By Jase Walker
Festival season is here! It’s finally here to dominate my summer plans and first to kick things off for me is a brand new festival in the form of South Of Heaven in the beautiful city of Maastricht. Thanks to some quick thinking I was able to side step the nationwide train strikes and got a Flixbus down to Maastricht from Amsterdam and I’m waiting for the floodgates to open with a pint in hand.
Today’s forecast was initially bloody terrible, but it ended up being a solid 20°C, a bit of cloud but otherwise sunny, ideal to start the weekend off. My initial walk around to get my bearings has made me realise this event is actually smaller than I initially thought, not that this is a downside, I’m more impressed that the names on over this weekend are pretty impressive given the size!
Technically today is a separate event to the main South Of Heaven festival that counts more as a standalone show with Heilung headlining, anyway it’s 17:00, the weather’s fucking great, and we’ve got an absolute hell of a day ahead! The beer is flowing, people are swarming the merch desk, and although the winds picked up a bit, Alcest are kicking things off and I can feel the festival buzz finally kicking in. The unmistakable sound of the subtle phasing noise due to the wind blowing it about is fully present but I feel good and that’s what matters.
Alcest weaves a wonderful tapestry of layered wailing guitars and vocals that washes over the crowd, fully welcoming in the early birds for this weekend. How I’ve missed this feeling of standing in a field, beer in hand and bands melting my face off with big riffs. It’s striking how much stuff is on stage and I’m unsure whether it’s Alcest’s stuff or not, several pots of tall grass and large birds that resemble a phoenix, either way it’s pretty lovely!
For a day like this, Alcest could not have been a more perfect opener. Their subtle melodic style mixed with post-metal and shoegaze influences that builds layer upon layer until a grand peak that smothers you is the perfect lead-in to the later acts of The HU and Heilung. I’m also pretty happy that Alcest gets a full hour set as well, considering I’m used to festival slots where support acts get a scant 30 minutes, I’m happy to get treated to nearly a full headline set from Alcest. We are off to a fully ideal start, in every possible way. Ideal weather, great first act, an easily navigable arena, spot on.
Considering that the phoenix statues have been replaced by the imposing figure of a large Mongolian warrior cladded in armour it seems that the bands are indeed running with that bit of extra production. It’s been a hot minute since I saw The HU last back in Manchester’s O2 Ritz and they’ve dropped quite a fair bit of material since then. It’s time to get stuck into some rock ‘n’ roll through the lens of Mongolian throat singing folk music!
There are definitely more people on stage than I remember, eight in total! The newer material is clearly something I’ve missed out on because The HU are seemingly way past the Status Quo/Rolling Stones vibe material that initially got the attention of crowds outside of their native country. These guys have turned up the heaviness by an order of magnitude, clearly reflecting a shift towards stronger influences from the likes of Metallica and Megadeth.
What always surprises me about The HU is how their sound always has this pervasive drone that is always present regardless of what the band is doing, most likely a hallmark of the traditional Mongol music but adds such a subtle fingerprint to their sound. Shouting “Everyone! Do you like Iron Maiden?!”, as they launched into a Mongolian-zed cover of The Trooper, even with translated lyrics to Mongolian which turned a few heads when they started!
Comparing this show to what I saw in the Ritz a few years back is night and day though, back then they were a band that was very suddenly thrust into the view of the world without much preparation but now, they’re a band that has embraced the production values and manner of performance of stalwarts of the world music scene. It’s clearly been a steep learning curve for them but right now, they’re putting across an incredible show that demonstrates how much they’ve learned in the process.
- The HU’s new EP, ‘Echoes Of Thunder’, is released today (Friday 13 June).
And finally for this evening, the band that has been causing a huge stir for their live shows and seemingly is drawing their era to a close, Heilung. The stage has now become an ensemble of leather cladding, drums dotted around the stage and mic stands dressed up in horn and bone. Just prior to taking the stage, a druid looking type appears with a brush and a bowl of burning incense which is wafted over the anticipating crowd.
Heilung have always been spoken of highly when it comes to their unique shows so I guess better late than never for me eh? A large group of people forms a circle in the middle of the stage, this makes it clear the set has started now but Heilung are opting for a silent ritual to kick things off. The smell of incense is already pretty overpowering, a mix of lavender, sage and pine, a bit like your local goth shop ran by a mid-60s lady that tells teenagers she’s a witch.
It’s striking how much of their live sound is driven almost entirely by vocal melodies and constantly beating the shit out of the selection of massive drums though. There’s varying levels of keys and some stringed instruments, but it’s almost entirely driven by the baser elements which makes the live sound all the more impressive. Switching up the lighting to be almost entirely floodlit from the back so the people on stage appear as silhouettes while there’s several people with spears and shields is a pretty damn cool touch. The throat singing carries a lot of the experience, this constant bassy drone alongside the relentless marching of the drums does give me a pretty interesting vibe. The addition of people on stage that perform war dances, throwing shields and spears up in the air reminds me a lot of similar antics to Amon Amarth who are no strangers to shield beating during their Viking war anthem moments.
The choreography that goes into this show is probably the most impressive part of the show though, getting the band and a full group of dancers to constantly work within each other’s space, dance, perform ritualised movements all while the main musical parts are focused on keeping their parts going too is immensely impressive. Even performing a phalanx manoeuvre at one point, the more I get through this show the more it becomes obvious that this is far from just a musical show and more of an educational performance. I notice as well that some of the performers have glowing runs adorned on their chests, the amount of artistic thought that has gone into this performance truly is staggering. It’s fully understandable why Heilung were picked to do the soundtrack for ‘Hellblade’ (great game too), other than maybe Wardruna and to some extent Kalandra and Myrkur, there’s not really anyone else that does the sort of thing that Heilung are doing. A true revival of Pagan music as close as they can get it.
Overall, it was an absolutely extraordinary live performance that truly pushes the boundaries of what a live performance can be. Admittedly I wasn’t super enthused about the music itself despite how impressive it is when done in a live context. This sort of performance is very much a live reenactment sort of scenario that has clearly had a lot of thought, care, and attention put into it but I don’t find the actual musical element of it all that interesting when compared to the incredibly choreographed show. A great way to begin the open-air segment of this weekend.
I thought I was done already but as it turns out, I have more in the tank for two follow-up sets over at Muziekgieterij. I’m more than happy to return here after last year’s incredible Pelagic Fest, but there’s two more acts left for tonight and more beers to be had. Sowulo and NiNi are set to properly wrap up today, so I’ve got myself a spot, a fresh cold beer and I’m ready to get the night properly tied off.
As Sowulo walks on, I notice that there’s actually a harp on stage so we’re very much in keeping with the theme of “non-standard” instruments tonight. The lighting reveals much more, violins, cello, two separate percussionists and a traditional horn player. These are pulling out all sorts of different instruments for each song, some I legitimately have no idea what they’re called but the sheer power of the drone mixed with subtle melodic layering is quite something to behold.
At one point one of the singers holds a large pipe up directly vertically up and lets loose a sound that wouldn’t be out of place in a cosmic space horror, quite an unnerving and alien sound that gives me chills. The female vocalist at one point goes through a solo vocal segment which is drenched in reverb to pad out an echo sound wherein she exercises some call and response bits with the crowd but mostly is just her working through some incredible melodies that are called back to with the next song. Sowulo really are quite something and are more than a worthy followup to Heilung. I won’t lie I’m getting incredibly tired by this point but I need to push through to catch a full 45-minute set from NiNi.
And finally, I have kept my absolutely shattered self still moving long enough to catch Taiwan ‘s unique metal/traditional music hybrid, and in a sec I’m gonna get a face full of it. The other band members build up a fierce intro before she joins the stage with her Shamisen (not sure of the Mandarin word sorry!), Its unique reverby trill echoes throughout the venue, this is what I was wanting to close today off with! This is one of those examples where I genuinely feel like the recorded versions don’t quite do the music justice compared to the live playing. I didn’t expect their bass player to drop his bass entirely to changeover to a de facto lead singer for a song either, using a style that feels very familiar to a metalcore listener but with NiNi also swapping in for vocal duties also.
She might be using traditional instruments, but I can tell you her playing of them is definitely far from traditional and feels very much at home with how the rest of the band functions as a metal band. I didn’t really expect a sudden cover of the ‘Reservoir Dogs’ theme to get blasted out but it seems the late crowd here are totally vibing with it, I wish I could summon the energy!
Oh wait, ‘Flight Of The Bumblebee’ now too? Okay then! I’d love to join in with the crowd participation, but I am genuinely exhausted to the point where I’m just focused on not losing strength in my legs. For their final song they promise that everyone would know the lyrics which is something I’ve heard a lot before and doesn’t always hit; however, covering ‘Hit Me One More Time’ by Britney Spears isn’t what I expected in any capacity and really caught me off guard. It absolutely works though, just for the record.
Great way to wrap things up.