01-10-2016 Heidevolk

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By: Başak Günel

When it comes to having fun and drinking, German metallers Finsterforst and Dutch metallers Heidevolk know how to deliver a kickass show!… and this is exactly what the crowd in Bochum were craving for on a Saturday evening. The two bands were part of the line-up for Armageddon Tour with Equilibrium as headliner and Nothgard as the other support act.

German metallers Finsterforst were the second band of the day after Nothgard. To be honest, before the show, I wasn’t sure if the audience was up for some fun metal since the band’s recent EP “#YOLO” received rather mixed reviews. But the band seems to not care about it too much and even have fun with it and this was also obvious from their show!
The band started the set with the new song “Bottle Gods”, which is obviously about drinking. One thing that made me laugh was those hipster glasses vocalist Oliver Berlin had when he came on stage! Those flashing glasses really fit the attitude of the band and made the overall atmosphere much more fun! Surprisingly, the audience was into the show from the first song and you could see that the band was more relaxed after they saw the audience cheering and headbanging. 

Although the band had little time to play a lot of songs from the old albums as well as the new EP, their setlist was quite entertaining. Apart from the new songs “Bottle Gods”, “YOLO” and “Auf die Zwölf”, the band also played “Zeit für Hass” and “Mach Dich Frei” from the previous album “Mach Dich Frei”. What I loved about the show was how interactive vocalist Oliver Berlin was. His jokes and comments kept the show going and I am sure the ones who had doubts about the band probably changed their mind or were warmed up for the next bands. The highlight, in my opinion, was “YOLO” which made me appreciate and respect the band once more for taking a risk and do a crazy EP! I could see that the band was really into this song as they danced the whole time and although the audience was confused a bit by those Balkan/ska melodies, they seemed to have a nice time and get warmed up for Heidevolk & Equilibrium. Too bad that they only played for a short time.

Heidevolk next… After seeing the Dutchies in Wolfszeit Festival this August, I couldn’t get enough and so I needed to see them again! After some major line-up changes, the band recently announced that the session musicians Kevin Storm [guitars] and Jacco De Wijs [vocals] joined the band as full-time members, which is quite great news considering that both of the band members seem to have fit into the band really well.

When it comes to Heidevolk shows, the neverending energy and fun is always there and this is what the band had for fans that evening. The setlist consisted of some songs like “Winter woede”, “Urth” and “Velua” from their latest album “Velua” but let’s not forget that the band has quite a lot of releases so some classics like “Nehalennia” and “Saksenland” were not forgotten for sure. The highlight of the show was definitely the last song “Vulgaris Magistralis” as always! But I gotta say that, overall, the whole show itself was a highlight; everybody sweated like crazy as the venue got warmer and a lot of crowdsurfers made the whole show even more entertaining. At the end, everybody had smiles on their faces. One thing I expected to see was the acoustic show. In Wolfszeit Festival, the band played some acoustic songs during their set but probably due to the lack of space or maybe change of plans, there was only some heavy metal involved! Nevertheless, Heidevolk delivered an energetic show; it’s great to see that they get better each time I see them live!

Links:
Finsterforst Facebook
Heidevolk Facebook