A Day at HELMFEST 2023

Zur deutschen Version geht es hier. 

One can certainly say a lot about this year’s Wacken disaster. However, an undeniable side effect was that smaller festivals became the gathering place for all those who didn’t make it to the so-called „Holy Ground“. One of those smaller festivals was Helmfest. We took a day trip to Helmstedt this year to find out what everyone is always raving about!

Let me tell you this much: Helmfest will be back in 2024. The tickets are available already via their shop!

lightinmirror.de was there too, of course -with her camera and the galaxy-taco-cat-pullover!

One man’s joy…

Yes, yes, ok, the introduction text was missing some info and also some context, but it has to be somewhat exciting! 

For the whole story we have to start a few days before the start of the Helfest (or Wacken): At that time the ticket store of the Helmfest was already closed and there were about 200 tickets left. Now you can certainly think something along the lines of „Yeah well, that’s not so much!“, but if you consider that there was only a total of 1000 tickets for 64€ each (at a privately organized event!), then it’s already significant when 200 tickets remain. 

Then followed the already known Wacken mud disaster, which left a lot of festival mad metal fans stranded. So then the unbelievable happened: The helmet festival opened the ticket store and enough short-tempered people came together that a little later the SOLD OUT could be announced! A circumstance, by the way, that the local media also picked up on a large scale!

For us, the Helmfest was anyway a more interesting spot than an over-commercialized festival that is visited less for the music than for the fact that you can say afterwards that you were there.

At this point, however, I must also explicitly emphasize how outstandingly they took care of us! I have never experienced that before! We were perfectly taken care of and my personal highlight were the fresh fruit plates in the backstage. Through a partnership with a local fruit farm, it was not only very fresh, but (probably) also regional. Huge thanks for that!

The area was very spacious and the food and drink stands were well distributed. Only the food stand directly at the entrance next to the stage I thought a bit ill-chosen. But that can certainly be improved next year. On the area was also the Rockharz present, which offered its „Teufelszeuch“-Schnaps/Likör/Whatever. (Unfortunately, I have no idea what exactly this actually is, except that it looks funny and smells fruity. After all, I don’t drink alcohol…)

Although the Helmfest was not spared from rainfall and corresponding muddy conditions, the festival infield was very walkable due to the use of wood chips and straw, if you had put on proper shoes. I was however glad that I did not drive, as actually planned, on the Campground, in order to park there. There it was also quite muddy and I would have come out with my car certainly only with difficulty again…

But all in all we had a wonderful day full of good music, wonderful conversations and great reunions. This was mainly due to the dedicated organization of a team that is 100% behind this event. So much heart and soul is something incredibly valuable and with us this passion has definitely arrived!

Thank you for the Music

But now to the reason why you (maybe?) read this post: The metal music!

The start on this changeable Friday made TEMPEST and SEDUCER two Heavy Metal bands that you can safely call in one breath, because they are, except for small differences in the lineup, actually the same band. Stylistically, this was clean, if somewhat old-fashioned Heavy Metal, in which I appreciated above all the straightforwardness very much. I’m just not quite clear why there are directly two bands here that make such similar music that we didn’t even notice in the backstage while listening that the second band was already playing… In any case, a good start to the day!

The program continued with SKELFIR, a Viking/Death Metal band from the Westerwald. This has already picked me up musically much more! For me, there were incredibly many exciting influences in the music to hear and the band also had noticeable fun to play their music live. I was only a bit bothered by the fact that the singer was so incredibly dressed up that the rest of the musicians seemed a bit like his backing band. This is certainly not the case within the band, but I think that everyone should either dress up or not dress up. The discrepancy was also because all band members were wearing a SKELFIR shirt, while the singer was decked out in a kilt, Viking(?) outer garment and fur, and had half his face covered in black makeup. If he had exchanged the outfit for a SKELFIR shirt, the whole thing would have been somehow more coherent for me. Nevertheless, this is a band that you can pay attention to within the scene!

In the run-up to the Helmfest, the following HEADSHOT were especially advertised to me, but I run into a well-known problem on my part: I hate Thrash Metal. I just can’t get into it, no matter how hard I try. But I try to give every band a chance and I have to say that the gig was really good! HEADSHOT easily outplayed all the previous bands and did a tremendously good show. Especially the stage presence of the singer was bombastic! If you now shorten the intro before the gig a little bit, then I have nothing more to complain (except that it is Thrash Metal xD)

Band number 5 of the day was KING LEORIC. When I listened to their music beforehand, I found the music mixed rather poorly, so that I was really afraid of something bad when the band came on stage. But the fear did not come true. Live it was much better than on the recordings. Nevertheless, it didn’t really hook me. It wasn’t bad or anything, but I felt the style of the music was a bit outdated. Especially in Heavy Metal, the competitive landscape is so enormous that you really have to come up with something these days to stay in people’s minds. Unfortunately, I missed that a bit with KING LEORIC…

But CONVICTIVE were all the more impressive. When you see figures in completely black clothes and corpse paint on stage, then you already know where it’s about to go. With the clearly defined direction of march, the quintet immediately set to work and demonstrated to the Helmfest what makes good (Atmospheric) Black Metal! Also the fact that here unusually a woman takes over the vocals makes the band stand out even more. The music was dark and aggressive, but also had a certain melancholic touch, I found. In short: I was already a bit in love!

Because contrasts are everything, the Power Metal storytellers from TERRA ATLANTICA followed immediately. In the context of the line-up they certainly had the hardest time on this day: Before them the Black Metal band CONVICTIVE and after them the local heroes of KAMBRIUM. But there is nothing that can be done… So they threw the fishing net over the drums, put on their costumes and showed the audience that Atlantis is quite nice and the industrial revolution is not so boring after all! Since Power Metal is known to be fun, it is not surprising that a pit arose almost immediately.

What would be a Helmfest (and also Helmstedt) without KAMBRIUM? It could be, but with is somehow better! Already in the run-up you could see some people with KAMBRIUM shirts on the infield and that only strengthened my suspicion that KAMBRIUM drive their own fan buses to their gigs. Joking aside: the loyal fans were waiting for their moment, which came when Jan, Martin and Karsten walked through the infield towards the stage. An epic-theatrical moment, which was skillfully underlined by the use of pyros. The set included a good mix of their songs, such as Cybernetic Overload and Season of the Sea Witch. Of course, it’s a shame that Maxi is no longer with us, but his absence was well compensated. But in the future I would wish for more guitar and backing vocals! Even if with Final Countdown a cover was played, I am a bit sad. I think Wonderwall could have rounded off the set even better. So please improve here in the future and design an appropriate cover!!!

The highlight of the day was without a doubt FIREWIND. The band of former DREAM EVIL and OZZY OSBOURNE guitarist Gus G. was basically unrivaled. The combination of the driving drums with the detailed guitar playing of Gus G. and the somewhat smoky sounding voice of singer Herbie Langhans is just bombastic! I saw them live for the first time and I was already a little bit in love… With something like that always resonates a little bit of annoyance that I have not experienced the bands before! It was a fulminant, powerful show, which was mainly characterized by the (technical) professionalism of the band members. They would have played this show the same if it would have been a bigger festival stage and the fact that they were in Helmstedt delivering this world-class performance, was just incredible to witness! The highlight, from my point of view, was definitely the song Destiny is Calling, which was still stuck in my ears until Sunday. The set was closed by their cover of Maniac and the song Falling to Pieces.

After FIREWIND’s performance, we went home, because we still had almost 1.5 hours of driving ahead of us. All in all, the day has given us a lot of fun and joy and if they want to have us there again in the future, we will be happy to come back!