Lichtenfels, Germany28th - 29th March 2008
Ragnarök Festival Day 1: SVARTSOT, NORTHER, SKYFORGER, SWORN, TURISAS, Agalloch, Premordial, Searbliss
By now we are celebrating the fifth Ragnarök Festival in 2008. What started as a small one day festival has become a constant festival size in the recent years in spring. It might seem that the "first Pagan metal festival in Germany" will benefit from the still ongoing Viking and Pagan boom of recent years, certainly, also the success lies in the unique line-up which would be brought to us year after year. Bands like UNLEASHED, TURISAS, HELRUNAR, PRIMORDIAL or the scene sizes AGALLOCH,WOLFCHANT and XIV DARK CENTURIES played again this year. The attention of the media came along with the crowds and the public interest.
Agalloch
Even at the main site changed allot. Who wished to spend the money for merchandise in the foyer of the main building like last year would be disappointed at least temporarily. The hall was empty beside of a wardrobe, the autograph booth of the “Legacy” and the festival own T-shirt stand. Instead, there were the numerous tables of the dealers in a separate tent directly in front of the town hall; everything was offered there from T-shirts to CDs and Viking accessories. Right next a pizza wagon ranked for the first time and also an outsourced catering tent with a pleasantly low prices for chips, French fries and Co.
Primordial
The changed ground also allowed the increase of the total number of visitors to a maximum of 5,000 which was a very significant jump from the 3,000 allowed visitors in the year 2007. There is not much time to deepen the realization that at 3pm the bulk of the festival visitors was finally be poured to the merch tent and the first alcohol victims could be seen before the front of the hall who where quickly picked up by the very well organized supporters of the Red Cross. Almost one and a half hour passed till the first band was ready to play. The crowd totally stormed the front rows and even the beer stand filled up quickly with fans.
Searbliss
SVARTSOT
The folk metal band SVARTSOT was started in February 2005 in Randers (Denmark), arising from the ashes of an earlier, more black metal-based folk metal act. With the addition of Claus B. Gnudtzmann on vocals to guitarists Cris J. S. Frederiksen and Michael L. Andersen, bassist Henrik B. Christensen and drummer Marcelo Freitas, came a change in course for the lyrical content, with songs being now based on traditional Danish folklore and Nordic mythology. The music still kept elements of black metal, together with other contemporary metal-styles merged with Nordic folk music.
SVARTSOT made their job as an opener for this festival really good. The audience really seemed eager for the opportunity to party and followed the songs of the debut album ‘Ravenes Saga’ from this Danish band. I didn’t realize why Gnudtzmann exactly dragged an axe on stage but the songs were even as good as on record. A very successful debut.
Rating
Performance 8
Music: 8
Sound: 8
Light: 8
Total: 8
NORTHER
The band was founded in the year 1996, when Toni Hallio and Petri Lindroos started playing together in a formation called REQUIEM. After a time of different line-ups and experimentation, the current line-up found its shape in 2000 when Kristian Ranta joined the band and came up with the name NORTHER. Soon after, Tuomas Planman and Jukka Koskinen joined the band. The NORTHER machine kicked into gear with its debut release ‘Dreams of Endless War’ through Spinefarm Records in 2002.
NORTHER, which is currently in tour with TURISAS in Europe, played quiet early this day. The audience gained some funny moments from the singer Petri Lindroos and his plastic Viking helmet. I’m not well introduced in their latest Album ‘N’ but they played real good power metal and many fans sing vigorously at the end by ‘Frozen Angel’.
Setlist
01. My Antichrist
02. Down
03. Blackhearted
04. Unleash Hell
05. Omen
06. We Rock
07. Frozen Angel
08. Death Unlimited
09. Black Gold
10. Self-righteous Fuck
Rating
Performance: 8
Music: 8
Sound: 8
Light: 7
Total: 7.8
The running order changed a little bit after somebody on the airport put the whole musical equipment of the black metal band SWORN into a wrong plane. So SWORN and AGGALOCH changed their places which was less problematic for me but due to an error of the operator of this festival, this change was not made known and so many fans of the group AGGALOCH stormed the merch tent during their set. So most of them noticed this change after the performance of AGGALLOCH and were very disappointed.
SKYFORGER
SKYFORGER have been tempering their music in the smithy of the Thundergod since 1995. For the last decade, the band has been fighting under the flag of Latvian Pagan Metal; an extreme blend of traditional Baltic Folk music and various Metal influences ranging from Norwegian inspired Black Metal through to 80s-rooted Heavy Metal. The band's unique combination of ancient and modern influence has given them a wide appeal throughout both the Metal and Folk scenes, and has brought great variety to their song writing over the course of the five SKYFORGER albums.
We continued with the already mentioned SKYFORGER. The forge readily to their highly successful performance in 2006 and had no problems with their Pagan Metal to gather a big audience in front of the stage. The five Latvians dressed stylishly and proper like the band SVARTSOT and used a bagpipe as well. It was an amazing fact that this band got no new album on the market for the last five years.
Rating
Performance: 8
Music: 9
Sound: 8
Light: 7
Total: 8
SWORN
It all started out as a one-man project by Christoffer Kjørsvik in 2005. After the creation of a couple of songs, he founded SWORN and released the 3-track demo, entitled ‘Night Supremacy’. After intense rehearsing, SWORN hit the road and played some live shows around in the Hordaland county, which went very well. The band also planned to re-record the Night Supremacy demo with the full line-up. Later on, new songs were created, and SWORN decided to record a full-length album, instead of just re-recording the old demo. In September 2006, SWORN entered Conclave Media Studio to record the album. In March 2007, Sworn signed a record deal with Twilight Vertrieb. The debut album, entitled ‘The Alleviation’, was released on the 20th of July, 2007.
SWORN is however optically still a young band gathered around the baldhead crier John Wilson. The Black Metal they played was quite melodic but could not convince me. Therefore I took a seat on the gallery and got a little break for my heavy feet. Nevertheless a large part of the audience seemed to like the show and spend quit lot applause.
Setlist
01. Alleviation
02. Silhouettes of a Broken World
03. Vivid Visions
04. Heart of Decay
05. Beauty of my Funeral
06. Nights Blood (Dissection cover)
Rating
Performance: 7
Music: 7
Sound: 7
Light: 7
Total: 7
TURISAS
The band was founded by Mathias Nygård and Jussi Wickström in the year 1997 in Finland and is named after an ancient Finnish war god. An accurate classification of style is difficult, as the band play many types of metal. Generally, however, you can say that TURISAS mainly play epic Viking metal mixed with Finnish Folk (Humppa). The band describes its music as Battle Metal.
Their appearance at the Ragnarök Festival 2006 brought TURISAS a reputation of being arrogant. The audience seemed to have largely forgiven this so you could see some fans gathering together with their red and black make-up. The group around Warlord Nygård and Fidler Olli Vänskä stormed the stage almost 45 minutes late. They otherwise played no disco song with the exception of the experimental songs of ‘Rasputin’ or ‘Musical Masturbation’. They presented a real good mixture of their two publications ‘Battle Metal’ and ‘The Way Varangian’. The audience frenetically celebrated such songs like ‘To Holmgard and Beyond’. The female replacement on the accordion Netta Skogg was quite an eye-catcher. So TURISAS were a worthy headliner for this festival Friday.
Rating
Performance: 9
Music: 8
Sound: 7
Light: 8
Total: 8
Additionally to the reviewed bands there are some more we took pictures of:
Agalloch
Premordial
Searbliss
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