed, and how. I was only of the only people there without one, and also without full pelt garb.

Step one: get into a sold-out show

I arrived late to the show, with my Finnish comrade, due to a minor mishap. Having heard from everyone multiple times that there was no way in hell we were getting in without tickets, as the festival had been sold out for weeks, we decided to give it a go anyway. First we tried the back entrance, and acted ignorant when asked for tickets. “Well, we thought the line out front was for people with them, so we figured we’d come back here to buy them. No? Go back out front? OK, no problem, man.” The whole time we were scoping out places to hop the fence, but security was quite heavy, especially around the easily hoppable sections of fencing.

Tuomas isn’t very confident with his German—although his English puts my German to shame—so I decided to do the talking with the security guard at the main gate. She said, “No. No way in hell, without a ticket. This has been sold out for weeks. Yes, I know you guys really want to see these bands, but my job is to make sure that no one without a ticket gets in. Sorry.”

Fortunately, I’m majoring in making friends. I talked with her for a little bit, and spun some bullshit like, “I know it’s completely out of the question for us to get in, but is there anyway we can at least just buy a T-shirt for the festival? We love these bands so much and we just want to be able to have something from the show, even if we don’t get to see them.” That definitely struck a chord of empathy with the guard, and I let it resonate for a bit before trying anything else. She said that maybe if we came back in an hour, there would be merch outside that we could pick up, possibly even at a discount. She recommended another club, with a beer garden, where we could go to kill time.

I of course said this was a wonderful idea, and thanked her profusely. Then Tuomas and I fell back a little bit and discussed our options. I translated my conversation with the guard (into English, not Finnish!) and also explained that I thought there was hope. We were already a little buzzed from the beers we’d had at my place before heading out, so we figured what the hell, let’s hang out and see what happens. Several minutes later, the same security guard comes up to me and says in a low voice, “Leave now. Come back in 10 minutes. Perhaps my colleague can help you.”

We booked it. I set an alarm on my phone for 8 minutes so that we’d be back in just the right amount of time, and Tuomas and I started talking about the bands playing. We were laughing that I hadn’t understood who was playing, because I’d always pronounced the bandname Týr as teer instead of the proper toorr. While joking around and taking stupid pictures of each other, the security guard came up to me again and said, “There, that’s my coworker. Talk to him. He’s on the phone now but when he’s off he’ll help you.”

We hovered so close to the guy we were practically hugging him. As soon as he snapped his cell phone shut, he looked us up and down, then gestured for us to follow him—quietly. We get in through the Guest List Only door, and he introduces us to a colleague of his, who wants money. She says, “That’ll be 28.” Not bad at all! I hand her 40. The guy says, “No, that won’t do. It has to be exact.” Well, shit. I didn’t know what to do about that, and I figured I was just about to get ripped off 12 bucks. Funny thing is, I didn’t really have a problem with this. But a suggestion is made that the woman break my bills, giving me a 20, a 10, and then another 10 in coins. Then I paid the 28 exactly. I still fail to see the point of this, but who the hell cares, because it got me in. Tuomas gets the same deal, we tip the nice man 5 bucks, and we’re on our way to forging through the crowd, trying to get near the stage.

Finding a place in the crowd

The people at this show were all-out diehard fans of folk metal, and it showed.

I think my favorite was this dude, whom I headbanged with throughout most of the show, until I was elected to crowdsurf and thrown over the front rail. (That was during Ensiferum, so I’d gotten a lot of pictures by that point, and it was OK by me. Plus, I loved those guys.)

While still standing near the back upon arriving, Tuomas treated me to a few beers as a thank-you for my rapport-building prowess. Again, as we’d arrived late, we’d already missed Equilibrium and Eluvietie (about whom I’ve heard great things), but we were able to catch Týr setting up, and their set in full force.

The bands

Týr

I love these guys. Their Ragnarok album blows me away every time I put it on, and it’s one of those epics discs that you have to listen to in its entirety, the whole way through, every time. The crowd dug them, hard.

Absolutely epic. I’ve also thrown up a video of the last part of Hail To The Hammer, in which the sound quality is even lower than above, but the crowd’s enthusiasm is even greater.

Moonsorrow

I’ve been dying to see these guys live. I haven’t listened to any Moonsorrow for years, and so as soon as they started playing, opening with Raunioilla (which Tuomas kindly informed me means “Upon The Ruins,” a freaking killer songtitle), I was taken back about 4 years, to the time I used to spin that CD every morning, walking to classes.

As is to be expected from these guys, they were only able to play about 3 or 4 songs during their 45-minute set, but that worked beautifully. Each song has such flowing dynamic contrast that they really worked the crowd, shifting from headbanging to clapping to singing and then back again.

Here’s a brief clip from Raunioilla, by far my favorite song of theirs. I say “brief” when it’s actually the first 3 minutes of a 13-minute song, so beware.

[audio:raunioilla-intro.mp3]

For the record, I freaking love bands who give a mic to everyone in the band. (Yes, even the drummer is wearing a headset.)

Korpiklaani

I was so not ready for these guys. I’ve called them “fratboy folk” before, because pretty much every one of their songs is about drinking, rather than fighting, but I’d failed to realize what this was going to mean to a crowd in Munich. Singing about beer is without a doubt the best way to win the hearts of a crowd in this city, and Korpiklaani wielded the crowd like the gods they are.

To get a good idea of their sound, check out this quip from their Wiki page.

The music of Korpiklaani ranges from the violin-and-guitar paean to the Finnish god of fermentation Pellonpekko, to the “typical” trollish metal “Wooden Pints”, to “Crows Bring The Spring”.

Yeah, that’s about right. Dancing galore. Wannabe vikings, arm-in-arm, spinning round and round and shouting at the top of their lungs things like, “Beer, beer! Beer, beer!”

And, of course, they’re not afraid to get down and folky. I wasn’t expecting it, but the bastards went ahead and did a live rendition of Shaman Drum, of which I only caught the end on camera.

It was far more haunting live than it seems here. As I was making the video, I wanted to make sure to cut off the explosion of cheers from the crowd as the song ended, which I thought it would make for better resonance on video, but I was completely wrong. The crowd reaction would only add to the experience. Ah, well.

Ensiferum

I finally, finally got to see Ensiferum live. It’s a damn shame Jari Mäenpää wasn’t with them, but the dude from Norther did a pretty damn good job on vocals. The opened, of course, with Iron, and the crowd went nuts. Unfortunately for Ensiferum, Korpiklaani had absolutely drained the audience with all the dancing, so the first few Ensiferum songs were met with relatively tame enthusiasm. Still, Ensiferum cleaned up.

My sole complaint regarding the new vocalist was that during the solo for Iron, he didn’t play the original. He referenced it in his sweeps, but he brought in too much of his own technique. I’m still torn as to whether this was a shameless appropriation of a classic song by a newcomer who can’t fill Jari’s shoes, or a reverant reticence to mar a beautiful, untouchable thing with his own playing. In my opinion, it’s more appropriate to lay insufficient offerings at the altar of a metal god than to build a new altar, which it seemed to me like he was doing.

This was partly made up for, though, by one of my favorite moments from the whole night, when Ensiferum fulfilled their duty as headliners and played part of a classic metal song. Being from the North, it would have been completely inappropriate to toss yet another tribute onto Dimebag Darrell’s burial mound. I’m glad they didn’t. They went the extra mile and played the main riff from the father of all battle metal songs, The Trooper.

While the band did play a stellar setlist, they left off Treacherous Gods, which thrilled me—because they did it as an encore. I made a video of the whole song, but it’s pretty poor quality, so I won’t embed it. I’ll see how it turns out upon YouTubeification, and might throw up a link to it later after it’s finished processing.

Probably the highlight of their set was the crowd singing along to the bridge of “Lai Lai Hei,” but sadly I don’t have video of it. Take my word for it, though: it was awesome.

The land of hope and glory

I know this was a disastrously protracted post, but I couldn’t help but gush about this show. I encourage you to listen to all the bands’ material at length, as everyone who played (well, I can’t vouch for Equilibrium) offers absolutely stellar folk metal.

Stay folk.

And of course I’m flat broke, so I won’t be going. I’m rather pleased, though, as I have been to a ton of concerts already this fall, so missing this one doesn’t burn too much.

Not so bad. I have a quiet weekend, so I’ll go back to reading and studying like a proper, non-metalhead student.

I’m gonna freaking crank the Six Feet Under and Nile tonight, though.

I have been listening to these guys since 2002, when their first CD came out. They’re now still touring for their third, which came out last fall, and which I don’t like particularly well. Unfortunately, their set tonight was pretty much all new material, playing almost every track off the new album, and very little else. Their set was so:

1. The Gale
2. Mortal Share
3. Drawn To Black
4. Change Of Heart
5. Bereavement
6. The Killjoy
7. The Day It All Came Down
8. Devoid Of Caring

Compare with the setlist I found online from their American tour this year (I had just arrived in Germany and so missed their U.S. dates). So all in all, the material they played simply wasn’t very good. But their performance was phenomenal. The vocals were much too quiet, but all the band members were spot-on in their playing.

Isn’t that an impressive picture? The evening was full of them, actually.

Unfortunately, the second band up, Swallow The Sun, played such a horribly boring set that I actually left in the middle of it, not evening sticking around for what was sure to be a class act by Amorphis. Yeah, Swallow The Sun were that bad.

I mean, maybe their material is selling better than Insomnium’s right now for some bizarre reason, but I just can’t understand how someone can organize a concert such that a melodic death metal band is followed by a doom metal band. Slowing the tempo down like that is the opposite of what metal concerts are about. Swallow The Sun would have been the perfect openers, as my bros and I could have knocked back a few beers, chilled, tapped our feet to their 50bpm tempo, so slow you can’t even headbang to it, and then smashed the bottles and crowdsurfed ourselves stupid while Insomnium played.

OK, I think I figured out why the organized it the way they did. But I still object.

And no, Insomnium did not play “Death Walked The Earth.” Unfortunate, yes, but they did play both “Bereavement” and “The Day It All Came Down” from that CD. Killer.

And because I can never end a post gracefully, take these two quotes.

From “Daughter Of The Moon“:

Slender the shape in night, unbearable the beauty
Shining in the silvery light, watching me with wistful eyes
Evanescent this vision, unattainable this illusion
But an image in my troubled dreams, hewn out of yearning and rue

From “Shades Of Deep Green“:

Neither the glittering dew on moors, nor the the whispering wind in dales
But only these shadows of green can remind me of her

\m/

The venue was a different one than I usually go to, and substantially larger, though still no seats or anything. (It’s called Georg Else Halle instead of Backstage, and is near the “other” very large train station in Munich, which means it’s farther away from my place than Backstage is.) Nonetheless, the place was pretty packed. In fact, on Thursday afternoon, after classes, I headed downtown to scoop up some tickets for the show that night, and called Sascha to see whether he’d bought his. “Dude. I was there this morning. They’re already sold out.”

This depressed me more than I can say, but fortunately Sascha had the bright idea of going anyway, to see whether there would still be tickets available at the window, and there were. Thirty bucks a pop, ouch, but still for sale, so no problem.

On the train, I met a 60-year-old Dimmu Borgir fan. How freaking cool is that? Here he is:

The best part is that later that night I saw him in the crowd. Actually, I kind of got thrown into him. He was right up on the front rail, headbanging with horns high, elbowing in the face every mosher who got near him. What a dude, man.

The opener of the night was a band called Engel, who were pretty OK. Did a great job working the crowd as an opener, but it wasn’t too difficult, as all the singer had to do was say, “So, who’s ready to see Amon Amarth?” and people were ripping out organs and hurling them at the stage. At least, I know I did.

When Amon Amarth stepped out, oh man, it was intense. They opened, of course, with “Valhall Awaits Me,” opening track on the newest CD. From there they went straight into “Death In Fire,” after making the crowd scream the name of the song and hurl more organs for a minute or two. Their set list was roughly so:

1. Valhall Awaits Me
2. Death In Fire
3. Cry Of The Black Birds
4. Runes To My Memory
5. Asator
6. Gods Of War Arise
7. Pursuit Of Vikings

They played another song or two, but I can’t really remember what they could have been. Maybe “Bloodshed,” maybe something else off The Fate Of Norns, I don’t remember. To be fair, it’s very hard to distinguish between a lot of their songs lyrically, especially when you’re totally drunk, both from beer and headbutts.

I know they didn’t play “Down The Slopes Of Death” and also not “The Dragons’ Flight Across The Waves,” which are probably my favorite songs of theirs next to “Death In Fire.”

But the songs they did play were definitely winners, and man did the crowd go nuts over their stuff. Every person there knew every word to every song, and the vocalist was loving it. The mic was over the crowd easily as much as it was in the hands of the vocalist. I made some videos of their set, mostly of the crowd, but it got me so pumped that I’m going to dedicate another post to discussing the Vikingage at that show. Just wow, man.

I leave you with a picture of horns and of Sascha headbanging like a pro.

That is all for now.

Deadlock, on the other hand, are straight up melodic death metal, though they do tend to lean on metalcore-inspired breakdowns and open string riffing. But whatever, they’re great, and it was nice to actually hear a vocalist yell “Danke schön!” to the crowd at the end of a song.

As good as the show was, it definitely had its downsides. The band is very young. They’ve only one CD to their name, meaning that their set consisted entirely of songs from a single album, just mixed up in order. Thank god for the fresh order, at least. But this is obviously their first major tour, as the band members were very visibly tired.

The female vocalist would waver out of tune every now and then, her voice at times noticeably ragged. I’m sure other than their studio time, she’s never sung this much in her life. She’s also sore from being on stage, as she kept favoring her neck, certainly from all the headbanging she’s been doing.

So as not to sound like I fell in love with the girl, I’ll now mention another band member: the lead guitarist. He played his sweaty heart out, but had to several times break away from a band-wide headbanging session in order to concentrate on his playing. Even then, he still messed up the descending pull-off riff in the solo to We All Shall Bleed, which I’m happy to say I got a video of.

Overall it was awesome to see some German bands kick ass in Germany, with German fans going nuts. The male vocalist even gave the mic to the crowd to let them open up We All Shall Bleed with the “Come on motherfuckers!” the song starts with.

[qt:/blog/pics/video/we_all_shall_bleed.mp4 320 256]

There are also a few pictures up from that night, but I didn’t take very many. I was pretty pleased with the video

External link to the video here.

Well, isn’t that depressing?

I’m off to pick up some drinks before the cornerstore closes, then it’s off to German Melodic Death Metal land, with long streaming blonde hair galore, chesty double bass punch, DDR-inspired electronica fills, open-string solo riffs, and even some female vocals thrown in the mix, in case the music wasn’t accessible enough. Although good ol’ metalcore Neaera will be closing, I should think.

I vow that my brain has a sufficiently fast connection to enjoy the concert.

I asked my bro Google about these Naerea chaps, and all it had to say was that it’s either this dude from Bremen, or a bizarre species of mollusk that for some reason is only evidenced in Switzerland of all places. Another possibility was a fan fiction fantasy world for D&D. None of these sound promising.

Buried all the way on page 2 of the Google results was a review of a concert from January 2007 where the author mentions a band by the name of “Naerea.” Ah-ha! He says they are pretty decent live, but that depends on whether one digs Thrash-Death metal. Either way, they know how to get a crowd moving it seems.

This investigation was launched because allegedly these dudes are headlining tonight at the Deadlock concert.

Obviously, by looking up the event on Last.fm I found out that I had been spelling the band’s name wrong. Thanks for nothing, Google.

I’d assumed doors were at 7pm and the show started at 8pm, but as I approached the venue around 7:30pm, I could hear there was a band on already. And it was very obviously Sonic Syndicate, as from a block away I could discern perfectly the burst-fire metalcore double bass stylings. I paid my 20€ and pushed my way through the hordes at the merch tables, made it onto the floor so I could watch Sonic Syndicate’s set. I was quite blown away by how well the crowd knew their material. I have both CDs, but I know that in the U.S. they’re a pretty obscure band still. Swedish metalcore isn’t taken very seriously in the States. (And yes, they’re metalcore. They might have melodeath influences, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re straight up metalcore. So no arguing in the comments, Jordan! <3)

After their set, the changing of the guard took place, with the metalcore kids receding to the merch tables, and all the melodeath fans lurching forward to fill the empty places on the floor. Dark Tranquillity came on next, and played a solid set. It was a bit short, and heavy on the new material, but they got the crowd moving and screaming along to the new songs. They even played a soft ballad from the new CD, called Misery’s Crown. One of my favorites! The setlist, near as I can remember, was so:

1. Terminus (Where Death Is Most Alive)
2. The Treason Wall
3. Focus Shift
4. The Lesser Faith
5. The Wonders At Your Feet
6. Misery’s Crown
7. Punish My Heaven
8. The New Build

Next was Soilwork. I had really thought that the crowd was into Sonic Syndicate, but then came Dark Tranquillity, and I realized people were probably here for them. But as soon as the setup was finished for Soilwork, the lights dimmed, fog machines clicked on, and the SOILWORK banner was illuminated, the place went nuts. They stepped out on stage and opened with Bastard Chain.

I’ve read many times that the A Predator’s Portrait CD sold like bratwurst in Germany, and that night proved it to me. Soilwork knows their fans, and they played the strongest set of back-to-back stunners I’ve ever seen. Even though they’re Swedish melodic death metal, whose fans are usually pretty chill, last night was by far the most violent concert I’ve ever been to. By the time Soilwork went on, I was pretty close to the front rail, and I still got sucked into the enormous pit that erupted when they announced they were about to play One With The Flies. Their set list was approximately so:

1. Bastard Chain
2. As We Speak
3. One With The Flies
4. Rejection Role
5. Exile
6. Distance
7. Follow The Hollow
8. Stabbing The Drama
9. Nerve

Never have I seen a band offer such a succession of massive hits live. Ten thousand thumbs up to these guys.

I don’t have any pictures from the night, because it was much too chaotic for that. I was headbutting people left and right just to stay sane. My watch was also ripped off my arm and thrown to the wolves, so I’ll have to replace that at some point. Though I do finally have a cell phone, so at least I have some form of time-keeping device.

I’ll say nothing about Caliban, the headliners. They were pretty lame, but they’re from Germany, so they got top spot. And I don’t think Soilwork liked supporting them, because Strid (the vocalist) kept making the crowd yell for “Swedish metal.” Burn.

This is going to be one crazy year of concerts, man.

Turisas were pretty intense. They came out on stage in full Viking warrior attire, amid the orchestral crashes of the opening track on their first CD. Stream some here if you haven’t heard their particular brand of Finnish folk viking metal [sic]. The vocalist looked particularly hardcore:

Following Turisas were Annihilator, who played a strong set of classic thrash. Most of the riffs were straight out of the book of Megadeth, but the crowd dug them, and that always makes for a good set. I myself can definitely use some more thrash influence in my own riffs, so I’m glad I got to see them.

Iced Earth were phenomenal. As soon as they stepped on stage, a little part of me died, as I finally came to terms with the fact that Matt Barlow really had left the band, and I’d have to put up with the astoundingly different vocal stylings of Tim “Ripper” Owens. It was still an Iced Earth show, and they played a strong list, if a bit heavy on the new material (which I of course don’t dig).

As their final encore, they played “Iced Earth,” as everyone had been expecting. The crowd sang along with the final guitar riff, and I got video of it, albeit it with horrible audio quality. I should point out that although it’s a bit beyond the range of the mic in my camera, Tim holds a high-pitched wail for a very long time, and releases it just before the video ends. It’s impressive, to say the least.

[qt:http://www.conorschaefer.com/blog/pics/icedearth-icedearth-small.mp4 320 256]

Remember, full album is up on Flickr. Also, if anybody has trouble with that embedded video, please let me know. Still trying to work out a decent way of doing that, so I don’t have to have videos load in a new tab each time. If you do have trouble, though, here’s the direct link to the video.