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I’m going to be honest: I am so happy that summer is finally over! Bye bye Brat Summer, Hello Haunted Girl Autumn! But Autumn not only brings bearable temperatures, on the contrary. When everyone got over their festival hang over, it’s time to start the pilgrimages into the clubs for the many awesome concert tours.
Just like the Vikings invading Lindisfarne, the berserks of ASENBLUT descended upon the Hellraiser in Leipzig for their last tour date. With them were the Melodic Death Metal band DELIVER THE GALAXY. Naturally, this was something you couldn’t miss, especially not if you’re into rough, but refined music.
Huge thanks to lightinmirror.de for your commitment! It was truly a fight against the fog!
DELIVER THE GALAXY
If you read my report on this year’s Helmfest, you’ll remember that we only got to see a short DELIVER THE GALAXY set. It’s all the more joyous that we got the chance to see a longer one this time!
Right from the get go, the group around singer Matze made it clear that their motto was „Power to the max“! The opening song was Bury Your Gods from the their latest album with the same title that was released at the end of August. The setlist was dominated by this album, which, to me, is their strongest album to date, and even though the audience was a bit apprehensive at first, DELIVER THE GALAXY were perfectly able to catch the listeners with their intransigent style.
The set also didn’t lack any emotion: In 2011, Matze and Rocky had seen AMON AMARTH on their Surtur Rising tour at Hellraiser and had sworn to themselves to one day play their music together on that stage. How beautiful is it that dream still do become reality? Furthermore, the band awarded their booker, merch fairy and dad, Schmelzer, a special jacket as a thank you for years of support behind the scenes. Metalheads can be so wholesome sometimes!
To me, this opener set manifested what I knew 10 years ago when I saw DELIVER THE GALAXY live for the first time: They have enormous potential!
ASENBLUT
The undisputed highlight was of course the headliner ASENBLUT!
We were there earlier for the interview and saw the doors open from inside. It was, at least in my memory, the first time we saw people running into the front row! You rarely see that in Metal…
However, the athletically motivated fans definitely had a feeling of what became apparent to us during the course of the evening: Brachially straightforward music with various mythological influences is even better than we had already imagined!
From the very first riffs of the first song, the crowd in front of the stage was already in a berserker-like fighting mood, which was certainly only increased by the fact that Tetzel’s microphone holder was modeled after a battle axe.
When you start so energetically, it’s always a challenge to maintain this level. But obviously no one told the band, because there were no signs of fatigue here, on the contrary! You can certainly blame it on the good routine of a successful tour, but I think that’s too short-sighted at this point. From songs like Berserkerzorn, Entfesselt and Seite an Seite to Unbesiegbar and Wie ein Berserker, the band simply gave a constant 120%!
But it would also be unfair if ASENBLUT had to do everything on their own. During the song Wölfe des Meeres, singer Tetzel therefore called for a spontaneous rowing session, which many willingly followed. Mixed with the long duration of the evening, this was an adequate substitute for a short workout! I also have to say that I really enjoyed the interaction between the band and the audience. You could just tell that there was a lot of mutual love here!
After my personal favorite 300 (Thermopylae Epigram, anyone?), it was time for some Lovecraft, at least musically. The song Dagon includes a feature from DELIVER THE GALAXY singer Matze, so it was no surprise that it simply had to be performed that evening. But it wouldn’t be a tour finale without a bit of chaos and so you could see a certain amount of fear on Tetzel’s face when Rocky took the stage instead of Matze! But don’t worry: the little personnel swap was quickly resolved and the audience was treated to double the vocal power.
Unfortunately, everything always has an end and so this concert was over after more than a dozen songs. Shameless! Fortunately, the end of the concert is very rarely the end of the reporting here and so you can look forward to an interview soon!
Shieldmaiden's Voice 