Dessau, Germany21st - 23rd May 2009
Legacy Fest Day 2: Facebreaker, Demonical, Nachtblut, Graveworm, Mercenary and Eluveitie
After surviving the first day, we were happy to be still alive and looked forward to the second day of the Legacy Fest. Getting up pretty early, we had a nice breakfast before we went to the festival ground to see some great bands like GRAVEWORM, BEHEMOTH and ARCH ENEMY. But as you will read later on, we didn't manage to get to see all of those bands.
Facebreaker
FACEBREAKER were formed in 1999, following a conversation between Janne, Roberth, Mikael and Jonas. They had similar music tastes and decided to start a brutal and straight-forward metal band. A few rehearsal-sessions later they added lead guitarist Janos to their line-up. In 2000, their first demo ‘Use your Fist’ was recorded at a local studio in the beginning of the new millennium. In 2007, a new record deal was closed and in July the band went back to Jonas Kjellgren's Black Lounge Studios to record their second full-length album ‘Dead Rotten and Hungry’ which was released last year. http://www.facebreaker.com/
Music & Performance
The Swedes FACEBREAKER were the first band we got to see this day and they were surely a great start to our second day of the Legacy Fest. With a mixture of old-school influenced death metal, a good dose of thrash metal and grooving rhythms, but not without musically denying their origin, FACEBREAKER played a nice, short and entertaining set of seven songs from their two studio albums released so far. Putting a lot of effort into it, the band and especially singer Roberth Karlsson were instantly sweating as they entered the stage. So, it was no surprise the show was a great success and provided a great execution of great music which actually deserved more than 30 minutes of stage time.
Rating
Music: 8
Performance: 7
Sound: 6
Light: - (daylight)
Total: 7.3 / 10
Demonical
DEMONICAL was spawned in March 2006 - by former Centinex members Johan Jansson (guitars & vocals), Martin Schulman (bass) and Ronnie Bergerståhl (drums) - with a mission to return to the roots of death metal and deliver a sheer dose of darkness and brutality. In December 2007, the band parted ways with vocalist Ludvig Engellau due to musical and personal reasons. DEMONICAL continued for a few months with various session vocalists until late March 2008 when Sverker “Widda” Widgren came on board as the new fulltime front man. Between December 2008 and February 2009 the band recorded their second full-length - entitled ‘Hellsworn’ - at Necromorbus Studios. It was due to release in May 2009 and supported by a headlining European tour and several summer festivals. http://www.demonical.net/
Music & Performance
Second band standing on our plan was DEMONICAL. I have to say that the amount of people standing in front of the stage was rather small. Only a couple of people managed it to get up at 2:50 p.m. to see the first bands of this day. But I have to say: the few people standing there really enjoyed the concert. They were in a good mood and so was the weather. No signs of the last thunderstorm and no cloud on the sky. And looking at the people, you could find a lot of beer which, I'm sure, contributed to the mood, too. Because of the small amount of people, we were able to stand in the first few rows, but the sound, especially from the guitars, was not that great here and a little bit washed out. DEMONICAL played a wide range of their albums. Besides some old songs, the majority of the songs came from their current album ‘Hellsworn’ which was released early this year. To their performance, you can say that they did a lot of moving on stage. And evidently, the singer couldn't handle his moves: He had some problems with the cable of his microphone which he dropped three times during the concert. It was pretty funny how this interrupted his whole try of a performance. But all in all, you can say that they did a solid show with an okay performance.
Rating
Music: 6
Performance: 6
Sound: 6
Light: - (daylight)
Total: 6 / 10
Nachtblut
NACHTBLUT was formed in 2005 by Askeroth (vocals). After writing the first couple of songs, he looked for some other people joining his band. One year later, he found those people and NACHTBLUT was complete. With the thought of singing about problems of our society they recorded two CDs: ‘Antik’ and ‘Das Erste Abendmahl’. http://www.myspace.de/nachtblutgefluester
Music & Performance
I had heard NACHTBLUT before; in fact they are my friends on MySpace. So, I had high expectations to this band. The Stardust Stage was pretty crowded when they began their show, of course too early. Right from the beginning, the people were asked to clap and sing along. If you ask me, it was pretty arrogant of them to ask for that right at the beginning of the show.
They are not that huge and have to earn their fame. Besides that, their music was pretty good with overall good compositions. Although the guitars were pretty thin, I was persuaded by their music. But if you don't like CRADLE OF FILTH you probably won't like NACHTBLUT either. Especially Askeroth’s look and habit reminded of Danny Filth and the band’s sound was also pretty similar, at least during the live experience. After thinking of a pretty arrogant band, something happened I didn't expect. The bassist came down the stage and gave his cigarette and a half cup of beer to people in the first row. Pretty nice gesture! All in all, it was a pretty ok concert with a nice mood of the audience. They will definitely stay my friends on MySpace.
Rating
Music: 7
Performance: 6
Sound: 6
Light: 8
Total: 6.7 / 10
Graveworm
GRAVEWORM is a dark metal band with strong influences from black metal, gothic metal (on older albums) and death metal (on the two most recent albums). Originating from Brunico, Italy, they formed in 1992. Even before GRAVEWORM released any demo they got signed by Serenades Records, who saw a show of the band close to their hometown Brunico. GRAVEWORM was signed in 1997, releasing their first EP, ‘Eternal Winds’, in that same year. During their first tour together with CREMATORY, THERION and LAKE OF TEARS, the band promoted the album ‘When Daylight's Gone’. GRAVEWORM's next album is due on June 19, 2009 and features Karsten Jäger as a guest musician. http://www.graveworm.de/
Music & Performance
Although it was very crowded and we had to stay in one of the rear lines, the sound got better to this point - the best condition to enjoy the gig of the Italian melodic death / black metal band GRAVEWORM. But wait - did I just write Italian? Why did vocalist Stefan Fiori spoke German without any notable accent? And why did a black metal band request the audience in nearly every song to freak out and form mosh pits or walls of death? Anyway, not involved in that, I was about to hear some older stuff like ‘Legions Unleashed’, recent material like ‘Touch of Hate’ or ‘Hateful Design’ as well as two brand new songs from their upcoming CD in the following 45 minutes. The second one of these insights was completed by a guest appearance of Karsten "Jagger" Jäger from DISBELIEF who also provided additional vocals on the album and was scheduled to play later that day with his band as well. We were also told the band played the day before on “Z7 Metal Dayz” in Switzerland and the day after at the “Summer Nights Open Air” in Austria, so there would be a comparison between the countries, so the audience was motivated to have some extra fun - I definitely had some.
Rating
Music: 8
Performance: 8
Sound: 7
Light: - (daylight)
Total: 7.8 / 10
Mercenary
MERCENARY is a six-piece metal band from Denmark that was formed in 1991. Although they are usually labelled as a melodic death metal band, they use aspects of power metal in their music, as well as thrash metal in their earlier work. In 2002, the band decided to expand their sound with the addition of pianist Morten Sandager, who greatly contributed with his keyboard as well as his brother Mikkel, who helped expand their songs with vocals into their songs. On August 1, 2006, MERCENARY released a compilation of their early demos, titled ‘Retrospective’, and on August 22, their new album, ‘The Hours that Remain’, was released. Their next album ‘Architect of Lies’ was released in March 2008. http://www.mercenary.dk/
Music & Performance
‘11 Dreams’ is one of my favourite albums of all times, providing superb songwriting, a great production and a motivated and skilled band playing a fresh mixture of power metal with some harsh vocals here and there. This album is the definition of power metal I enjoy. Unfortunately MERCENARY released a just good album after that and a very mediocre one after that, but I always wanted to see this band live, and so I waited for things to come. The majority of the people who just cheered for GRAVEWORM didn’t share my anticipation, so you were able to get a place in the centre of the first three rows till the very beginning - it was very empty in front of the stage, but the Danes weren’t impressed by that. Energetic as I expected them to be, they entered the stage and played 5 out of 7 songs from the latest ‘Architect of Lies’, which I couldn’t really enjoy that much and just one from the okay ‘The hours that remain’. But they did a very good job, delivering great vocals parts (one of the highest pitched screams I have ever heard) and an overall absolutely solid collaboration of instrumental work. Somehow I expected to be more blown away, which not occurred. In the meantime the heaven got covered in deepest pitch black I decided to leave for the camp not to get soaked in water, so I left after the 6th song, missing the lat song ‘Firesoul’ from ‘11 dreams’. Great!
Setlist
01. Black and Hollow
02. Bloodsong
03. Soul Decision
04. The endless fall
05. Death Connection
06. Execution Style
07. Firesoul
Rating
Music: 7
Performance: 8
Sound: 6
Light: - (daylight)
Total: 7.2 / 10
Eluveitie
The band has originally been formed by mastermind Chrigel Glanzmann in winter 2002 as a mere studio project; their first EP ‘Vên’ was recorded in 2003, already unique in it's way of having the Folk-part being on an equal footing with the Metal instruments. This self-financed MCD was ardently received by the scene, zines etc. and sold out within a few months. In 2004, ELUVEITIE signed to the Dutch label Fear Dark Records, which released a re-mastered (and partly re-recorded) version of ‘Vên’, and continued as a "real" band, playing gigs together with bands such as CRUACHAN, KORPIKLAANI and SKYFORGER. On June 4, 2008, brothers Rafi Kirder and Sevan Kirder (bassist and bagpipe player, respectively) announced on their MySpace pages that they would leave ELUVEITIE following their concert at the Metal Camp Open Air in Slovenia on July 8, 2008. ELUVEITIE's next project, ‘Evocation’, was announced in 2008, and should take the form of a two-disc concept acoustic album. http://www.eluveitie.ch/
Music & Performance
Well, actually I hoped to a great concert with some fantastic music but it all came different. Starting at the beginning... ELUVEITIE have released some albums and their most recent one ‘Slanía’ (before the acoustic album) definitely doesn't belong to their greater ones but I was still anxious to see how they would do on stage. First thing I noticed was that the twins were missing which I found to be pretty sad since I really liked those two. Christian “Chrigel” Glanzmann (vocals) came on stage and immediately started getting the audience going. It was quite nice to see how fast the people enjoyed the music that much. The sound wasn't the best though. You couldn't hear all of the instruments and even the vocals were really quiet but during the first songs it became better. Their music wasn't that bad, all knew how to play their instruments really well and despite this fact their music was still pretty lame and boring. Chrigel tried to cover it with his intense vocals but didn't manage it. The back-up vocals from Anna and Meri weren't that good because they didn't hit all the notes. Well, they didn't really persuaded me that much as they did on their CDs before. Actually, they disappointed me and when I looked above the audience, I was probably one of the few ones who didn't like it.
Setlist
01. Intro (Sacrapos)
02. Inis Mona
03. Bloodstained Ground
04. Gray Sublime Archon
05. Primordial Breath
06. Somber Lay
07. Slanias Song
08. Brictom
09. Memento
10. Omnos
11. Your Gaulish War
12. Uis Elveti
13. Tegernako
Rating
Music: 6
Performance: 6
Sound: 5
Light: - (daylight)
Total: 5.8 / 10
At the end of the show, a huge storm broke down… and then, the stage did, too. So, we had to run back to the camping ground to save our stuff. We needed 10 people to hold the pavilions and our tent. Everything was broken and went. Around us, tents were flying, grills were flying, pavilions were flying… everything was flying. It took us quite a while to get everything at its place and well, we didn't manage all of the stuff. The rest was ready for the trash can. And since we were completely wet, we had to get new clothes and dry somehow to not get sick. And well, we didn't make it to the last two bands. And we were surely not the only ones... Anyway the whole team did an absolutely great job by putting BEHEMOTH onto the Stardust Stage to have time to fix the Main Stage for that day’s headliner ARCH ENEMY.
All pictures by Anne Kuhfuß
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