NO SLEEP IN ATHENS
Up the Hammers VIII
March 7-9, 2013
The police don’t go into the Exarchia section of Athens,
Greece. If they did, they might not make it out alive, judging by the
copious amounts of graffiti bearing ominous slogans like “Crack Cops
Skulls.” The U.S. State Department warns American travelers not to
venture into the Omonia Square area of Athens after dark because of the rampant
drug use, theft, violence, and other criminal activity that goes on
there. Yet for 4 days in March, the Exarchia / Omonia part of Athens was
the site of perhaps the best heavy metal party I’ve ever attended, in the form
of the Up the Hammers VIII music festival, the pre-party, and the
post-party. Here’s the tale, in all of its unvarnished glory.
Thursday, March 7, 2013
After 24 hours of travel, I arrived alone (my better half having been detained
at home for an extra two days because of damnable work commitments) at the
Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport in Athens at about 2:30 p.m. local
time. After killing about 4 hours in the airport rocking out to my mp3
player and reading book 3 of the Game of Thrones saga, I ventured back
downstairs to the arrival area to welcome my dear friends from Widow, who were
flying in to play the fest. The four of us hopped a shiny, clean,
efficient metro line from the Airport into downtown Athens, which took about 45
minutes. By around 8 p.m., we were deposited at the Omonia Square metro
stop, which was less than a mile from our hotel. The problem was finding
the hotel. It was dark. Athens is hugely crowded and confusing,
with poorly marked streets, insane (and bloodthirsty) drivers, and decaying
infrastructure on all sides. Lugging both band gear and personal effects,
the four of us wandered around lost for about 30 minutes before finally waving
the white flag and beckoning a taxi. The taxi driver professed to have no
idea where Hotel Dryades was, even though I had a printout of a map showing its
exact location. His first question was, “How long have you been in
Athens?” Like a dumbass, I piped up, “Oh, we just got here.”
Sucker. The cabby proceeded to drive us around in a big circle, saying
things like “Look, the Parthenon” (which wasn’t on our way to the hotel,
incidentally) when he wasn’t cursing the other drivers in English and Greek,
and generally driving like a maniac. By the time he let us out near (but
not at) the hotel, I felt like our pockets had been picked, but was grateful to
be alive. Welcome to Athens.
We checked into our hotel, only to learn in short order that nothing really
works properly. It’s sort of typical of our experience in Greece.
Wi-fi didn’t work (except when we were on the roof of the adjoining hotel
building). The telephone didn’t work. The proprietor was reasonably
good-natured, but spoke little English and had his patience thoroughly tried by
four drunk, loud and boisterous Americans coming and going at all hours of the
day and night. The most distinguishable feature of the hotel was
that it was located way up the side of a hill. The stairs to get to the
hotel were very long, and very steep. Every time we climbed them, we
huffed and puffed and cursed them. But hey, at least we got our exercise in Athens.
A chill was in the air and a light rain was falling when we made our way on foot
over to the An Club (about a 10 minute walk) sometime after 9:00 p.m. for the
official UTH VIII pre-party. The An Club (logo featuring a spade like the
ace of spades) is located about two blocks off of a small, dingy public square
filled with unsavory types (mostly sitting on benches and smoking pot) all night
long. Spray-painted bedsheets hung in the square displaying what appeared
to be anti-government or anarchist slogans. It was grimy, gritty and
dirty, and the sullen-faced loiterers looked unhappy and unwelcoming.
Fortunately, the An Club itself rocks. The venue is subterranean, as the
street-level entrance gives way to a steep staircase down to the club. It
has multiple levels that allow for great viewing angles all around the room, no
matter how crowded it might be, and probably holds 400 people (just a
guess). Stage is small, but the sound system is good, and most bands were
blessed by excellent mixes and clear sound all weekend long. The bar only
had two taps, both of which dispensed Amstel products (regular Amstel and Amstel
Bock, the latter of which cost a Euro more than the 3 Euro regular stuff).
Funny, Amstel is ubiquitous in Athens, even though it’s a Dutch brew. And
never the Amstel Light you see in the U.S., either, just regular Amstel.
Not great but it was better than the Mythos local swill I tried. My
preference was to get 0.5 liter cans of Edelstein from street vendors for 1 Euro
whenever possible, so as to minimize the amount of Amstel I had to drink.
Anyway, back to the venue. A cool feature of it was that the door to the
outside mostly stayed open, so that fresh air wafted in, keeping the room from
becoming too hot or too smoky (bars ain’t smoke-free in Greece, folks, and the
Greeks smoke like chimneys). Nice.
At the entrance to the venue, we were warmly greeted by the promoter, Manolis
Karazeris, an amiable chap who is himself a guitarist of some repute
(ex-Battleroar, and currently playing in Dexter Ward). Manolis asked
about our travels and the adequacy of our hotel, then ushered us downstairs,
saying, “Let’s have some fun.” When we entered the room, Mob Rules
(the alter ego of Chicago’s Damien Thorne) were in mid-set dishing out some
tasty covers from the Ronnie James Dio canon. We heard “We Rock,”
“Stargazer,” “Man on a Silver Mountain,” “Heaven and Hell,” and maybe one or
two others. The band was pretty static, but they played the songs well,
and the singer did an excellent job handling the classic RJD vocal lines.
There only looked to be 100 or so people in the venue, but everyone was fully
engaged and rocking out. Eventually, the four of us realized we were famished. There was
no food at the An Club, so we went back outside and walked a half-block away to
a restaurant that we dubbed “Pizza Sandwich” because those the words emblazoned
on its orange awning. The great thing about Pizza Sandwich was you could
get a rectangular slice of pizza and a coke for just 3 Euros, then sit outside
and bring in whatever beer you wanted. So that’s what we did, early and often.
Duly refreshed, we returned to the venue at 10:30 p.m. or so, just as the
pre-party headliner, Into Glory Ride, were taking the stage. The
Greek quartet was (as you might expect) a Manowar tribute act, and a very
talented one at that. Right out of the chute, they played the legendary
Into Glory Ride album in its entirety, the crowd throwing fists and
singing along word for word at the top of their lungs. Importantly, the
short-haired singer did a fine Eric Adams impression (albeit not quite able to
hit the high notes or to duplicate the magnificent range of Mr. Adams in his
prime), even if he was using lyric sheets from time to time. It almost
brought tears to my eyes standing there with my Greek brothers and sisters,
singing along with “Secrets of Steel,” “Revelation,” “March for Revenge,” and
so on. After finishing the Into Glory Ride album, the band whipped
through a selection of 12 more mostly old-school Manowar tracks, including 4
from Hail to England (what a stellar version of “Each Dawn I
Die”). Near the end of the set, the salvo of “Thor (the Powerhead)” and
“Battle Hymn” was a thing of beauty to behold, and the band capped off its
nearly two hour performance with an a capello run through “The Crown and the
Ring.” Amazing. Manowar themselves would not have played better,
had they been here tonight. Setlist: Warlord, Secret of
Steel, Gloves of Metal, Gates of Valhalla, Hatred, Revelation, March for
Revenge, Kill with Power, Hail to England, Hail and Kill, Metal Warriors, Kings
of Metal, Army of Immortals, Each Dawn I Die, Heart of Steel, Thor, Battle
Hymn, Warriors of the World, Crown and the Ring.
By this time, jetlag was encroaching on all of us, so we worked our way back to
Hotel Dryades by around 2 a.m. to catch a little shut-eye. But not much.
After all, we wanted to get up early on Friday and explore Athens’ metal
shops. As exhausted as I was, I couldn’t sleep, so I sat up reading until
well after 3 a.m. before sleep finally took me away, at least for a little while.
Friday, March 8, 2013
It turns out, my second floor hotel room wasn’t really conducive to sleeping in,
for two reasons. First, the huge windows on two sides (including East)
meant that the daylight came streaming in unbidden at just after 6 a.m.
Second, Athens has a crapload of feral cats. One of these accursed feral
cats camped out under my window and made the most tortured meowing sound much of
the night and morning. I tried to sleep through the light and the infernal
racket, but finally gave up at around 8. It’s just as well, because Chris
was knocking on my door before 9, telling me to mobilize. By 10 or so, the
four of us were out on the street, in search of breakfast. We found a
little gyro shop and had delicious souvlaki sandwiches (cubed pork or chicken
with salad, spicy sauce and french fries wrapped inside the pita), washed down
with cans of coke. Mmmmm, good.
We spent the remainder of the morning and part of the afternoon exploring our
environs. Nearly every inch of Exarchia / Omonia is covered with
graffiti, some of it lovely and artistic (like the jungle scene painted onto
the building across from the An Club, complete with elephants, toucans and blue
frogs), some of it ugly and profane (one panel read “Fuck the police, Fuck
Nazis, Fuck government, Fuck capitalism”). The streets are narrow, with
cars and scooters parked in disorderly fashion on the street, on sidewalks,
anywhere. The city is dirty, and it is almost impossible to find a
garbage can anywhere, I guess because there is no money to pay municipal
employees to empty the garbage. As a result, I felt like a goober walking
around with empty beer cans half the day looking for a non-litter means of
disposing of them. Also, there are no crosswalks, so you take your life
into your hands each time you cross the road, as the cars (and especially the
taxis) come whipping around the corners at breakneck speed.
Some of these cars have loudspeakers strapped to their roofs,
amplifying loud, angry, harsh-sounding voices. We guessed that maybe they
were talking about locations for anti-government rallies or something, but who
knows. This is what official unemployment rates of nearly 30% do to a
community, especially when coupled with crippling governmental austerity
measures. Athens seemed to be a society on the brink. All of our
eyes were opened wide by what we saw, and we resolved then and there to stick
together for the remainder of the weekend. No wandering off alone, especially after dark.
That’s not to see that our meanderings were unpleasant. Far from it.
We actually had a delightful day. We stumbled onto a metal t-shirt shop
that had the most amazing inventory of both official and bootleg t-shirts.
Five different Running Wild designs, Sacred Steel, Grim Reaper, Gamma Ray ‘Land
of the Free’ hoodies, Vio-Lence ‘Eternal Nightmare’ shirts, and so on. It
was cool as hell, and the Widow guys dropped many a Euro there. Me, I kept
my powder dry to buy merch at the festival, though I’ll admit to being sorely
tempted. At some point, we went back to the hotel and spent a couple of
hours on the rooftop of the adjacent building so that John E. could use wi-fi
and we could admire the breathtaking hillside views of the city of Athens laid
out before us, including a stunning vantage point of the Acropolis looming earby.
The day got much cooler when, in mid-afternoon, we encountered some denim-vest
clad Greek and Swiss metalheads roaming around the Exarchia area. They
knew Widow’s music and one of them asked whether they planned to play “Beware
the Night” off the Nightlife album. In truth, Widow hadn’t
rehearsed that number, but they vowed to perform it for the dude anyway.
The 0.5-liter cans of Edelstein started flowing and the day started
rocking. But we had to eat, so we went off in search of a nice sit-down
place where we could have a proper Greek meal. Somehow the four of us
wound up at a place called The Beer Academy. Hey, I graduated from
there. It was actually a German food place. Maybe when I go to
Germany I can eat a nice Greek meal. For today, though, it was mountains
of sausage, cabbage, and sauerkraut, washed down with the some tasty Warsteiner. As we were finishing our
meal, we looked at our watches. 4:40 p.m. Crap, the first band started playing at
4:30. I had stupidly left my earplugs at the hotel, but fortunately John
E. had an extra clean pair that he lent me, and we beat feet over to the An
Club, arriving at a few minutes after 5, sadly just after the opening band
R.U.S.T. (from Cyprus) had finished their set. Oh well, sorry dudes
… We had to eat. This was the first and only band whose performance
I missed at UTH VIII though, so I’d say I did pretty well.
Next up were the Frenchmen of Hurlement, whose debut album De Sang et
d’Acier made a favorable impression on me a couple of years ago.
Widow had played with Hurlement at the Swordbrothers Fest in Germany in 2010
(?), so they were familiar with Hurlement, and told me I was in for a
high-energy performance. They were exactly right. Sounding like a
mixture of Running Wild, Manowar, Lonewolf and Killers to these ears, Hurlement
ripped through an enthusiastic 40-minute show that had the Greek punters
singing along lustily to French-language tunes like “Moine Guerrier,” “Dernier
Combat,” “Ordalie,” and set-closer “Mercenaire.” Guitarist Francois
Porte’s fingers danced across the fretboard, churning out the lively melody
lines, while red-maned singer Alexis Roy-Petit unleashed his powerful
lungs. One interesting moment was when a problem with the drums led to a
roughly two-minute lull in the set. On the fly, Alexis led the crowd in
an a capella run through the first verse of Manowar’s “Heart of Steel.” It
was a ballsy move, but I’ll go to my grave swearing that everyone in the crowd
joined their voices with Alexis’, the heavens parted, and the sun shone down
beatifically on us all. (Sorry, inside joke from my conversation with
Hurlement later that weekend.) At any rate, by the end of their set, I was
thinking to myself, “Damn, I need to spend more time listening to Hurlement
CDs.” Setlist: Dernier Combat, Dogue de Broceliande, Moine
Guerrier, Brothers of the Watch, Tigres Volants, Ordalie, Mercenaire.
(Inquisition was dropped from the set due to time constraints.)
The third band on the Friday slate was actually my most anticipated act of the
day, Alpha Tiger. The lone German artist on the UTH VIII roster,
Alpha Tiger captured my imagination two years ago with a stunningly good debut
album, Man or Machine, especially the heavenly vocals of Stephan
Dietrich, who has more than a touch of classic John Arch in his voice.
Alpha Tiger recently released their second album Beneath the Surface
through Century Media, but I hadn’t heard it yet because those assholes at CM
didn’t see fit to release it domestically in any physical format. Thanks
a lot, dipshits. (Of course, I rectified the situation at UTH, purchasing
both a special “fan edition” copy of the album with a bonus live CD and an
Alpha Tiger shirt bearing the slogan “Unleash the Beast” on the
backprint.) When the band took the stage, I was immediately struck by how
young they are. Early 20s, at the oldest. Several members were
decked out in colorful spandex (early 80s style). I only recognized two
songs (“Karma” and “Against the Time,” two of my absolute favorites from the
debut), plus the set-closing cover “Queen of the Reich.” Everything else
came off the new album. I loved the music and Dietrich’s vocals, although
the playing seemed a bit sloppy in spots. Funny, though, the Greeks I
spoke to later that weekend weren’t altogether impressed with Alpha Tiger, some
even suggesting that they were posers because they were kids who dressed up
like old-school metalheads, then didn’t bother to stick around for the rest of
the weekend to watch other bands. (That criticism seems harsh and
unjustified to me, as I saw the whole band in the venue most of the rest of
Friday and I could have sworn that one of the guitarists was in the An Club on
Saturday too.) Only in Greece would a killer old-school true-metal German
band like Alpha Tiger be viewed as posers, I guess. My assessment remains
that Alpha Tiger are a talented young band with a bright future behind them,
especially if Century Media will pull their heads out of their asses and
promote them properly in Europe and the USA. Setlist: The
Alliance, From Outer Space, Against the Time, Beneath the Surface, Along the
Rising Sun, Karma, Queen of the Reich.
By now, the venue was filling up nicely and the true underground heavy metal
spirit was in the air. I’ve never seen so many denim patch-covered
jackets in one place before. And the patches weren’t “sell-out” bands
like Megadeth or Hammerfall, no sirree Bob, it was all Doomsword and Battleroar
and Manilla Road and Sortilege and Brocas Helm and Liege Lord and Armored
Saint. I tell you, being in Athens for the Up the Hammers can really
distort your perspective. It feels like you’ve entered the Twilight
Zone. Who knew there was such a metal place on planet Earth? I
mean, I’ve been to Germany many times and always thought Germany was the metal
capital of the Northern Hemisphere (gotta include that caveat, because I’ve
heard that South America is its own special breed of heavy metal
insanity). Nope. Greece pretty much kicks Germany’s ass in terms of
its overall underground metal bad-assery. And it pains me to say it too
because I love Germany. But Greece wears the crown. And it’s not
just how they dress, either. They know the words to every song. They
“sing” the guitar melodies. And they can rock out and drink for 24 hours
straight, without eating or sleeping. It’s insane, really.
At 7:00, it was time for Damien Thorne to perform, this time
sans Dio cover songs. To be honest, I am not familiar with this band’s
music, but I know that their Sign of the Jackal album from the 80s is
viewed as a cult classic in certain quarters. Their set seemed to be drawn
heavily from that disc, judging by the strength of the audience
reaction for old songs versus new songs. As was the case Thursday night in their
Mob Rules incarnation, these guys aren’t the most dynamic performers in the
world. They’re older and heavyset, and they don’t move around the stage
much at all. But they sounded quite good and their songs were
impressive. Certainly, the crowd seemed to love them, although Damien
Thorne confused them by waving a Chicago Blackhawks towel at one point.
Not really an NHL room, my friends. Midway through their set, the Widow
guys told me they were crashing and needed to go back to the hotel to sleep for
an hour or two. I felt strong (at least, at that moment), so I stayed at
the An Club to remain in the heavy metal vortex. Big mistake …
The next two bands marked the festival’s only rocky stretch, at least for my
personal tastes. The bands in question were Vice Human from Greece
and Adramelch from Italy. Neither made a favorable impression on
me, albeit for very different reasons. Vice Human are one of the oldest
Greek heavy metal bands, and god do they look it. The two guitar players
appeared positively ancient, especially the one with
the grey hair, sweater and spectacles who stood at the back of the stage
watching his fingers the whole time. Vice Human’s singer looked to be 30
years younger than everyone else in the band, and he had a great voice.
But the material was way too simple and primitive for my ears, sounding a bit
like the earliest hard-rockiest, bounciest NWOBHM stuff. I just couldn’t
get into it. That said, the An Club went positively bonkers during Vice
Human’s set. The audience treated them like metal gods. They were
worth watching just to witness the crowd reaction. As for Adramelch, the
name of the game was short hair and spectacles, which isn’t a problem in and of
itself (hell, I have short hair and spectacles). The trouble was that
Adramelch’s set leaned too hard on their most recent album, last year’s
Lights from Oblivion, which is unfortunately boring-ass prog rock that is
far removed from the epic metal that characterized Adramelch’s earlier
records. Sure, they played some classic stuff from Irae Melanox
(“Was called Empire” for the win) and some good stuff from Broken History
(title track), but the momentum was killed by the proggy crap each time.
Again, the Greeks didn’t seem to mind, as the by-now packed An Club was firmly
in Adramelch’s corner from beginning to end.
The truth of the matter is that there was a larger problem at hand.
Remember how I said I was feeling strong when my friends went back to the hotel
to rest at 7:30? By 9:00, I wasn’t feeling strong anymore. Part of
the problem was an overall wave of exhaustion. Part of it was a vicious
headache. And part of it was a feeling of queasiness in my stomach.
Before you laugh and say that’s what I get for being
a drunk, let me just clarify that I wasn’t wasted. I’d had all of one beer
since we got to the club at 5 p.m. Whatever it was, it wasn’t the
beer. The problem, of course, is that by now I was stuck. There
would be no walking back to the hotel by myself at night, and I was damned if I
was going to impair my friends’ fun at all, much less miss a minute of the
festival. So I set my jaw and resolved to power through the night, come what may.
At the end of Adramelch’s set, Chris and Peter arrived back at the venue (John
E. was still sacked out at the hotel). I thought some fresh air might
help, so the three of us went outside to avail ourselves of the venue’s in/out
privileges and escape the ultra-crowded hall. By now, there was quite a
scene outside. Dozens of headbangers had congregated, most of them
drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. The buzz of the conversations drew
many curious natives, from the scavengers who slipped through the crowd
wordlessly, picking up empty glass bottles (presumably to cash in on them via
recycling) as they went, to the beggars who persistently demanded money, to the
peddlers selling incense and knickknacks and whatever other cheap junk they
had. As I said, it was quite a scene.
Sarissa had already begun playing by the time we went back into the
venue. They were something of an oddball in the lineup, only because
these Greeks have a pedigree that includes both much-revered obscure 80s
material and much more modern-sounding (i.e., chunky riffage, elements of
groove) later material, particularly in the form of a 2004 album entitled
Masters of Sins. The result was a set that was unclassifiable
because old-school sounding songs and new-school sounding songs were side by
side. Once again, the packed house went ballistic for Sarissa, affording
them the kind of overwhelming response usually reserved for conquering
heroes. For my part, I thought Sarissa sounded cool, and I regretted not
having spent some time reconnecting with their material (I own the
Masters disc as well as a CD version of their 1987 demo) before coming
over for this festival. Now that I’m home, I certainly intend to remedy
that omission without delay.
We went back outside (by now, joined by John E., who had returned to the ranks
of the living after a 3-hour nap) for a bit after Sarissa finished playing, if
only to escape the wall-to-wall crowds inside the venue. It was during
this interval that the first bout of nausea hit me. Fortunately, there
was a large dumpster about half a block down from the venue, so I ran down
there thinking I was going to yak. It didn’t happen, but I was
super-woozy. I went downstairs to buy a Coca-cola from the bar to try to
settle my stomach, which helped a bit, but I was feeling like a wounded metal
warrior indeed. Still, when the first notes of Domine’s set became
audible, I told Chris and Peter, “I’m not going to miss this band,” and raced
back into the venue.
Domine are a band I have long respected and enjoyed. I own their entire
5-album catalog, and I’m a sucker for their brand of over-the-top Italian epic
metal with songs about Elric of Melnibone. Unfortunately, I’ve never had
the chance to see them live in the 15 years I’ve been listening to their music,
and I don’t expect I ever will again. So it didn’t matter how crappy I
felt, I was not going to miss out on this. What’s more, this was no
ordinary Domine gig, but was instead billed as a “special old-school set,”
meaning that only one song (“The Messenger”) was aired from their controversial,
proggier 5th album, 2007’s Ancient Spirit Rising. Likewise, there was only one
song (“The Aquilonia Suite”) from their 4th
album. Everything else was old shit. The crowd couldn’t have been
happier. From the standpoint of audience/band interaction, Domine’s set
was one of the most remarkable gigs I’ve ever seen. The An Club was
stuffed to the gills with people, and the crowd was singing every word along
with Morby, singing the guitar lines, and going absolutely crazy. The
broad smiles on the faces of guitarist / mastermind Enrico Paoli and his
brother, bassist Riccardo Paoli, told the story. And holy crap, did Domine sound incredible. While
they had a keyboardist, those keyboard lines that are sometimes overbearing and
distracting on their CDs were low in the live mix, allowing the full power of
the music to shine through. Vocalist Morby sang his ass off too
(strangely, he was clad in a Metal Blade Records hoodie, which is odd because
Domine was never on that label, and Metal Blade is the kind of poser imprint
that you’d think the underground hordes in Greece would love to hate). The
band played brilliantly, the crowd cheered brilliantly, and those Domine
classics that are so near and dear to the hearts of epic metal fans shone
brightly in the night like the evergreens they are. I daresay there’s
nowhere in the world that Domine could enjoy such a rabid audience reaction as
they did in Athens. (Oddly, Domine missed the opportunity to cash in on
their fans’ reverence, as they only brought one t-shirt
design, and that was the (ugly) cover art from the Emperor of the Black
Runes album. Strange.) Even when Enrico’s guitar cut out in the
middle of the second proper song, “Thunderstorm,” causing a delay before the
band started playing the song from the beginning again, the audience held fast
and remained strong. It was a thing of beauty to behold, and a tribute to
the magick and might of heavy metal music. I’ll never forget this gig,
that’s for sure, and it made no difference how queasy and headachy I felt.
If this was to be the only time I ever see Domine in my life, then it was
absolutely the perfect show to see them, and I left it all on the field.
This sweeping two-hour performance was an epic metal fan’s dream. Two
funny moments: (i) at the end of the more-epic-than-thou “Eternal
Champion,” it was time for the band to leave until encores, but there was
nowhere to go because the backstage area at the An Club is on the other side of
the venue from the stage, and there’s no way the band could have gotten through
that crowd to the dressing room, so they just stood on stage for a minute before
kicking into the encores; (ii) when the show finally ended, Enrico Paoli took
the mike, thanked everyone for enjoying their old-school setlist, and threatened
(jokingly) to play only new songs the next time Domine comes to Athens.
Setlist: Hymn, The Mass of Chaos, Thunderstorm, Uriel the Flame of
God, The Messenger, The Aquilonia Suite, The Ship of the Lost Souls, Army of the
Dead, Eternal Champion. Encores: Chronicles of the Black Sword,
Dragonlord, Defenders, The Ride of the Valkyries.
By now, it was after 1 a.m., and all I wanted to do was crawl into my hotel bed
and pass out from exhaustion. The Widow boys had other ideas. After
all, there was an after-party at a nearby metal club called the Ragnarokk Club,
and damned if they were going to miss it. In for a penny, in for a pound,
as they say, so I tagged along. Actually, though, we didn’t go to
Ragnarokk right away, but instead took a lengthy detour to our favorite hangout
destination in Athens. You guessed it, Pizza Sandwich. They all got
food (I felt too sick to eat), and we sat outside amidst metalheads from
Germany and Switzerland. As luck would have it, our companions were both
very cool and very interesting, so the conversation flowed freely and
pleasantly. (Not me, I sat there and shivered in the chill night air in
my fleece, but that’s okay, I was listening and enjoying the spirited dialogue,
nonetheless.) Sometime after 2:00 a.m., things took a turn for the
bizarre and disturbing when we heard sounds of an altercation in the street
maybe 30 feet from where we were sitting. Two strapping younger dudes
were pushing and shoving an older guy around. The older guy tried to get into a
passing taxicab, then we watched in horror as the cab driver got out of the
vehicle and began punching the old guy in the face. The other two joined
in, and now it was three on one. We sat there helplessly, not
understanding what was happening or knowing what to do. The beating didn’t
last long, thankfully, and the older guy seemed not to be seriously hurt,
although he was bleeding from the nose. Did the police come? No. Did
local bystanders (of which there were numerous) intervene? No. Just
another night in Exarchia, I suppose, but it was a sobering experience,
nonetheless. I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.
At around 3:00 a.m., we finally got up from Pizza Sandwich and made our way over
to the after party at Ragnarokk. Just as we were about to go inside, the
second wave of nausea hit me and I grabbed John E., as I headed back for the
street, sure that I was going to puke. Once again, I didn’t . And
again, I still wasn’t drunk. By this time, I hadn’t had a beer in 9 hours,
so I was stone-cold sober. It wasn’t alcohol. Maybe bad sausage.
Maybe exhaustion. Maybe my body telling me I needed to get some
rest. Finally, I felt good enough to venture inside the after party.
I couldn’t believe my eyes or ears. Ragnarokk is a heavy metal club,
through and through, with a giant Motorhead mascot painted on the wall.
The PA was cranking out true heavy metal at full volume, as we heard the likes
of Running Wild, Manowar, Exciter, and so on. And the place was jam-packed
with metalheads, all of them drinking. Peter worked his way to the bar and
bought two half-liter beers. The rest of us stood pinned against the wall
near the women’s restroom, which I must confess wasn’t a bad vantage point to
watch the metal chicks coming in and out. The defining moment for me was
when the PA started playing Liege Lord’s “Rage of Angels.” It seemed like
every person in the room stopped talking and sang along with the chorus at the
top of their lungs. I was flabbergasted. I mean, it’s an incredible
song. I’m down with that. But where in the world does a collection of a
couple hundred metalheads stand nuts to butts in a club singing along to a Liege
Lord CD at 3 in the morning after a 10-hour metal festival day has
concluded? Only in Greece, my friends. That was when I turned to
John E. and Chris, and said, “You know, I always thought I was a pretty metal
dude. But these people are way more metal than me.”
At about 3:45, we decided to head back to the hotel. Peter hadn’t gotten
any takers for his two beers, so he pounded both of them in about 4 minutes
(bad idea). As we walked back to the hotel, John E. stopped at Pizza
Sandwich to buy several cans of Mythos beer (also a bad idea). The square
was still crawling with people, and the vibe outside was extremely
hostile. It looked like another physical confrontation was in the offing,
so we took off back to the hotel as quickly as we could, making it back to the
room sometime after 4:15 a.m. I took two Advil, drank a shitload of
water, then stood in the shower for about 15 minutes and let steaming hot water
wash over my weary bones. Maybe it was 5 when I finally nodded off after this truly epic day …
Saturday, March 9, 2013
I didn’t sleep long. Before 10 a.m., the sunlight streaming in through my
two windows awakened me (along with that damned infernal cat). But I
didn’t mind. I was ready to rise and shine, for today was going to
be a great day. A bunch of killer bands were going to play at the An
Club. Jen would be arriving. The sun was out. And I was
headache- and nausea-free, with no ill effects whatsoever from that temporary
illness that had nearly incapacitated me last night. I felt like a new
man, so I celebrated by going downstairs to the Widow guys’ room to drink some
of their beer. Hey, you can’t drink all day if you don’t start in the
morning. I don’t want to incriminate anyone, but I will say there were
some in our little crew who were in pretty rough shape this morning. In
fact, the four of us just hung out in the room talking until after 2:00
p.m. As you might expect, much of the conversation centered on today’s
gig. What setlist would be played? Did they remember “Beware the
Night” well enough to be able to play it without rehearsing it, to accommodate
the request of the Greek fan who bumped into us on the street? It was
cool to just be a fly on the wall, sitting and listening and sipping on my beer
while all of these details were hashed out.
Although the doors for the Festival didn’t open until 4 p.m., we decided to
arrive at the venue by 3 to check in Widow’s merchandise and make the necessary
arrangements. On our way down the hill, we passed by a bustling farmers’
market set up in the middle of the street (it was, after all, Saturday
afternoon). One vendor had a table with gigantic bowls of olives, more
different kinds of olives than I ever seen in one place. Ahhhh, Greece.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t dally. We had a schedule to keep, and besides,
we were all laden down with Widow gear and merch. The merch check-in went
smoothly (although the festival staff had us prepare an inventory of everything
we had, which involved me counting dozens of t-shirts, organized by size and
design), and I got to watch Sanctuaire’s soundcheck while this process
occurred. The festival staff was uniformly gracious and helpful, and gave
Widow a nice spot of prime real estate in the vendor area to display all 3 of their shirt designs.
By this time, all of us were pretty damned hungry. After all, those German
sausages had been about 20 hours ago, and I hadn’t eaten anything (not even a
Pizza Sandwich) since then. Once everything was squared away at the An
Club (including a photo op in the tiny “backstage area,” which consisted of a
small red-painted room with a wooden table and a couple of chairs), we went to
the café next door for a pressed Panini sandwich and a 0.5-liter bottle of
Kaiser beer. As we ate, my eyes scanned the sidewalk
in either direction, because Jen’s flight was supposed to have arrived in Athens
at 2:30. If it had been on time, and if she had made the 3:00 subway, she
ought to reach Omonia by 3:45 or so, which was now. But of course we
didn’t have working cell phones and there was no way for us to keep in
touch. I nervously kept an eye on the road, when suddenly there appeared
a dark-haired girl in a pink Raven t-shirt, just walking right up to the
café. There’s my Jen. She came in and joined us, fresh off the
airplane, drinking espresso and bottled water. With her arrival, the 5
members of Team Widow were now reunited. Happy days are here again.
Reunions are all fun and nice, but hey, we had a gig to attend. By 4:15,
we were back inside the An Club watching Sanctuaire kick off the
Saturday slate of entertainment. These Frenchmen are very young, and
their inexperience shows in their songwriting and their stage presence.
To the best of my discernment, they’re aiming for an occult Mercyful
Fate-meets-Venom kind of vibe, with French lyrics. It worked better live
than it does on their debut CD, L’Empreinte de Lucifer, and the
sparse crowd seemed to enjoy Sanctuaire. The coolest part of their set-up
was that they had an upside-down t-shirt box on the stage, covered with a
tablecloth and bearing the same artifacts (skull, glass of wine, book, quill)
depicted on their album cover. It was
a nice touch, although singer Florent B-Manquat accidently jostled the box near
the end of their set, sending the wine glass spilling, the skull breaking into
pieces and the little display into ruination. Ah, well.
From there, the Up the Hammers running order favored us with four stellar bands
in a row. This was my favorite musical portion of the entire
weekend. Swiss traditional metallers Sin Starlett got the party
going in earnest with a high-energy set drawn heavily from their new CD,
Throat Attack, recently released on Emanes Metal Records. If
rotund, bearded vocalist Elias’s baby-blue Reebok spandex tights and pale blue
vintage Y&T t-shirt didn’t win over the crowd immediately, the opening
track, “Headed by the Hexx,” unquestionably did the trick. “Beholders of
the Claw” ripped and ruled most authoritatively, too. I was sadly
unfamiliar with most of Sin Starlett’s material, their CD having arrived in the
mail the very day before I flew to Athens, but they were great. Highly
recommended for all fans of 1980s traditional heavy metal goodness.
The quality level remained ridiculously high for today’s band #3,
Ruler. Funny, the quartet hails from Italy, yet their backdrop
consisted of a Union Jack and their bassist was wearing a sleeveless Japanese
rising sun t-shirt. Nationality confusion notwithstanding, Ruler were
great for several reasons. Visually, they had the most over-the-top
appearance of any band at UTH VIII, with singer Daniele Valentini
sporting a killer mullet and guitarist Matti “Moustachio” Baldoni taking no prisoners
with the El Camino hairstyle, 80s-style glasses, massive moustache and mutton
chops. Musically, Ruler served up an inspired 7-song set of Iron
Maiden-influenced melodic heavy metal. There was speed, there was energy,
there was melody, and there was power. Valentini is a hell of singer, and
songs like “We Rule the Night” and “Sutjeska” are simply fantastic. As a
special treat, Ruler even offered up a couple of new songs, “Fighting Again” and
“Temple of Doom,” which sounded quite satisfactory on first listen. If you
haven’t heard Ruler’s Evil Nightmares CD on the My Graveyard label, it
would be well worth your while to remedy that omission. The Athens
metalheads loved them, and I thought Ruler put in one of the top 5 performances
of the weekend, for sure. Setlist: Mayday, Fighting Again, We Rule
the Night, Temple of Doom, Sutjeska, Evil Nightmares, Limpieza de Sangre.
Without any further ado, it was time for Widow. Obviously, I’m
biased. But let me say this: I’ve seen the North Carolinians at
least a dozen times in the last few years. I’ve never seen them play a bad
show, but I’ve also never seen them play a better show than the one in
Athens. Everything was just a small notch better, more intense, and more
energetic. It helped, of course, that the Up the Hammers audience knew
their songs. People were going crazy singing along with songs like
“American Werewolf in Raleigh” and “Angel Sin.” Hell, “Beware of the
Night” received a positively giddy reaction from the crowd, which by this point
had filled up the An Club to probably 2/3 capacity. I could tell from the
big smiles on their faces that the Widow guys were having a blast. I was
so happy, and so proud. I’ve seen a lot of behind-the-curtains stuff with
this band over the last couple of years, so I think I have a good appreciation
for (i) all the hard work and personal sacrifice it took for them to get here,
and (ii) just how much it meant to them to be here. Their expectations
for this gig may have been sky-high, but those expectations were at least met, if not
exceeded. It was a Widow gig for the ages, and they kicked major Athenian
ass tonight. Setlist: Take Hold of the Night, Re-Animate Her,
Lady Twilight, American Werewolf in Raleigh, Nightlife, Embrace It, Beware the
Night, Angel Sin, Reunion, Pleasure of Exorcism.
Closing out this four-band run of live heavy metal paradise was the Dutch act,
Vanderbuyst. While they were setting up their gear, Jen said, “Hey,
I saw them at the airport this afternoon,” which is kind of a cool detail.
At any rate, I had been yammering on about these guys for months, and they were honestly
one of the primary draws for me at this festival. To be clear,
Vanderbuyst are different from most of the bands I listen to. Their sound
is much more rooted in the 70s than the 80s and beyond. Some of their
songs owe more to basic, old-fashioned hard rock like Thin Lizzy or even AOR
than to the metallic might and majesty that is so dear to me. But they
sound so cool and they rock so convincingly that I could be give a damn about
genre boundaries. All of that I knew before Up the Hammers. What I
didn’t know, though, was that Vanderbuyst are a killer live band, a power trio
that is like a ball of rockin’ headbangin’ energy. Shrewdly, Willem
Verbuyst and his bandmates structured their setlist to emphasize their heavier,
more metallic numbers, including my two favorite songs, “KGB” and “String of
Beads.” Without question, Vanderbuyst ruled, so much so that John E.,
Chris and I were all compelled to buy Vanderbuyst shirts after their set.
They’ve got that “it” factor. Too bad the room had cleared out a bit
during their set, as some of the Greeks decided to use this “lightweight” band
as a convenient dinner break. Their loss. Those of us that stayed in the room
got our asses kicked for sure. Setlist: To Last Forever, KGB, Butcher’s Knife, Tiger,
Stealing Thunder, String of Beads, Traci Lords, Lecherous.
Because the An Club’s backstage area is so tiny, the rule is that all bands had
to remove their gear no later than an hour after they finished playing.
Well, Widow’s hour was up, so the five of us had to haul the Widow gear back to
the hotel now. It was also a convenient opportunity to take Jen’s bag to
the hotel, and let her wash up and freshen up a bit after her full day of
traveling and 5 bands worth of rocking. We didn’t tarry at the hotel, but
this process takes time. Oh, and we reached the hotel just as the band
Wotan (my next-door neighbors) were leaving the hotel with their gear to head
down to the venue. We weren’t far behind them. I didn’t want to
miss any of the remaining four bands, and knew that I’d necessarily be missing
part of Angus’s performance since their time slot was now. So I made it
back to the venue with Jen and the Widow guys as promptly as possible.
Now’s as good a time as any to acknowledge a small (but nonetheless present)
dark cloud over today’s festivities. Up the Hammers was not the only
heavy metal event happening in Athens today. Less than 3 km away, over at
the Fuzz Club, the Hellish Rock II Tour (featuring Helloween and Gamma Ray) was
rocking the masses. Now, it’s no secret that Gamma Ray has been my
favorite band for, oooh, about the last 20 years. I’ve seen ‘em 14 times
in 7 countries. The notion that they were playing right down the street
and yet I wouldn’t get to see Kai Hansen & Co. was a bitter pill for me to
swallow, personally. But I had cast my lot with Up the Hammers and
dammit, that’s where I was going to stay. That said, I still felt more
than a little pang in my heart whenever the thought intruded into my
otherwise-ecstatic brain today. Aside from the personal angst it caused
your intrepid narrator, Hellish Rock was problematic in another respect,
to-wit: It siphoned off a decent percentage of the Up the Hammers crowd.
Oh, didn’t get me wrong. The turnout was quite solid on Saturday at the
An Club. It just never reached the kind of packed, fever-pitch throngs we
saw on Friday night. I blame Helloween and Gamma Ray for the difference,
which probably amounted to 70 or 80 patrons, a not-inconsiderable discrepancy
in attendance from Friday to Saturday nights.
That said, we made it back to the An Club in time to catch the last 4 songs
from Angus. The Dutchmen were kind of a strange case, inasmuch as
they only featured one original member (drummer William Lawson) from their
1986/1987 glory days. From the tracks I witnessed (“The Gates,” “If God’s
in Heaven,” “Warriors of the World,” and “When Giants Collide”), the
replacements did a more than adequate job, particularly the lone guitarist, who
looked a bit like Wolf Hoffman wearing a black knit hat. Angus sounded
good, and clearly had the crowd’s attention and support, especially when the
singer hopped into the audience to sing most of “When Giants Collide.” By
all accounts and appearances, Angus were an honor and a credit to their legacy
tonight. (Other songs on their printed setlist included “Track of Doom,”
“Heavyweight Warrior,” “Money Satisfies,” “Black Despair,” and a couple of
others.) In the future, would it be too much to ask for some new music
from Angus? It’d be interesting to hear what this lineup can
achieve. Nonetheless, I heard two sets of grumbles about Angus from other
festival attendees. First, “When Giants Collide” was actually aired twice,
as both the first and the last song of the Angus set. Repeating songs is
not a way to win favor with the UTH crowd, especially when you’ve got other cool
songs in your catalog that you haven’t performed. Not sure what the deal
was there. Second, I heard reports (nothing I witnessed firsthand) of
band members being extremely aggressive in their efforts to sell merch, to the
point of physically putting patches in people’s hands then saying, “that’ll be
3 Euros.” If true, that’s not too cool either. Still, from
everything I witnessed, Angus did a fine job in Athens.
By now, Jen and I were both hungry, so I introduced her to the wonders of the
Pizza Sandwich. Mmmmm, mmmmm, delicious. Then it was back to the venue
for more metal.
Italian epic metallers Wotan were up next, hitting the stage at 9:35 p.m.
for an hourlong set that was touted as featuring their 2004 album Carmina
Barbarica performed in its entirety. I’ll be honest here. I own
a couple of Wotan albums, including Carmina Barbarica, but I’m no expert in the
band and I always thought they were something of a B-grade version of Domine or
Doomsword or something. Sure,
all the epic metal hallmarks and reference points are there, including
Manowarisms aplenty. But outside of a few isolated tracks (especially
“Lord of the Wind”), Wotan never really grabbed me. Nothing about their
live performance tonight really changed my opinion. Sure, the quartet
played well, and seemed very enthused about their music, but most of the songs
just kind of washed over me without much of an impact. I remember they had
a damn near interminable intro tape that played forever while the four dudes
just stood there on stage. Oh, and for better or worse, the distinctive
voice of blond-maned, partially braided singer Vanni Ceni (if you’ve ever heard
Wotan, you know what I’m talking about) sounded just the same live as it does on
CD. The coolest part of Wotan’s set was “Lord of the Wind,” when Ceni
donned a black cape and golden helm (there’s actually a photo of him in this
getup in the center pages of the Epos booklet), then drew a sword that he
brandished throughout the song. It was more epic than thou, and pretty
freaking awesome. Otherwise, I didn’t get too much out of Wotan’s
performance. But the Greeks were going nuts, and more than one person told me
afterwards that Wotan was their favorite gig of the entire festival, so what do I know?
By this time, a rather distressing subplot was emerging at the An Club.
Tonight’s scheduled headliners, Raven, weren’t at the venue yet. An
announcement was made that their flights had been delayed and that their set
time had therefore been swapped with that of the cover band, Mercyful Diamond,
who had originally been scheduled to close out the proceedings after the
Gallagher brothers finished playing. The information circulating around
the venue was pretty spotty and not at all encouraging. I wondered if
Raven would happen at all tonight, and whispered
to Jen right before Mercyful Diamond started playing that this might be the last
act of the festival. None of this detracted from the party atmosphere at
the venue though. Everyone seemed to be having a great time, the beer was
flowing freely, and our Widow pals were shooting videos of Greeks in the street
engaged in impromptu renditions of “Lady Twilight,” which was about 50 kinds of
awesome. I was feeling strong and in control, and Jen surprisingly was
wide awake, jetlag and the 11:00 p.m. local time be damned. We were having
a great night.
As the opening strains of “Come to the Sabbath” wafted up from the venue, I
ditched the street scene and headed back downstairs to catch Mercyful
Diamond, a Danish tribute band that (as the name suggests) covers both
Mercyful Fate and King Diamond nuggets. I understand that Mercyful
Diamond consists of name musicians, including members of cool Danish bands like
Serpent Saints and Ripe, but I never really figured out who was who. What
I did figure out rather quickly was that for a tribute act, Mercyful Diamond
kick ass, offering up damn near note-perfect versions of such classics as
“Angel of Light,” “Dressed in White,” “Nuns Have no Fun,” “Return of the
Vampire,” “Melissa,” and “Burn.” A notable exception was “Family Ghost,”
during which the band screwed up so badly that they had to stop and start again
two or three times before everyone could get on the same page. Near the
end of their set, “Halloween” gave way to “Evil” which yielded to “No Presents
for Christmas,” closing out the proceedings in fine fashion.
Special kudos go to the vocalist, who was clad in King Diamond makeup and top
hat, who sounded remarkably like the King himself except on some of the high
screams. Mercyful Diamond managed to give Into Glory Ride a solid run for
their money, in terms of who would be crowned best tribute band of the weekend.
Somewhere in the middle of Mercyful Diamond’s performance, I checked the
staircase and saw with a sigh of relief that Mark and John Gallagher were
entering the venue. I didn’t see Joe Hasselvander, but assumed he must
already be here, or maybe he was on his way. It was only after Mercyful
Diamond’s set, when I was outside again shooting the breeze with other festival
attendees, that I learned how wrong I was. Hasselvander wasn’t here, and he wasn’t going to be
here because he had missed his flight thanks to a snowstorm in New
England. So how could Raven possibly play a gig without a drummer?
It turns out that they had lined up three local drummers (on just four hours’
notice) to play portions of the gig. One of those Athenian
skinsmen was Battleroar’s Nick Papadopoulos, but I wasn’t familiar with the other two.
From what I learned later, each of these drummers had a few minutes with one of
the Gallagher brothers in a rehearsal studio somewhere in Athens tonight to run
through their parts. Now, Raven songs aren’t complex from a percussive
standpoint, but I was pretty worried about how it could possibly work to plug
in three essentially unrehearsed drummers to play a Raven gig. Little did I know …
It was around 12:30 a.m. when the An Club stage crackled to life with
Raven launching into their traditional set opener, “Take Control.”
Turns out that was about the only traditional aspect of this Raven gig.
From the outset, it was obvious that Raven were missing some gear.
Bassist/vocalist John was missing his distinctive glittery silver bass,
strumming a black one instead. Even worse, he didn’t have his head mike,
but was instead tethered to a stationary microphone stand on the left side of
the stage. I’ve never seen that before. When John offered a hearty
“Fuck You” to Air France later in the gig, it became clear that his basses and
gear (including microphone) had not made it to Athens. After “Take
Control,” the set took an unpredicted swerve into the obscure as Raven marched
through a delightful selection of rarely-heard gems like “I Don’t Need Your
Money,” “Hell Patrol,” and “Firepower.” Sure, it was noticeable that the
drummer wasn’t quite in step with the brothers, but this was actually a lot of
fun. During “I Don’t Need Your Money,” a visibly wasted Manolis (the
promoter) ran onto the stage and did a stage dive, only for the crowd to part
before him. He hit the floor. Hard. Ouch. Fortunately,
I think he was too drunk to notice. After “Firepower,” the first drummer
left and out came the second drummer, as the set segued neatly into another
rarity, “Wiped Out,” before the staple, “Rock Until You Drop,” was aired.
Sadly, the gig went downhill fast from this point on. Technical problems
became glaringly obvious, with John requiring help from a tech to repair his
borrowed bass and Mark having all kinds of trouble with his guitar setup (he’d
strum the guitar, and the most awful distortion sound would come out, causing
him to stop and adjust the pedal repeatedly). Moreover, a certain
lethargy was visible on the Gallagher brothers. Listen, I know they’re no
spring chickens, but I saw Raven deliver an absolute energetic smasher of a gig
in Atlanta in November 2012. I know the guys have still got it. But
not tonight. They weren’t moving around much and seemed like they were
just trying to hang on. Under the circumstances, that’s
understandable. But it’s not Raven. Things took a turn for the
worse when Raven dipped into a pair of non-metal covers (“Rock & Roll” and
“Tie Your Mother Down”) to pad their set. They went over like a lead
balloon. The rabid Up the Hammers crowd doesn’t want Led Zeppelin and
Queen covers. Massive fail. Then there was a protracted delay after
“Tie Your Mother Down” to adjust the drumkit for the next drummer. It got
worse. During “On and On,” Mark broke a string, forcing John to go into
an impromptu bass solo while Mark dashed offstage with his backup axe. He
came back a few minutes later, only the backup guitar hadn’t been tuned
properly, and kept falling out of tune. Mark tried to fix it, but it
mostly sounded like shit.
I was so bummed. I know from seeing them four months ago that Raven are
still a vital, stellar live act. They didn’t show it tonight. The
frustration and disappointment on their faces was evident. And the Greek
fans were disappointed to an extreme. Raven hadn’t played their country
since 1991. This was hardly a triumphant return. The energy was
off, the covers were kind of awful and the omissions (no “All for One”? no
“Live at the Inferno”?) were just painful. I couldn’t really blame the
Gallagher brothers. It wasn’t their fault. They were dealt a shitty
hand, with the missing drummer, the missing gear, the late flights, and the
rampant technical troubles. A part of me greatly respected and admired
them for soldiering on under such adverse circumstances to try to play a proper
gig as they had promised to do for the Up the Hammers faithful. Most
bands put in that position would have canceled, and Raven are absolutely to be
commended for making the show happen, in spite of everything. But the
other part of me couldn’t help but wish that Raven had canceled tonight.
It wasn’t a real Raven gig. It wasn’t. And it just made me kind of
sad. Especially with all the rarities the Gallaghers had planned to play,
this could have been a gig for the ages. Instead, it’s a performance that
most of us would probably rather forget. Setlist: Take Control, I
Don’t Need Your Money, Hell Patrol, Firepower,
Wiped Out, Rock Until You Drop, Mark Gallagher guitar solo, Lambs to the
Slaughter, On and On, John Gallagher bass solo, Break the Chains (with snippets
of I Don’t Need No Doctor, Symptom of the Universe and Genocide).
Just like that, the Festival was over. Jen and I lingered in the An Club
for quite some time, drinking more beers, hanging with the Widow guys and our
newfound friends from all over Europe, and taking pictures. For his part,
promoter Manolis was passed out on a bench, a small sliver of his pale Greek
belly protruding from under his Widow shirt. Somewhere there’s a photo of
Manolis in this pose. Priceless. While we were standing around
talking, Nick Papadopoulos (the fill-in drummer who played the end of Raven’s
set) walked by. I stopped him and congratulated him on a job well
done. He thought I was making fun of him. I wasn’t. Still,
Nick was embarrassed by his performance. I explained that I know things
hadn’t gone perfectly (far from it), but that we all owed him a huge debt of
gratitude for stepping up in the worst of conditions so that Raven could play
those songs. With that, he loosened up and told us a little bit of the
story. He said he’d gotten a call that night and had met Mark (I think)
to rehearse for 15 minutes. He knew he would playing “On and On” and
“Break the Chains,” but he hadn’t heard those songs in many year so he wasn’t
sure how they went. To make matters worse, it was explained to him that
the Gallagher brothers like to jam during those songs. (They do.)
When Nick asked them what he was supposed to do, they told him, “We lead, you
follow.” When he told them he didn’t know how to follow them, they
reassured him, “We’ll do what we do. You do what you do.” Wow.
Trying conditions for sure. All of us (me, Jen, the Widow dudes) thanked
Nick and told him we really appreciated what he had done tonight.
By now, it was after 2:00 in the morning. We all felt great and wanted to
go to the after party, which was being held at the Dr. Feelgood metal club
nearby. There was only one problem: We had to haul the giant (and
only slightly lighter than it had been) Widow merch bag back to the hotel
first. So we did. We were none too happy to be ascending Strefi
Hill to get to our hotel at 2:30 a.m. The hotel owner was none too happy
to see us when we showed up at the door, breathless and boisterous, ringing the
bell for him to let us in. We dropped off the bag, then hauled ass back
down the hill to Dr. Feelgoods. As we walked through the square, we
bumped into a couple of people wearing Gamma Ray and Helloween t-shirts (one of
them even clutching an inflatable pumpkin that had been thrown into the
audience at the end of the set) who told us about how incredible that gig was
tonight. My mood momentarily soured, but then I remembered myself and
returned my mind to living (and basking in) the moment that was, not the moment
that might have been in some alternate reality. There’s a good life
lesson somewhere in there, kiddos.
The after party tonight wasn’t quite the madhouse that the one last night was,
but there were an awful lot of headbangers out nonetheless. We chose to
hang out just outside Dr. Feelgoods, where many of our number had gathered. (A
nice thing about standing outside was you didn’t have to pay inflated bar
prices, but could run to the convenience stores nearby to buy a beer for much
cheaper.) The next couple of hours were a blur of interesting
conversation (Stephan from Switzerland, Daniel from Hamburg, our new Greek
friend in the Motorhead hoodie, the Ruler dudes), beer and uproarious
laughter. The Sin Starlett guys were there, in various states of
intoxication. Somehow, the Widow guys decided to take it upon themselves
to teach Southern vernacular to the drummer, who was a willing (albeit quite
drunk) pupil. For the rest of the night, he kept coming up to us with a
goofy grin on his face, saying things like “10-4 good buddy” or “Damn straight
boo” in a thick German accent. It was funny as hell. To push things
over the top, somebody produced a superball that lit up whenever it hit the
ground. We were chasing that damn superball up and down the filthy square
while we talked and drank, somehow managing to avoid being hit by taxicabs or
mugged by thieves along the way. At some point, while I stood there
feeling good and going strong way into the wee hours of the morning, I turned
to Jen and said, “You know, I’m every bit as metal as these people.” My,
what a difference a day makes.
Alas, all things must end, and sometime after 4:00 a.m., the five us decided we
needed to go back to the hotel to get some sleep. After all, tomorrow we
were going to go be tourists, and we didn’t want to sleep through our one
chance to see the splendor of Athens’ tourist sites. By 4:30 or so, we
all made it back to our hotel rooms. I collapsed in bed, only to sit up
straight at the awful noise assaulting my eardrums. No, it wasn’t
tinnitus (for once). It was shitty electronica. There must have
been an all-night rave going on right nearby, because it was L-O-U-D. So
I lay there and listened to that damned infernal rave until the first rays of
dawn broke at 6:00 a.m., when the rave finally stopped, the music ended, and
that awful cat serenaded me to sleep for a couple of hours.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
I don’t include touristy bits in these trip narratives I do. Never.
It’s all about the heavy metal, dammit. In this case, though, a short
postscript is in order, because Sunday was (in some respects) the most fun,
epic and amazing day of the entire vacation. By late morning, the Widow
guys, Jen and me were mobilized and en route to the Acropolis. We spent
the afternoon crawling all over the ruins at the cradle of Western Civilization
as an impossibly bright Greek sun shone down on us. Chris ate a hot dog
cone. Jen had her first proper gyro. We all shopped for tacky
souvenirs. We saw Parthedogs (stray dogs living near the
Parthenon). Then we went back to the hotel, bought a bunch of beers, and
sat on the rooftop talking until the sun went down. Magnificent! After the sunset, we
freshened up a bit and then went to a formal dinner that Up the Hammers promoter
Manolis was putting on for 30-40 band members and guests. The food was
exceptional (everyone laughed at me for becoming addicted to tatziki sauce, but
damn that stuff rules), the wine was surprisingly good (this spoken by a man who
doesn’t drink wine, but Manolis is a sommelier for his day job and he chose the
wines himself), and the heavy metal was playing softly over the speakers (High
Spirits, Armored Saint, Killers and tons of others). The best part was the
conversation. Jen and I ended up sitting next to our Swiss friend Stephan,
our Hamburg pal Daniel (and his friend whose name I can’t remember), and Alexis
and Francois from Hurlement. Jen and Alexis were in an animated
conversation that must have lasted 4 hours, with Francois and I chipping in
comic relief and laughter. Sometime after midnight, we said our farewells
and our thank yous to Manolis, then worked our way back down to Dr.
Feelgoods. There, the Widow guys, the Hurlement guys, Stephan, Daniel, Jen
and I , and several others drank large quantities of beer (mostly purchased from
the store next door for 0.70 Euros apiece), clinked mugs, and enjoyed a sort of
fellowship and camaraderie uniting all of us across demographic, national, and
other boundaries. It was a magical night. We stayed out until after
4:00 a.m., then hauled ass back to the hotel so the Widow guys could pack.
Sleep was not part of the equation for any of us. Before 6:00 a.m., Jen
and I guided our Widow friends down to the subway, so that they could catch
their flights home. Jen and I then went back to the hotel, packed our
bags, and returned to the subway to hitch a ride to the Piraeus port.
From there, we repaired to the Island of Hydra for three days of beautiful
tranquility and serenity. And sleep. Lots and lots of fucking
sleep. And donkeys. And chickens. But that, my friends, is a tale for another time.
~ Review by Kit Ekman ~
Up the Hammers VIII
March 7-9, 2013
The police don’t go into the Exarchia section of Athens,
Greece. If they did, they might not make it out alive, judging by the
copious amounts of graffiti bearing ominous slogans like “Crack Cops
Skulls.” The U.S. State Department warns American travelers not to
venture into the Omonia Square area of Athens after dark because of the rampant
drug use, theft, violence, and other criminal activity that goes on
there. Yet for 4 days in March, the Exarchia / Omonia part of Athens was
the site of perhaps the best heavy metal party I’ve ever attended, in the form
of the Up the Hammers VIII music festival, the pre-party, and the
post-party. Here’s the tale, in all of its unvarnished glory.
Thursday, March 7, 2013
After 24 hours of travel, I arrived alone (my better half having been detained
at home for an extra two days because of damnable work commitments) at the
Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport in Athens at about 2:30 p.m. local
time. After killing about 4 hours in the airport rocking out to my mp3
player and reading book 3 of the Game of Thrones saga, I ventured back
downstairs to the arrival area to welcome my dear friends from Widow, who were
flying in to play the fest. The four of us hopped a shiny, clean,
efficient metro line from the Airport into downtown Athens, which took about 45
minutes. By around 8 p.m., we were deposited at the Omonia Square metro
stop, which was less than a mile from our hotel. The problem was finding
the hotel. It was dark. Athens is hugely crowded and confusing,
with poorly marked streets, insane (and bloodthirsty) drivers, and decaying
infrastructure on all sides. Lugging both band gear and personal effects,
the four of us wandered around lost for about 30 minutes before finally waving
the white flag and beckoning a taxi. The taxi driver professed to have no
idea where Hotel Dryades was, even though I had a printout of a map showing its
exact location. His first question was, “How long have you been in
Athens?” Like a dumbass, I piped up, “Oh, we just got here.”
Sucker. The cabby proceeded to drive us around in a big circle, saying
things like “Look, the Parthenon” (which wasn’t on our way to the hotel,
incidentally) when he wasn’t cursing the other drivers in English and Greek,
and generally driving like a maniac. By the time he let us out near (but
not at) the hotel, I felt like our pockets had been picked, but was grateful to
be alive. Welcome to Athens.
We checked into our hotel, only to learn in short order that nothing really
works properly. It’s sort of typical of our experience in Greece.
Wi-fi didn’t work (except when we were on the roof of the adjoining hotel
building). The telephone didn’t work. The proprietor was reasonably
good-natured, but spoke little English and had his patience thoroughly tried by
four drunk, loud and boisterous Americans coming and going at all hours of the
day and night. The most distinguishable feature of the hotel was
that it was located way up the side of a hill. The stairs to get to the
hotel were very long, and very steep. Every time we climbed them, we
huffed and puffed and cursed them. But hey, at least we got our exercise in Athens.
A chill was in the air and a light rain was falling when we made our way on foot
over to the An Club (about a 10 minute walk) sometime after 9:00 p.m. for the
official UTH VIII pre-party. The An Club (logo featuring a spade like the
ace of spades) is located about two blocks off of a small, dingy public square
filled with unsavory types (mostly sitting on benches and smoking pot) all night
long. Spray-painted bedsheets hung in the square displaying what appeared
to be anti-government or anarchist slogans. It was grimy, gritty and
dirty, and the sullen-faced loiterers looked unhappy and unwelcoming.
Fortunately, the An Club itself rocks. The venue is subterranean, as the
street-level entrance gives way to a steep staircase down to the club. It
has multiple levels that allow for great viewing angles all around the room, no
matter how crowded it might be, and probably holds 400 people (just a
guess). Stage is small, but the sound system is good, and most bands were
blessed by excellent mixes and clear sound all weekend long. The bar only
had two taps, both of which dispensed Amstel products (regular Amstel and Amstel
Bock, the latter of which cost a Euro more than the 3 Euro regular stuff).
Funny, Amstel is ubiquitous in Athens, even though it’s a Dutch brew. And
never the Amstel Light you see in the U.S., either, just regular Amstel.
Not great but it was better than the Mythos local swill I tried. My
preference was to get 0.5 liter cans of Edelstein from street vendors for 1 Euro
whenever possible, so as to minimize the amount of Amstel I had to drink.
Anyway, back to the venue. A cool feature of it was that the door to the
outside mostly stayed open, so that fresh air wafted in, keeping the room from
becoming too hot or too smoky (bars ain’t smoke-free in Greece, folks, and the
Greeks smoke like chimneys). Nice.
At the entrance to the venue, we were warmly greeted by the promoter, Manolis
Karazeris, an amiable chap who is himself a guitarist of some repute
(ex-Battleroar, and currently playing in Dexter Ward). Manolis asked
about our travels and the adequacy of our hotel, then ushered us downstairs,
saying, “Let’s have some fun.” When we entered the room, Mob Rules
(the alter ego of Chicago’s Damien Thorne) were in mid-set dishing out some
tasty covers from the Ronnie James Dio canon. We heard “We Rock,”
“Stargazer,” “Man on a Silver Mountain,” “Heaven and Hell,” and maybe one or
two others. The band was pretty static, but they played the songs well,
and the singer did an excellent job handling the classic RJD vocal lines.
There only looked to be 100 or so people in the venue, but everyone was fully
engaged and rocking out. Eventually, the four of us realized we were famished. There was
no food at the An Club, so we went back outside and walked a half-block away to
a restaurant that we dubbed “Pizza Sandwich” because those the words emblazoned
on its orange awning. The great thing about Pizza Sandwich was you could
get a rectangular slice of pizza and a coke for just 3 Euros, then sit outside
and bring in whatever beer you wanted. So that’s what we did, early and often.
Duly refreshed, we returned to the venue at 10:30 p.m. or so, just as the
pre-party headliner, Into Glory Ride, were taking the stage. The
Greek quartet was (as you might expect) a Manowar tribute act, and a very
talented one at that. Right out of the chute, they played the legendary
Into Glory Ride album in its entirety, the crowd throwing fists and
singing along word for word at the top of their lungs. Importantly, the
short-haired singer did a fine Eric Adams impression (albeit not quite able to
hit the high notes or to duplicate the magnificent range of Mr. Adams in his
prime), even if he was using lyric sheets from time to time. It almost
brought tears to my eyes standing there with my Greek brothers and sisters,
singing along with “Secrets of Steel,” “Revelation,” “March for Revenge,” and
so on. After finishing the Into Glory Ride album, the band whipped
through a selection of 12 more mostly old-school Manowar tracks, including 4
from Hail to England (what a stellar version of “Each Dawn I
Die”). Near the end of the set, the salvo of “Thor (the Powerhead)” and
“Battle Hymn” was a thing of beauty to behold, and the band capped off its
nearly two hour performance with an a capello run through “The Crown and the
Ring.” Amazing. Manowar themselves would not have played better,
had they been here tonight. Setlist: Warlord, Secret of
Steel, Gloves of Metal, Gates of Valhalla, Hatred, Revelation, March for
Revenge, Kill with Power, Hail to England, Hail and Kill, Metal Warriors, Kings
of Metal, Army of Immortals, Each Dawn I Die, Heart of Steel, Thor, Battle
Hymn, Warriors of the World, Crown and the Ring.
By this time, jetlag was encroaching on all of us, so we worked our way back to
Hotel Dryades by around 2 a.m. to catch a little shut-eye. But not much.
After all, we wanted to get up early on Friday and explore Athens’ metal
shops. As exhausted as I was, I couldn’t sleep, so I sat up reading until
well after 3 a.m. before sleep finally took me away, at least for a little while.
Friday, March 8, 2013
It turns out, my second floor hotel room wasn’t really conducive to sleeping in,
for two reasons. First, the huge windows on two sides (including East)
meant that the daylight came streaming in unbidden at just after 6 a.m.
Second, Athens has a crapload of feral cats. One of these accursed feral
cats camped out under my window and made the most tortured meowing sound much of
the night and morning. I tried to sleep through the light and the infernal
racket, but finally gave up at around 8. It’s just as well, because Chris
was knocking on my door before 9, telling me to mobilize. By 10 or so, the
four of us were out on the street, in search of breakfast. We found a
little gyro shop and had delicious souvlaki sandwiches (cubed pork or chicken
with salad, spicy sauce and french fries wrapped inside the pita), washed down
with cans of coke. Mmmmm, good.
We spent the remainder of the morning and part of the afternoon exploring our
environs. Nearly every inch of Exarchia / Omonia is covered with
graffiti, some of it lovely and artistic (like the jungle scene painted onto
the building across from the An Club, complete with elephants, toucans and blue
frogs), some of it ugly and profane (one panel read “Fuck the police, Fuck
Nazis, Fuck government, Fuck capitalism”). The streets are narrow, with
cars and scooters parked in disorderly fashion on the street, on sidewalks,
anywhere. The city is dirty, and it is almost impossible to find a
garbage can anywhere, I guess because there is no money to pay municipal
employees to empty the garbage. As a result, I felt like a goober walking
around with empty beer cans half the day looking for a non-litter means of
disposing of them. Also, there are no crosswalks, so you take your life
into your hands each time you cross the road, as the cars (and especially the
taxis) come whipping around the corners at breakneck speed.
Some of these cars have loudspeakers strapped to their roofs,
amplifying loud, angry, harsh-sounding voices. We guessed that maybe they
were talking about locations for anti-government rallies or something, but who
knows. This is what official unemployment rates of nearly 30% do to a
community, especially when coupled with crippling governmental austerity
measures. Athens seemed to be a society on the brink. All of our
eyes were opened wide by what we saw, and we resolved then and there to stick
together for the remainder of the weekend. No wandering off alone, especially after dark.
That’s not to see that our meanderings were unpleasant. Far from it.
We actually had a delightful day. We stumbled onto a metal t-shirt shop
that had the most amazing inventory of both official and bootleg t-shirts.
Five different Running Wild designs, Sacred Steel, Grim Reaper, Gamma Ray ‘Land
of the Free’ hoodies, Vio-Lence ‘Eternal Nightmare’ shirts, and so on. It
was cool as hell, and the Widow guys dropped many a Euro there. Me, I kept
my powder dry to buy merch at the festival, though I’ll admit to being sorely
tempted. At some point, we went back to the hotel and spent a couple of
hours on the rooftop of the adjacent building so that John E. could use wi-fi
and we could admire the breathtaking hillside views of the city of Athens laid
out before us, including a stunning vantage point of the Acropolis looming earby.
The day got much cooler when, in mid-afternoon, we encountered some denim-vest
clad Greek and Swiss metalheads roaming around the Exarchia area. They
knew Widow’s music and one of them asked whether they planned to play “Beware
the Night” off the Nightlife album. In truth, Widow hadn’t
rehearsed that number, but they vowed to perform it for the dude anyway.
The 0.5-liter cans of Edelstein started flowing and the day started
rocking. But we had to eat, so we went off in search of a nice sit-down
place where we could have a proper Greek meal. Somehow the four of us
wound up at a place called The Beer Academy. Hey, I graduated from
there. It was actually a German food place. Maybe when I go to
Germany I can eat a nice Greek meal. For today, though, it was mountains
of sausage, cabbage, and sauerkraut, washed down with the some tasty Warsteiner. As we were finishing our
meal, we looked at our watches. 4:40 p.m. Crap, the first band started playing at
4:30. I had stupidly left my earplugs at the hotel, but fortunately John
E. had an extra clean pair that he lent me, and we beat feet over to the An
Club, arriving at a few minutes after 5, sadly just after the opening band
R.U.S.T. (from Cyprus) had finished their set. Oh well, sorry dudes
… We had to eat. This was the first and only band whose performance
I missed at UTH VIII though, so I’d say I did pretty well.
Next up were the Frenchmen of Hurlement, whose debut album De Sang et
d’Acier made a favorable impression on me a couple of years ago.
Widow had played with Hurlement at the Swordbrothers Fest in Germany in 2010
(?), so they were familiar with Hurlement, and told me I was in for a
high-energy performance. They were exactly right. Sounding like a
mixture of Running Wild, Manowar, Lonewolf and Killers to these ears, Hurlement
ripped through an enthusiastic 40-minute show that had the Greek punters
singing along lustily to French-language tunes like “Moine Guerrier,” “Dernier
Combat,” “Ordalie,” and set-closer “Mercenaire.” Guitarist Francois
Porte’s fingers danced across the fretboard, churning out the lively melody
lines, while red-maned singer Alexis Roy-Petit unleashed his powerful
lungs. One interesting moment was when a problem with the drums led to a
roughly two-minute lull in the set. On the fly, Alexis led the crowd in
an a capella run through the first verse of Manowar’s “Heart of Steel.” It
was a ballsy move, but I’ll go to my grave swearing that everyone in the crowd
joined their voices with Alexis’, the heavens parted, and the sun shone down
beatifically on us all. (Sorry, inside joke from my conversation with
Hurlement later that weekend.) At any rate, by the end of their set, I was
thinking to myself, “Damn, I need to spend more time listening to Hurlement
CDs.” Setlist: Dernier Combat, Dogue de Broceliande, Moine
Guerrier, Brothers of the Watch, Tigres Volants, Ordalie, Mercenaire.
(Inquisition was dropped from the set due to time constraints.)
The third band on the Friday slate was actually my most anticipated act of the
day, Alpha Tiger. The lone German artist on the UTH VIII roster,
Alpha Tiger captured my imagination two years ago with a stunningly good debut
album, Man or Machine, especially the heavenly vocals of Stephan
Dietrich, who has more than a touch of classic John Arch in his voice.
Alpha Tiger recently released their second album Beneath the Surface
through Century Media, but I hadn’t heard it yet because those assholes at CM
didn’t see fit to release it domestically in any physical format. Thanks
a lot, dipshits. (Of course, I rectified the situation at UTH, purchasing
both a special “fan edition” copy of the album with a bonus live CD and an
Alpha Tiger shirt bearing the slogan “Unleash the Beast” on the
backprint.) When the band took the stage, I was immediately struck by how
young they are. Early 20s, at the oldest. Several members were
decked out in colorful spandex (early 80s style). I only recognized two
songs (“Karma” and “Against the Time,” two of my absolute favorites from the
debut), plus the set-closing cover “Queen of the Reich.” Everything else
came off the new album. I loved the music and Dietrich’s vocals, although
the playing seemed a bit sloppy in spots. Funny, though, the Greeks I
spoke to later that weekend weren’t altogether impressed with Alpha Tiger, some
even suggesting that they were posers because they were kids who dressed up
like old-school metalheads, then didn’t bother to stick around for the rest of
the weekend to watch other bands. (That criticism seems harsh and
unjustified to me, as I saw the whole band in the venue most of the rest of
Friday and I could have sworn that one of the guitarists was in the An Club on
Saturday too.) Only in Greece would a killer old-school true-metal German
band like Alpha Tiger be viewed as posers, I guess. My assessment remains
that Alpha Tiger are a talented young band with a bright future behind them,
especially if Century Media will pull their heads out of their asses and
promote them properly in Europe and the USA. Setlist: The
Alliance, From Outer Space, Against the Time, Beneath the Surface, Along the
Rising Sun, Karma, Queen of the Reich.
By now, the venue was filling up nicely and the true underground heavy metal
spirit was in the air. I’ve never seen so many denim patch-covered
jackets in one place before. And the patches weren’t “sell-out” bands
like Megadeth or Hammerfall, no sirree Bob, it was all Doomsword and Battleroar
and Manilla Road and Sortilege and Brocas Helm and Liege Lord and Armored
Saint. I tell you, being in Athens for the Up the Hammers can really
distort your perspective. It feels like you’ve entered the Twilight
Zone. Who knew there was such a metal place on planet Earth? I
mean, I’ve been to Germany many times and always thought Germany was the metal
capital of the Northern Hemisphere (gotta include that caveat, because I’ve
heard that South America is its own special breed of heavy metal
insanity). Nope. Greece pretty much kicks Germany’s ass in terms of
its overall underground metal bad-assery. And it pains me to say it too
because I love Germany. But Greece wears the crown. And it’s not
just how they dress, either. They know the words to every song. They
“sing” the guitar melodies. And they can rock out and drink for 24 hours
straight, without eating or sleeping. It’s insane, really.
At 7:00, it was time for Damien Thorne to perform, this time
sans Dio cover songs. To be honest, I am not familiar with this band’s
music, but I know that their Sign of the Jackal album from the 80s is
viewed as a cult classic in certain quarters. Their set seemed to be drawn
heavily from that disc, judging by the strength of the audience
reaction for old songs versus new songs. As was the case Thursday night in their
Mob Rules incarnation, these guys aren’t the most dynamic performers in the
world. They’re older and heavyset, and they don’t move around the stage
much at all. But they sounded quite good and their songs were
impressive. Certainly, the crowd seemed to love them, although Damien
Thorne confused them by waving a Chicago Blackhawks towel at one point.
Not really an NHL room, my friends. Midway through their set, the Widow
guys told me they were crashing and needed to go back to the hotel to sleep for
an hour or two. I felt strong (at least, at that moment), so I stayed at
the An Club to remain in the heavy metal vortex. Big mistake …
The next two bands marked the festival’s only rocky stretch, at least for my
personal tastes. The bands in question were Vice Human from Greece
and Adramelch from Italy. Neither made a favorable impression on
me, albeit for very different reasons. Vice Human are one of the oldest
Greek heavy metal bands, and god do they look it. The two guitar players
appeared positively ancient, especially the one with
the grey hair, sweater and spectacles who stood at the back of the stage
watching his fingers the whole time. Vice Human’s singer looked to be 30
years younger than everyone else in the band, and he had a great voice.
But the material was way too simple and primitive for my ears, sounding a bit
like the earliest hard-rockiest, bounciest NWOBHM stuff. I just couldn’t
get into it. That said, the An Club went positively bonkers during Vice
Human’s set. The audience treated them like metal gods. They were
worth watching just to witness the crowd reaction. As for Adramelch, the
name of the game was short hair and spectacles, which isn’t a problem in and of
itself (hell, I have short hair and spectacles). The trouble was that
Adramelch’s set leaned too hard on their most recent album, last year’s
Lights from Oblivion, which is unfortunately boring-ass prog rock that is
far removed from the epic metal that characterized Adramelch’s earlier
records. Sure, they played some classic stuff from Irae Melanox
(“Was called Empire” for the win) and some good stuff from Broken History
(title track), but the momentum was killed by the proggy crap each time.
Again, the Greeks didn’t seem to mind, as the by-now packed An Club was firmly
in Adramelch’s corner from beginning to end.
The truth of the matter is that there was a larger problem at hand.
Remember how I said I was feeling strong when my friends went back to the hotel
to rest at 7:30? By 9:00, I wasn’t feeling strong anymore. Part of
the problem was an overall wave of exhaustion. Part of it was a vicious
headache. And part of it was a feeling of queasiness in my stomach.
Before you laugh and say that’s what I get for being
a drunk, let me just clarify that I wasn’t wasted. I’d had all of one beer
since we got to the club at 5 p.m. Whatever it was, it wasn’t the
beer. The problem, of course, is that by now I was stuck. There
would be no walking back to the hotel by myself at night, and I was damned if I
was going to impair my friends’ fun at all, much less miss a minute of the
festival. So I set my jaw and resolved to power through the night, come what may.
At the end of Adramelch’s set, Chris and Peter arrived back at the venue (John
E. was still sacked out at the hotel). I thought some fresh air might
help, so the three of us went outside to avail ourselves of the venue’s in/out
privileges and escape the ultra-crowded hall. By now, there was quite a
scene outside. Dozens of headbangers had congregated, most of them
drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. The buzz of the conversations drew
many curious natives, from the scavengers who slipped through the crowd
wordlessly, picking up empty glass bottles (presumably to cash in on them via
recycling) as they went, to the beggars who persistently demanded money, to the
peddlers selling incense and knickknacks and whatever other cheap junk they
had. As I said, it was quite a scene.
Sarissa had already begun playing by the time we went back into the
venue. They were something of an oddball in the lineup, only because
these Greeks have a pedigree that includes both much-revered obscure 80s
material and much more modern-sounding (i.e., chunky riffage, elements of
groove) later material, particularly in the form of a 2004 album entitled
Masters of Sins. The result was a set that was unclassifiable
because old-school sounding songs and new-school sounding songs were side by
side. Once again, the packed house went ballistic for Sarissa, affording
them the kind of overwhelming response usually reserved for conquering
heroes. For my part, I thought Sarissa sounded cool, and I regretted not
having spent some time reconnecting with their material (I own the
Masters disc as well as a CD version of their 1987 demo) before coming
over for this festival. Now that I’m home, I certainly intend to remedy
that omission without delay.
We went back outside (by now, joined by John E., who had returned to the ranks
of the living after a 3-hour nap) for a bit after Sarissa finished playing, if
only to escape the wall-to-wall crowds inside the venue. It was during
this interval that the first bout of nausea hit me. Fortunately, there
was a large dumpster about half a block down from the venue, so I ran down
there thinking I was going to yak. It didn’t happen, but I was
super-woozy. I went downstairs to buy a Coca-cola from the bar to try to
settle my stomach, which helped a bit, but I was feeling like a wounded metal
warrior indeed. Still, when the first notes of Domine’s set became
audible, I told Chris and Peter, “I’m not going to miss this band,” and raced
back into the venue.
Domine are a band I have long respected and enjoyed. I own their entire
5-album catalog, and I’m a sucker for their brand of over-the-top Italian epic
metal with songs about Elric of Melnibone. Unfortunately, I’ve never had
the chance to see them live in the 15 years I’ve been listening to their music,
and I don’t expect I ever will again. So it didn’t matter how crappy I
felt, I was not going to miss out on this. What’s more, this was no
ordinary Domine gig, but was instead billed as a “special old-school set,”
meaning that only one song (“The Messenger”) was aired from their controversial,
proggier 5th album, 2007’s Ancient Spirit Rising. Likewise, there was only one
song (“The Aquilonia Suite”) from their 4th
album. Everything else was old shit. The crowd couldn’t have been
happier. From the standpoint of audience/band interaction, Domine’s set
was one of the most remarkable gigs I’ve ever seen. The An Club was
stuffed to the gills with people, and the crowd was singing every word along
with Morby, singing the guitar lines, and going absolutely crazy. The
broad smiles on the faces of guitarist / mastermind Enrico Paoli and his
brother, bassist Riccardo Paoli, told the story. And holy crap, did Domine sound incredible. While
they had a keyboardist, those keyboard lines that are sometimes overbearing and
distracting on their CDs were low in the live mix, allowing the full power of
the music to shine through. Vocalist Morby sang his ass off too
(strangely, he was clad in a Metal Blade Records hoodie, which is odd because
Domine was never on that label, and Metal Blade is the kind of poser imprint
that you’d think the underground hordes in Greece would love to hate). The
band played brilliantly, the crowd cheered brilliantly, and those Domine
classics that are so near and dear to the hearts of epic metal fans shone
brightly in the night like the evergreens they are. I daresay there’s
nowhere in the world that Domine could enjoy such a rabid audience reaction as
they did in Athens. (Oddly, Domine missed the opportunity to cash in on
their fans’ reverence, as they only brought one t-shirt
design, and that was the (ugly) cover art from the Emperor of the Black
Runes album. Strange.) Even when Enrico’s guitar cut out in the
middle of the second proper song, “Thunderstorm,” causing a delay before the
band started playing the song from the beginning again, the audience held fast
and remained strong. It was a thing of beauty to behold, and a tribute to
the magick and might of heavy metal music. I’ll never forget this gig,
that’s for sure, and it made no difference how queasy and headachy I felt.
If this was to be the only time I ever see Domine in my life, then it was
absolutely the perfect show to see them, and I left it all on the field.
This sweeping two-hour performance was an epic metal fan’s dream. Two
funny moments: (i) at the end of the more-epic-than-thou “Eternal
Champion,” it was time for the band to leave until encores, but there was
nowhere to go because the backstage area at the An Club is on the other side of
the venue from the stage, and there’s no way the band could have gotten through
that crowd to the dressing room, so they just stood on stage for a minute before
kicking into the encores; (ii) when the show finally ended, Enrico Paoli took
the mike, thanked everyone for enjoying their old-school setlist, and threatened
(jokingly) to play only new songs the next time Domine comes to Athens.
Setlist: Hymn, The Mass of Chaos, Thunderstorm, Uriel the Flame of
God, The Messenger, The Aquilonia Suite, The Ship of the Lost Souls, Army of the
Dead, Eternal Champion. Encores: Chronicles of the Black Sword,
Dragonlord, Defenders, The Ride of the Valkyries.
By now, it was after 1 a.m., and all I wanted to do was crawl into my hotel bed
and pass out from exhaustion. The Widow boys had other ideas. After
all, there was an after-party at a nearby metal club called the Ragnarokk Club,
and damned if they were going to miss it. In for a penny, in for a pound,
as they say, so I tagged along. Actually, though, we didn’t go to
Ragnarokk right away, but instead took a lengthy detour to our favorite hangout
destination in Athens. You guessed it, Pizza Sandwich. They all got
food (I felt too sick to eat), and we sat outside amidst metalheads from
Germany and Switzerland. As luck would have it, our companions were both
very cool and very interesting, so the conversation flowed freely and
pleasantly. (Not me, I sat there and shivered in the chill night air in
my fleece, but that’s okay, I was listening and enjoying the spirited dialogue,
nonetheless.) Sometime after 2:00 a.m., things took a turn for the
bizarre and disturbing when we heard sounds of an altercation in the street
maybe 30 feet from where we were sitting. Two strapping younger dudes
were pushing and shoving an older guy around. The older guy tried to get into a
passing taxicab, then we watched in horror as the cab driver got out of the
vehicle and began punching the old guy in the face. The other two joined
in, and now it was three on one. We sat there helplessly, not
understanding what was happening or knowing what to do. The beating didn’t
last long, thankfully, and the older guy seemed not to be seriously hurt,
although he was bleeding from the nose. Did the police come? No. Did
local bystanders (of which there were numerous) intervene? No. Just
another night in Exarchia, I suppose, but it was a sobering experience,
nonetheless. I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.
At around 3:00 a.m., we finally got up from Pizza Sandwich and made our way over
to the after party at Ragnarokk. Just as we were about to go inside, the
second wave of nausea hit me and I grabbed John E., as I headed back for the
street, sure that I was going to puke. Once again, I didn’t . And
again, I still wasn’t drunk. By this time, I hadn’t had a beer in 9 hours,
so I was stone-cold sober. It wasn’t alcohol. Maybe bad sausage.
Maybe exhaustion. Maybe my body telling me I needed to get some
rest. Finally, I felt good enough to venture inside the after party.
I couldn’t believe my eyes or ears. Ragnarokk is a heavy metal club,
through and through, with a giant Motorhead mascot painted on the wall.
The PA was cranking out true heavy metal at full volume, as we heard the likes
of Running Wild, Manowar, Exciter, and so on. And the place was jam-packed
with metalheads, all of them drinking. Peter worked his way to the bar and
bought two half-liter beers. The rest of us stood pinned against the wall
near the women’s restroom, which I must confess wasn’t a bad vantage point to
watch the metal chicks coming in and out. The defining moment for me was
when the PA started playing Liege Lord’s “Rage of Angels.” It seemed like
every person in the room stopped talking and sang along with the chorus at the
top of their lungs. I was flabbergasted. I mean, it’s an incredible
song. I’m down with that. But where in the world does a collection of a
couple hundred metalheads stand nuts to butts in a club singing along to a Liege
Lord CD at 3 in the morning after a 10-hour metal festival day has
concluded? Only in Greece, my friends. That was when I turned to
John E. and Chris, and said, “You know, I always thought I was a pretty metal
dude. But these people are way more metal than me.”
At about 3:45, we decided to head back to the hotel. Peter hadn’t gotten
any takers for his two beers, so he pounded both of them in about 4 minutes
(bad idea). As we walked back to the hotel, John E. stopped at Pizza
Sandwich to buy several cans of Mythos beer (also a bad idea). The square
was still crawling with people, and the vibe outside was extremely
hostile. It looked like another physical confrontation was in the offing,
so we took off back to the hotel as quickly as we could, making it back to the
room sometime after 4:15 a.m. I took two Advil, drank a shitload of
water, then stood in the shower for about 15 minutes and let steaming hot water
wash over my weary bones. Maybe it was 5 when I finally nodded off after this truly epic day …
Saturday, March 9, 2013
I didn’t sleep long. Before 10 a.m., the sunlight streaming in through my
two windows awakened me (along with that damned infernal cat). But I
didn’t mind. I was ready to rise and shine, for today was going to
be a great day. A bunch of killer bands were going to play at the An
Club. Jen would be arriving. The sun was out. And I was
headache- and nausea-free, with no ill effects whatsoever from that temporary
illness that had nearly incapacitated me last night. I felt like a new
man, so I celebrated by going downstairs to the Widow guys’ room to drink some
of their beer. Hey, you can’t drink all day if you don’t start in the
morning. I don’t want to incriminate anyone, but I will say there were
some in our little crew who were in pretty rough shape this morning. In
fact, the four of us just hung out in the room talking until after 2:00
p.m. As you might expect, much of the conversation centered on today’s
gig. What setlist would be played? Did they remember “Beware the
Night” well enough to be able to play it without rehearsing it, to accommodate
the request of the Greek fan who bumped into us on the street? It was
cool to just be a fly on the wall, sitting and listening and sipping on my beer
while all of these details were hashed out.
Although the doors for the Festival didn’t open until 4 p.m., we decided to
arrive at the venue by 3 to check in Widow’s merchandise and make the necessary
arrangements. On our way down the hill, we passed by a bustling farmers’
market set up in the middle of the street (it was, after all, Saturday
afternoon). One vendor had a table with gigantic bowls of olives, more
different kinds of olives than I ever seen in one place. Ahhhh, Greece.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t dally. We had a schedule to keep, and besides,
we were all laden down with Widow gear and merch. The merch check-in went
smoothly (although the festival staff had us prepare an inventory of everything
we had, which involved me counting dozens of t-shirts, organized by size and
design), and I got to watch Sanctuaire’s soundcheck while this process
occurred. The festival staff was uniformly gracious and helpful, and gave
Widow a nice spot of prime real estate in the vendor area to display all 3 of their shirt designs.
By this time, all of us were pretty damned hungry. After all, those German
sausages had been about 20 hours ago, and I hadn’t eaten anything (not even a
Pizza Sandwich) since then. Once everything was squared away at the An
Club (including a photo op in the tiny “backstage area,” which consisted of a
small red-painted room with a wooden table and a couple of chairs), we went to
the café next door for a pressed Panini sandwich and a 0.5-liter bottle of
Kaiser beer. As we ate, my eyes scanned the sidewalk
in either direction, because Jen’s flight was supposed to have arrived in Athens
at 2:30. If it had been on time, and if she had made the 3:00 subway, she
ought to reach Omonia by 3:45 or so, which was now. But of course we
didn’t have working cell phones and there was no way for us to keep in
touch. I nervously kept an eye on the road, when suddenly there appeared
a dark-haired girl in a pink Raven t-shirt, just walking right up to the
café. There’s my Jen. She came in and joined us, fresh off the
airplane, drinking espresso and bottled water. With her arrival, the 5
members of Team Widow were now reunited. Happy days are here again.
Reunions are all fun and nice, but hey, we had a gig to attend. By 4:15,
we were back inside the An Club watching Sanctuaire kick off the
Saturday slate of entertainment. These Frenchmen are very young, and
their inexperience shows in their songwriting and their stage presence.
To the best of my discernment, they’re aiming for an occult Mercyful
Fate-meets-Venom kind of vibe, with French lyrics. It worked better live
than it does on their debut CD, L’Empreinte de Lucifer, and the
sparse crowd seemed to enjoy Sanctuaire. The coolest part of their set-up
was that they had an upside-down t-shirt box on the stage, covered with a
tablecloth and bearing the same artifacts (skull, glass of wine, book, quill)
depicted on their album cover. It was
a nice touch, although singer Florent B-Manquat accidently jostled the box near
the end of their set, sending the wine glass spilling, the skull breaking into
pieces and the little display into ruination. Ah, well.
From there, the Up the Hammers running order favored us with four stellar bands
in a row. This was my favorite musical portion of the entire
weekend. Swiss traditional metallers Sin Starlett got the party
going in earnest with a high-energy set drawn heavily from their new CD,
Throat Attack, recently released on Emanes Metal Records. If
rotund, bearded vocalist Elias’s baby-blue Reebok spandex tights and pale blue
vintage Y&T t-shirt didn’t win over the crowd immediately, the opening
track, “Headed by the Hexx,” unquestionably did the trick. “Beholders of
the Claw” ripped and ruled most authoritatively, too. I was sadly
unfamiliar with most of Sin Starlett’s material, their CD having arrived in the
mail the very day before I flew to Athens, but they were great. Highly
recommended for all fans of 1980s traditional heavy metal goodness.
The quality level remained ridiculously high for today’s band #3,
Ruler. Funny, the quartet hails from Italy, yet their backdrop
consisted of a Union Jack and their bassist was wearing a sleeveless Japanese
rising sun t-shirt. Nationality confusion notwithstanding, Ruler were
great for several reasons. Visually, they had the most over-the-top
appearance of any band at UTH VIII, with singer Daniele Valentini
sporting a killer mullet and guitarist Matti “Moustachio” Baldoni taking no prisoners
with the El Camino hairstyle, 80s-style glasses, massive moustache and mutton
chops. Musically, Ruler served up an inspired 7-song set of Iron
Maiden-influenced melodic heavy metal. There was speed, there was energy,
there was melody, and there was power. Valentini is a hell of singer, and
songs like “We Rule the Night” and “Sutjeska” are simply fantastic. As a
special treat, Ruler even offered up a couple of new songs, “Fighting Again” and
“Temple of Doom,” which sounded quite satisfactory on first listen. If you
haven’t heard Ruler’s Evil Nightmares CD on the My Graveyard label, it
would be well worth your while to remedy that omission. The Athens
metalheads loved them, and I thought Ruler put in one of the top 5 performances
of the weekend, for sure. Setlist: Mayday, Fighting Again, We Rule
the Night, Temple of Doom, Sutjeska, Evil Nightmares, Limpieza de Sangre.
Without any further ado, it was time for Widow. Obviously, I’m
biased. But let me say this: I’ve seen the North Carolinians at
least a dozen times in the last few years. I’ve never seen them play a bad
show, but I’ve also never seen them play a better show than the one in
Athens. Everything was just a small notch better, more intense, and more
energetic. It helped, of course, that the Up the Hammers audience knew
their songs. People were going crazy singing along with songs like
“American Werewolf in Raleigh” and “Angel Sin.” Hell, “Beware of the
Night” received a positively giddy reaction from the crowd, which by this point
had filled up the An Club to probably 2/3 capacity. I could tell from the
big smiles on their faces that the Widow guys were having a blast. I was
so happy, and so proud. I’ve seen a lot of behind-the-curtains stuff with
this band over the last couple of years, so I think I have a good appreciation
for (i) all the hard work and personal sacrifice it took for them to get here,
and (ii) just how much it meant to them to be here. Their expectations
for this gig may have been sky-high, but those expectations were at least met, if not
exceeded. It was a Widow gig for the ages, and they kicked major Athenian
ass tonight. Setlist: Take Hold of the Night, Re-Animate Her,
Lady Twilight, American Werewolf in Raleigh, Nightlife, Embrace It, Beware the
Night, Angel Sin, Reunion, Pleasure of Exorcism.
Closing out this four-band run of live heavy metal paradise was the Dutch act,
Vanderbuyst. While they were setting up their gear, Jen said, “Hey,
I saw them at the airport this afternoon,” which is kind of a cool detail.
At any rate, I had been yammering on about these guys for months, and they were honestly
one of the primary draws for me at this festival. To be clear,
Vanderbuyst are different from most of the bands I listen to. Their sound
is much more rooted in the 70s than the 80s and beyond. Some of their
songs owe more to basic, old-fashioned hard rock like Thin Lizzy or even AOR
than to the metallic might and majesty that is so dear to me. But they
sound so cool and they rock so convincingly that I could be give a damn about
genre boundaries. All of that I knew before Up the Hammers. What I
didn’t know, though, was that Vanderbuyst are a killer live band, a power trio
that is like a ball of rockin’ headbangin’ energy. Shrewdly, Willem
Verbuyst and his bandmates structured their setlist to emphasize their heavier,
more metallic numbers, including my two favorite songs, “KGB” and “String of
Beads.” Without question, Vanderbuyst ruled, so much so that John E.,
Chris and I were all compelled to buy Vanderbuyst shirts after their set.
They’ve got that “it” factor. Too bad the room had cleared out a bit
during their set, as some of the Greeks decided to use this “lightweight” band
as a convenient dinner break. Their loss. Those of us that stayed in the room
got our asses kicked for sure. Setlist: To Last Forever, KGB, Butcher’s Knife, Tiger,
Stealing Thunder, String of Beads, Traci Lords, Lecherous.
Because the An Club’s backstage area is so tiny, the rule is that all bands had
to remove their gear no later than an hour after they finished playing.
Well, Widow’s hour was up, so the five of us had to haul the Widow gear back to
the hotel now. It was also a convenient opportunity to take Jen’s bag to
the hotel, and let her wash up and freshen up a bit after her full day of
traveling and 5 bands worth of rocking. We didn’t tarry at the hotel, but
this process takes time. Oh, and we reached the hotel just as the band
Wotan (my next-door neighbors) were leaving the hotel with their gear to head
down to the venue. We weren’t far behind them. I didn’t want to
miss any of the remaining four bands, and knew that I’d necessarily be missing
part of Angus’s performance since their time slot was now. So I made it
back to the venue with Jen and the Widow guys as promptly as possible.
Now’s as good a time as any to acknowledge a small (but nonetheless present)
dark cloud over today’s festivities. Up the Hammers was not the only
heavy metal event happening in Athens today. Less than 3 km away, over at
the Fuzz Club, the Hellish Rock II Tour (featuring Helloween and Gamma Ray) was
rocking the masses. Now, it’s no secret that Gamma Ray has been my
favorite band for, oooh, about the last 20 years. I’ve seen ‘em 14 times
in 7 countries. The notion that they were playing right down the street
and yet I wouldn’t get to see Kai Hansen & Co. was a bitter pill for me to
swallow, personally. But I had cast my lot with Up the Hammers and
dammit, that’s where I was going to stay. That said, I still felt more
than a little pang in my heart whenever the thought intruded into my
otherwise-ecstatic brain today. Aside from the personal angst it caused
your intrepid narrator, Hellish Rock was problematic in another respect,
to-wit: It siphoned off a decent percentage of the Up the Hammers crowd.
Oh, didn’t get me wrong. The turnout was quite solid on Saturday at the
An Club. It just never reached the kind of packed, fever-pitch throngs we
saw on Friday night. I blame Helloween and Gamma Ray for the difference,
which probably amounted to 70 or 80 patrons, a not-inconsiderable discrepancy
in attendance from Friday to Saturday nights.
That said, we made it back to the An Club in time to catch the last 4 songs
from Angus. The Dutchmen were kind of a strange case, inasmuch as
they only featured one original member (drummer William Lawson) from their
1986/1987 glory days. From the tracks I witnessed (“The Gates,” “If God’s
in Heaven,” “Warriors of the World,” and “When Giants Collide”), the
replacements did a more than adequate job, particularly the lone guitarist, who
looked a bit like Wolf Hoffman wearing a black knit hat. Angus sounded
good, and clearly had the crowd’s attention and support, especially when the
singer hopped into the audience to sing most of “When Giants Collide.” By
all accounts and appearances, Angus were an honor and a credit to their legacy
tonight. (Other songs on their printed setlist included “Track of Doom,”
“Heavyweight Warrior,” “Money Satisfies,” “Black Despair,” and a couple of
others.) In the future, would it be too much to ask for some new music
from Angus? It’d be interesting to hear what this lineup can
achieve. Nonetheless, I heard two sets of grumbles about Angus from other
festival attendees. First, “When Giants Collide” was actually aired twice,
as both the first and the last song of the Angus set. Repeating songs is
not a way to win favor with the UTH crowd, especially when you’ve got other cool
songs in your catalog that you haven’t performed. Not sure what the deal
was there. Second, I heard reports (nothing I witnessed firsthand) of
band members being extremely aggressive in their efforts to sell merch, to the
point of physically putting patches in people’s hands then saying, “that’ll be
3 Euros.” If true, that’s not too cool either. Still, from
everything I witnessed, Angus did a fine job in Athens.
By now, Jen and I were both hungry, so I introduced her to the wonders of the
Pizza Sandwich. Mmmmm, mmmmm, delicious. Then it was back to the venue
for more metal.
Italian epic metallers Wotan were up next, hitting the stage at 9:35 p.m.
for an hourlong set that was touted as featuring their 2004 album Carmina
Barbarica performed in its entirety. I’ll be honest here. I own
a couple of Wotan albums, including Carmina Barbarica, but I’m no expert in the
band and I always thought they were something of a B-grade version of Domine or
Doomsword or something. Sure,
all the epic metal hallmarks and reference points are there, including
Manowarisms aplenty. But outside of a few isolated tracks (especially
“Lord of the Wind”), Wotan never really grabbed me. Nothing about their
live performance tonight really changed my opinion. Sure, the quartet
played well, and seemed very enthused about their music, but most of the songs
just kind of washed over me without much of an impact. I remember they had
a damn near interminable intro tape that played forever while the four dudes
just stood there on stage. Oh, and for better or worse, the distinctive
voice of blond-maned, partially braided singer Vanni Ceni (if you’ve ever heard
Wotan, you know what I’m talking about) sounded just the same live as it does on
CD. The coolest part of Wotan’s set was “Lord of the Wind,” when Ceni
donned a black cape and golden helm (there’s actually a photo of him in this
getup in the center pages of the Epos booklet), then drew a sword that he
brandished throughout the song. It was more epic than thou, and pretty
freaking awesome. Otherwise, I didn’t get too much out of Wotan’s
performance. But the Greeks were going nuts, and more than one person told me
afterwards that Wotan was their favorite gig of the entire festival, so what do I know?
By this time, a rather distressing subplot was emerging at the An Club.
Tonight’s scheduled headliners, Raven, weren’t at the venue yet. An
announcement was made that their flights had been delayed and that their set
time had therefore been swapped with that of the cover band, Mercyful Diamond,
who had originally been scheduled to close out the proceedings after the
Gallagher brothers finished playing. The information circulating around
the venue was pretty spotty and not at all encouraging. I wondered if
Raven would happen at all tonight, and whispered
to Jen right before Mercyful Diamond started playing that this might be the last
act of the festival. None of this detracted from the party atmosphere at
the venue though. Everyone seemed to be having a great time, the beer was
flowing freely, and our Widow pals were shooting videos of Greeks in the street
engaged in impromptu renditions of “Lady Twilight,” which was about 50 kinds of
awesome. I was feeling strong and in control, and Jen surprisingly was
wide awake, jetlag and the 11:00 p.m. local time be damned. We were having
a great night.
As the opening strains of “Come to the Sabbath” wafted up from the venue, I
ditched the street scene and headed back downstairs to catch Mercyful
Diamond, a Danish tribute band that (as the name suggests) covers both
Mercyful Fate and King Diamond nuggets. I understand that Mercyful
Diamond consists of name musicians, including members of cool Danish bands like
Serpent Saints and Ripe, but I never really figured out who was who. What
I did figure out rather quickly was that for a tribute act, Mercyful Diamond
kick ass, offering up damn near note-perfect versions of such classics as
“Angel of Light,” “Dressed in White,” “Nuns Have no Fun,” “Return of the
Vampire,” “Melissa,” and “Burn.” A notable exception was “Family Ghost,”
during which the band screwed up so badly that they had to stop and start again
two or three times before everyone could get on the same page. Near the
end of their set, “Halloween” gave way to “Evil” which yielded to “No Presents
for Christmas,” closing out the proceedings in fine fashion.
Special kudos go to the vocalist, who was clad in King Diamond makeup and top
hat, who sounded remarkably like the King himself except on some of the high
screams. Mercyful Diamond managed to give Into Glory Ride a solid run for
their money, in terms of who would be crowned best tribute band of the weekend.
Somewhere in the middle of Mercyful Diamond’s performance, I checked the
staircase and saw with a sigh of relief that Mark and John Gallagher were
entering the venue. I didn’t see Joe Hasselvander, but assumed he must
already be here, or maybe he was on his way. It was only after Mercyful
Diamond’s set, when I was outside again shooting the breeze with other festival
attendees, that I learned how wrong I was. Hasselvander wasn’t here, and he wasn’t going to be
here because he had missed his flight thanks to a snowstorm in New
England. So how could Raven possibly play a gig without a drummer?
It turns out that they had lined up three local drummers (on just four hours’
notice) to play portions of the gig. One of those Athenian
skinsmen was Battleroar’s Nick Papadopoulos, but I wasn’t familiar with the other two.
From what I learned later, each of these drummers had a few minutes with one of
the Gallagher brothers in a rehearsal studio somewhere in Athens tonight to run
through their parts. Now, Raven songs aren’t complex from a percussive
standpoint, but I was pretty worried about how it could possibly work to plug
in three essentially unrehearsed drummers to play a Raven gig. Little did I know …
It was around 12:30 a.m. when the An Club stage crackled to life with
Raven launching into their traditional set opener, “Take Control.”
Turns out that was about the only traditional aspect of this Raven gig.
From the outset, it was obvious that Raven were missing some gear.
Bassist/vocalist John was missing his distinctive glittery silver bass,
strumming a black one instead. Even worse, he didn’t have his head mike,
but was instead tethered to a stationary microphone stand on the left side of
the stage. I’ve never seen that before. When John offered a hearty
“Fuck You” to Air France later in the gig, it became clear that his basses and
gear (including microphone) had not made it to Athens. After “Take
Control,” the set took an unpredicted swerve into the obscure as Raven marched
through a delightful selection of rarely-heard gems like “I Don’t Need Your
Money,” “Hell Patrol,” and “Firepower.” Sure, it was noticeable that the
drummer wasn’t quite in step with the brothers, but this was actually a lot of
fun. During “I Don’t Need Your Money,” a visibly wasted Manolis (the
promoter) ran onto the stage and did a stage dive, only for the crowd to part
before him. He hit the floor. Hard. Ouch. Fortunately,
I think he was too drunk to notice. After “Firepower,” the first drummer
left and out came the second drummer, as the set segued neatly into another
rarity, “Wiped Out,” before the staple, “Rock Until You Drop,” was aired.
Sadly, the gig went downhill fast from this point on. Technical problems
became glaringly obvious, with John requiring help from a tech to repair his
borrowed bass and Mark having all kinds of trouble with his guitar setup (he’d
strum the guitar, and the most awful distortion sound would come out, causing
him to stop and adjust the pedal repeatedly). Moreover, a certain
lethargy was visible on the Gallagher brothers. Listen, I know they’re no
spring chickens, but I saw Raven deliver an absolute energetic smasher of a gig
in Atlanta in November 2012. I know the guys have still got it. But
not tonight. They weren’t moving around much and seemed like they were
just trying to hang on. Under the circumstances, that’s
understandable. But it’s not Raven. Things took a turn for the
worse when Raven dipped into a pair of non-metal covers (“Rock & Roll” and
“Tie Your Mother Down”) to pad their set. They went over like a lead
balloon. The rabid Up the Hammers crowd doesn’t want Led Zeppelin and
Queen covers. Massive fail. Then there was a protracted delay after
“Tie Your Mother Down” to adjust the drumkit for the next drummer. It got
worse. During “On and On,” Mark broke a string, forcing John to go into
an impromptu bass solo while Mark dashed offstage with his backup axe. He
came back a few minutes later, only the backup guitar hadn’t been tuned
properly, and kept falling out of tune. Mark tried to fix it, but it
mostly sounded like shit.
I was so bummed. I know from seeing them four months ago that Raven are
still a vital, stellar live act. They didn’t show it tonight. The
frustration and disappointment on their faces was evident. And the Greek
fans were disappointed to an extreme. Raven hadn’t played their country
since 1991. This was hardly a triumphant return. The energy was
off, the covers were kind of awful and the omissions (no “All for One”? no
“Live at the Inferno”?) were just painful. I couldn’t really blame the
Gallagher brothers. It wasn’t their fault. They were dealt a shitty
hand, with the missing drummer, the missing gear, the late flights, and the
rampant technical troubles. A part of me greatly respected and admired
them for soldiering on under such adverse circumstances to try to play a proper
gig as they had promised to do for the Up the Hammers faithful. Most
bands put in that position would have canceled, and Raven are absolutely to be
commended for making the show happen, in spite of everything. But the
other part of me couldn’t help but wish that Raven had canceled tonight.
It wasn’t a real Raven gig. It wasn’t. And it just made me kind of
sad. Especially with all the rarities the Gallaghers had planned to play,
this could have been a gig for the ages. Instead, it’s a performance that
most of us would probably rather forget. Setlist: Take Control, I
Don’t Need Your Money, Hell Patrol, Firepower,
Wiped Out, Rock Until You Drop, Mark Gallagher guitar solo, Lambs to the
Slaughter, On and On, John Gallagher bass solo, Break the Chains (with snippets
of I Don’t Need No Doctor, Symptom of the Universe and Genocide).
Just like that, the Festival was over. Jen and I lingered in the An Club
for quite some time, drinking more beers, hanging with the Widow guys and our
newfound friends from all over Europe, and taking pictures. For his part,
promoter Manolis was passed out on a bench, a small sliver of his pale Greek
belly protruding from under his Widow shirt. Somewhere there’s a photo of
Manolis in this pose. Priceless. While we were standing around
talking, Nick Papadopoulos (the fill-in drummer who played the end of Raven’s
set) walked by. I stopped him and congratulated him on a job well
done. He thought I was making fun of him. I wasn’t. Still,
Nick was embarrassed by his performance. I explained that I know things
hadn’t gone perfectly (far from it), but that we all owed him a huge debt of
gratitude for stepping up in the worst of conditions so that Raven could play
those songs. With that, he loosened up and told us a little bit of the
story. He said he’d gotten a call that night and had met Mark (I think)
to rehearse for 15 minutes. He knew he would playing “On and On” and
“Break the Chains,” but he hadn’t heard those songs in many year so he wasn’t
sure how they went. To make matters worse, it was explained to him that
the Gallagher brothers like to jam during those songs. (They do.)
When Nick asked them what he was supposed to do, they told him, “We lead, you
follow.” When he told them he didn’t know how to follow them, they
reassured him, “We’ll do what we do. You do what you do.” Wow.
Trying conditions for sure. All of us (me, Jen, the Widow dudes) thanked
Nick and told him we really appreciated what he had done tonight.
By now, it was after 2:00 in the morning. We all felt great and wanted to
go to the after party, which was being held at the Dr. Feelgood metal club
nearby. There was only one problem: We had to haul the giant (and
only slightly lighter than it had been) Widow merch bag back to the hotel
first. So we did. We were none too happy to be ascending Strefi
Hill to get to our hotel at 2:30 a.m. The hotel owner was none too happy
to see us when we showed up at the door, breathless and boisterous, ringing the
bell for him to let us in. We dropped off the bag, then hauled ass back
down the hill to Dr. Feelgoods. As we walked through the square, we
bumped into a couple of people wearing Gamma Ray and Helloween t-shirts (one of
them even clutching an inflatable pumpkin that had been thrown into the
audience at the end of the set) who told us about how incredible that gig was
tonight. My mood momentarily soured, but then I remembered myself and
returned my mind to living (and basking in) the moment that was, not the moment
that might have been in some alternate reality. There’s a good life
lesson somewhere in there, kiddos.
The after party tonight wasn’t quite the madhouse that the one last night was,
but there were an awful lot of headbangers out nonetheless. We chose to
hang out just outside Dr. Feelgoods, where many of our number had gathered. (A
nice thing about standing outside was you didn’t have to pay inflated bar
prices, but could run to the convenience stores nearby to buy a beer for much
cheaper.) The next couple of hours were a blur of interesting
conversation (Stephan from Switzerland, Daniel from Hamburg, our new Greek
friend in the Motorhead hoodie, the Ruler dudes), beer and uproarious
laughter. The Sin Starlett guys were there, in various states of
intoxication. Somehow, the Widow guys decided to take it upon themselves
to teach Southern vernacular to the drummer, who was a willing (albeit quite
drunk) pupil. For the rest of the night, he kept coming up to us with a
goofy grin on his face, saying things like “10-4 good buddy” or “Damn straight
boo” in a thick German accent. It was funny as hell. To push things
over the top, somebody produced a superball that lit up whenever it hit the
ground. We were chasing that damn superball up and down the filthy square
while we talked and drank, somehow managing to avoid being hit by taxicabs or
mugged by thieves along the way. At some point, while I stood there
feeling good and going strong way into the wee hours of the morning, I turned
to Jen and said, “You know, I’m every bit as metal as these people.” My,
what a difference a day makes.
Alas, all things must end, and sometime after 4:00 a.m., the five us decided we
needed to go back to the hotel to get some sleep. After all, tomorrow we
were going to go be tourists, and we didn’t want to sleep through our one
chance to see the splendor of Athens’ tourist sites. By 4:30 or so, we
all made it back to our hotel rooms. I collapsed in bed, only to sit up
straight at the awful noise assaulting my eardrums. No, it wasn’t
tinnitus (for once). It was shitty electronica. There must have
been an all-night rave going on right nearby, because it was L-O-U-D. So
I lay there and listened to that damned infernal rave until the first rays of
dawn broke at 6:00 a.m., when the rave finally stopped, the music ended, and
that awful cat serenaded me to sleep for a couple of hours.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
I don’t include touristy bits in these trip narratives I do. Never.
It’s all about the heavy metal, dammit. In this case, though, a short
postscript is in order, because Sunday was (in some respects) the most fun,
epic and amazing day of the entire vacation. By late morning, the Widow
guys, Jen and me were mobilized and en route to the Acropolis. We spent
the afternoon crawling all over the ruins at the cradle of Western Civilization
as an impossibly bright Greek sun shone down on us. Chris ate a hot dog
cone. Jen had her first proper gyro. We all shopped for tacky
souvenirs. We saw Parthedogs (stray dogs living near the
Parthenon). Then we went back to the hotel, bought a bunch of beers, and
sat on the rooftop talking until the sun went down. Magnificent! After the sunset, we
freshened up a bit and then went to a formal dinner that Up the Hammers promoter
Manolis was putting on for 30-40 band members and guests. The food was
exceptional (everyone laughed at me for becoming addicted to tatziki sauce, but
damn that stuff rules), the wine was surprisingly good (this spoken by a man who
doesn’t drink wine, but Manolis is a sommelier for his day job and he chose the
wines himself), and the heavy metal was playing softly over the speakers (High
Spirits, Armored Saint, Killers and tons of others). The best part was the
conversation. Jen and I ended up sitting next to our Swiss friend Stephan,
our Hamburg pal Daniel (and his friend whose name I can’t remember), and Alexis
and Francois from Hurlement. Jen and Alexis were in an animated
conversation that must have lasted 4 hours, with Francois and I chipping in
comic relief and laughter. Sometime after midnight, we said our farewells
and our thank yous to Manolis, then worked our way back down to Dr.
Feelgoods. There, the Widow guys, the Hurlement guys, Stephan, Daniel, Jen
and I , and several others drank large quantities of beer (mostly purchased from
the store next door for 0.70 Euros apiece), clinked mugs, and enjoyed a sort of
fellowship and camaraderie uniting all of us across demographic, national, and
other boundaries. It was a magical night. We stayed out until after
4:00 a.m., then hauled ass back to the hotel so the Widow guys could pack.
Sleep was not part of the equation for any of us. Before 6:00 a.m., Jen
and I guided our Widow friends down to the subway, so that they could catch
their flights home. Jen and I then went back to the hotel, packed our
bags, and returned to the subway to hitch a ride to the Piraeus port.
From there, we repaired to the Island of Hydra for three days of beautiful
tranquility and serenity. And sleep. Lots and lots of fucking
sleep. And donkeys. And chickens. But that, my friends, is a tale for another time.
~ Review by Kit Ekman ~