Il portale della musica Heavy Metal

Hammer Open Air 2011 - Day 2 - 7/16/2011 - Ilmaristen Metsäpirtti - Lieto (FI)

Saturday 16th

The aftershow of the day before didn’t leave much room for sleeping, so it’s still with my eyes half closed and yawning that I approach the bus station of Turku to reach once again the festival location for the second day. The weather is surprisingly better, as for good part of the day there will even be some sunlight hitting the area from between the clowds, but still it’s not too hot, which is honestly a very good thing for the hundreads of metalheads gathered here today.
Stormheit opens the day with its patriotic and pagan music, taken especially from the new (and not only good but also quite interesting) “Chronicon Finlandiae”. One of my personal favourite of the show is “Kalevan Kansa”, while the people gathered in the front, definitely more than yesterday, sing along with the guys these chants of the Finnish tradition. It comes useless after all this explanation to ask yourself why there were 2 big Finnish flags in front of the stage. Go Suomi!
Completely a different register for Morbid Insulter, irreverent with everything and everyone, with an attitude at time annoying for the crowd, these Swedish guys come here covered in fake blood and bones, with a spine attached to the microphone stand of the vocalist/guitar player. The bass player wears a sky mask in order not to show his face, but has absolutely no problems to take out his penis. That’s some bad taste. The music is black metal with thrash influences, but nothing that makes you jump up in excitement.
I’m surely looking forward more for Totalselfhatred, which I saw last time in Tuska’s aftershow with Shining last summer, and had positively impressed me since then. “Apocalypse In Your Heart”, the new album, is obviously well represented in their set, but there’s still room for “classics” from the debut record. The three-vocal setting works well, and the guys in the front are well supported by the work of M. and I., the latest additions to the band, at the keys and drums respectively. I would have found these guys better to play the same day as Mortifera, but it’s still a nice addition to this festival, waiting to see them again in a week in Helsinki.
I didn’t know what to expect when I stopped by to see Morbus Chron, but I was surprised to hear how good they sounded. This death metal band from Sweden actually kicked ass on stage! And even though they have only one full-length, they got me very curious into exploring more about their music. That’s what festivals are for!
I remember seeing Merrimack last year in Germany, but they didn’t really leave me such an impression since I couldn’t remember much about the show itself. This time the French band takes a small revenge by making me follow their show more thoroughly, as things apparently gets interesting in this case when you have a smaller stage and better contact with the crowd. Not to mention that last year when I saw them I was practically sinking in 30cm of mud under a neverending rain.
Said this, Vestal shows a nice act on stage, and so the band of the guitarist Perversifier catch the attention of these Finnish blacksters, who really seems to enjoy the gig. If next time it’ll be even better, I might actually begin to seriously follow them more myself! Soon after this comes another of the many Swedish bands of the day: Isole. The definition composed by the words “epic” and “doom” should make it for a pretty good combo, but not being very familiar with the band I find it a bit heavy to digest in the middle of the afternoon. This music is probably something I would have liked a lot in a different setting, but after the energy given me by the previous two shows in the long run I start to lose interest, and begin to focus on the preparations for one of the seemingly most awaited shows of the festival.
That’s when Mr. Satanic Warmaster makes his appearance among the shouting of his faithful followers. There is so much people already at this point that it would seem as if it’s the headliner already. I was very disappointed about the cancellation of the show (independent from the band) at Hellfest, and so I was looking forward to this gig. Which showed up to be actually very good. True black metal as it should be done, no more, no less. Plus all the weird faces of SW who keeps showing his tongue to the audience, spitting beer or moking the cross attached to his black tights.
The peculiar venomous voice of the singer is followed by the audience who sings along most of the time, as song such as “True Blackness” or “Vampiric Tyrant” goes by, all really excited in front of their local hero of blasphemy and darkness. That’s a Finnish thing. You just go with the flow. No matter if there were some slight tech issues at the very beginning of the show, the atmosphere goes up and up until in the end comes a surprising guest appearance of Stormheit, to sing no less than “Fighting The World” by Manowar! Which makes for a funny ending, and probably the most involving concert of the weekend.
That makes it a bit harder for Interment to keep up soon after, but the Swedes lead by the Demonical duo Johan Jansson/Martin Schulman still makes it worth to follow them for those 45 mins. After a few demos in the early nineties, their debut “Into The Crypts of Blasphemy” turns out to be pretty good live, and it shows also to the headbanging people in the front. The only thing is that the place seems at times a bit too small for these kind of bands, but as the guys seems to be enjoying both on and off stage, I guess that’s still ok. After all the guys put up an interesting performance, so much that there’s nobody around in front of the other stage until In Solitude’s gig is about to start.
The last of the long list of Swedish bands already made a good impression on me on the French soil last month, so here I am again to watch these young guys (the bass player actually looks a teenager) as they start with the titletrack of their new “The World, The Flesh, The Devil”. Still with their traditional smoking incense sticks taped to the monitors, the singer shying out a little in the back wearing his usual consumed leather jacket and fox fur around his neck, these guys are somehow peculiar and bring a fresh wave in the Swedish scene.
“Demons” and “Serpents Are Rising” show just that, even though the only one who’s really actively interacting with the audience appears to be the bass player, with the two guitarists a bit on their own, and the vocalist Pelle spending most of the time just in front of the drums, carrying around the microphone stand for the whole stage.
Once again it’s “Witches Sabbath” that ends their show, after all nothing to complain about, but still not even comparable to the excitement the people had just a couple of hours before.
Another band I was curious to check out is the German Darkened Nocturn Slaughtercult, as it doesn’t happen every day to see a female-fronted black metal band. The leader Onielar, with her awfully long blonde hair, comes on stage showing an inverted cross, and greets his fans (and some poor photographers) by spitting blood on them. Everyone is happily covered in red and keeps shouting like nothing happened.
The music is after all quite good, and some vocal parts of the singer/guitar player are impressive. You don’t want to mess around with this girl or she’ll blow your mind up with her screams! But apart from this once you get to listen to it, you can get carried away in the show. Another pleasant discovery from this festival, at the very least since even if I heard the band before, I never saw them live till now.
But the greatest expectations for me today were all towards Autopsy, which I can safely say I was probably one of the very few people who had the luck to see live already before this night, among all the guys in the audience. And that one was an hell of a great show!
The band itself is very laid back, since they spend a lot of time with no complaints whatsoever to sign albums and take photos with their fans in the afternoon. Of course the setting is way different than the one of last year’s PartySan Open Air where they played in front of about 10,000 people on a much bigger stage. But the stage doesn’t make the band, and the guys from San Francisco show to have lots of fun playing even here, especially Eric Cutler and Danny Coralles, with the newest addiction of the former Abscess Joe Allen to the band’s rank.
But the mastermind is still Chris Reifert, and man, that dude sure is great to handle drums and vocals! After 16 years from the previous record, the recently reformed band has some fresh material to display with the new “Macabre Eternal”, preceded by the single “The Tomb Within”. Fortunately there’s enough room for the old classics as well, and this turns out to be a very inflamed concert for the audience, which is now filling the festival area almost completely.
Tonight I’m much better organized than yesterday, so with the others we manage to get a taxi as soon as the show is finished, and so I’m able to arrive at the aftershow club right a couple of minutes before the first band starts to play.

(see at the bottom of the page for the photos of the day)

Aftershow at Klubi, Turku

This time it’s way easier to find the right path inside this strange club, in fact, they closed the doors that link the disco-side with the live-side with the whatever-side of Klubi. It must have created quite a ruckus the night before to have all those evil guys dressed in black shirts and covered with studs and spikes wander all around the place...
I came here early on purpose, because I had heard many good things about Devastracktor, and I must say they were true! This local thrash metal band, gathering former Axegressor and Frostbitten Kingdom guys among the others, has a really good vibe, and works very well as a warming act for the English headliner.
The band got the crowd headbanging and even a small mosh at some point in the middle of the room, especially with songs like “Devastracktor Battalion” or the overwhelming “Poser Disposer”. Congratulations to these guys for their energy on stage, and I’ll definitely try to see them again when possible.
The long awaited moment, and the very last band of the weekend, is instead coming as Angel Witch approaches the stage. The show in Hellfest was really good, or at least I liked it a lot even if it was around noon, here the atmosphere is quite different, but still the audience goes wild when hearing “Gorgon”, “Sorceress” or “White Witch”. Bill Steer (does Carcass ring any bell?) is a reliable riff-machine again, and Kevin Heybourne, the only original member left, keeps the glory of the angel witch going on through these classics of NWOBHM. Quite the difference compared to the kind of music we have been listening to all the weekend.
The fans are really crazy anyway, like the day before with Jex Thoth, it must be part the drunkness, part the adrenaline, but it seems the show is a real success for the audience. Sadly it doesn’t really last much, as in about 1 hour only, we are already listening to “Baphomet”, which preceeds we all now what: “Angel Witch”!
Needless to say, everyone in the hall sings together with the band in their most famous anthem, which makes as a closure for the night, but also wraps up this whole festival. Overall very well organized, and a really positive experience.
Now it’s finally time to have dinner, at 3:30AM, in the nearby pizza place. A proper prize after all this “gigging” of the past two days! And since the festival seems very promising and with a great potential, I’m already looking forward to HOA 2012!


Photos:
Angel Witch


Devastractor


Autopsy


Darkened Nocturn Slaughtercult


In Solitude


Interment


Satanic Warmaster


Isole


Merrimack


Morbus Chron


Totalselfhatred


Morbid Insulter


Stormheit


Report a cura di Marco Manzi