Summer Breeze 2005
For another time the Summer Breeze symbolised the conclusion of a great festival summer. The weather was pretty different. Hot sunshine alternated with rainy phases. But the conditions were much better than 2004 and will hopefully return to the usual sunshine-festival in 2006 as we know. Then the Summer Breeze which was sold out on all three days will perhaps take place on another bigger area. But these are still rumors. We’ll keep you informed in our news-section.
At the Summer Breeze 2005 played 60 bands on two stages which rotated with each other for 12000 visitors.
Thursday
Main Stage
Born From Pain Metalcore is another evidence for the successful integration of different new styles on the festival’s billing. After Heaven Shall Burn in 2004 and Cataract last year the organizers noticed their acceptance those bands earned from the open-minded Summer Breeze-audience. So this year four Metalcore / Hardcore – bands stood on the festival-billing. The first were the Metalcore-attack from the Netherlands. They presented by “Judgement” and “The New Hate” new stuff from the “In Love With The End”-album which convinced the crowd as older material like the “Sands Of Time”-smasher “Day Of The Scorpio”. So while the appearance of the sympathic and very active fivepiece the first moshpit of the festival got created.
The Bones This moshpit was continued while the Swedish Punkrockers surprised with their cool show. “Hey Baby”, “Do You Wanna” and “Slick” made the decision easy to stay and to party with the crow. The main voice switched between three band members (except for the drummer) and with their attitude the band took care of a good mood.on the spectaors’ side. But the next time the musicians should be better informed before asking the question: “How do you feel in Bavaria?” Anyway: Cool performance which found the spectators’ acceptance pretty soon!
Pink Cream 69 Then the time had come for Melodic Metal / Hardrock. Karlsruhe’s finest opened with the title track of their latest release “Thunderdome”. Classics like the following “Do You Like It Like That” or “Talk To The Moon” are made to be played on festivals, but somehow in the beginning of the set most people didn’t really care about. Because of their live power the band around the wonderful voice of David Readman won more and more interested spectators which finally celebrated “Shame”, “Keep Your Eye On The Twisted” ( including singalong-games between band and fans), a Reggae-medley and the Police-cover “So Lonely”.
Therion It was a long time ago I had seen the bombastic Swedish band which got supported from three female and one male classic singers. The metal-vocals were sung by the well-known Mats Levén (At Vance, ex-Abstrakt Algebra, ex-Treat, ex-Yngwie Malmsteen, etc.). With “Blood Of Kingu” and “Uthark Runa” the formation around mastermind Christoffer Johnsson started into a one hour lasting best of-program consisting of “Invocation Of Naamah”, “Riders Of Theli”, “Seven Secrets Of The Sphinx”and “The Rise Of Sodom And Gomorrha”. While some fans were disappointed because of the more dominant bombastic element in Therions’s sound most supporters celebrated one of the most innovative bands of the Gothic Metal-scene. So whith their biggest hit “To Mega Therion” the musicians dismissed a happy audience.
Amon Amarth To this appearance I need to conclude: The same procedure as every month (or even weak)! After I had seen them on this year’s Rock Hard Festival, Bang Your Head and Party San I watched the vikings for the fourth time in the festival summer. By “An Ancient Sign Of Coming Storm” and “Pursuit Of Vikings” from the current “Fate Of Norns”-longplayer and supported by a clear sound fronter Johann Hegg & Co won the crowd easily. As no band of the world plays four totally different shows in ten weeks of course many things repeated. But objectively I need to recognize the very sympathic fivepiece were the right headliner for the first festival’s day. So they finished by their hit “Victorious March” a much jubilated show. Actually there were no doubts, just convinced metalheads!
Pain Stage
Impious After years dwelling in the underground the Death Metal-fivepiece from Saab-hometown Trollhättan got a Metal Blade-deal where they had released “Hellucinations”. So they showed their excellent live-qualities mainly by songs from this record (“Inject”, “Wicked Saints”, “Show Me Your God!”) as by their wild live-show. Cheers to the band that also knows how to party!
Macabre After this appearance I can stress: I don’t share the fascination about this trio! The singalongs of their average Speed / Death Metal may be special, but that’s it! And comedy stories about serial killers like Jeffrey Dahlmer may correspond to somebody’s flavour, but not to mine. Besides that this performance was a total disappointment!
Haggard Another disappointment became the appearance of the formerly innovative Bavarian band around Asis Nasseri. The Pain Stage was pretty crowded by the 16 musicians who performed a greatest hits-program. But like a few weeks before on the With Full Force the show offered nothing inspiring and the female singers outed themselves again as enemies of some melodies. In the end they got stopped in the middle of a song because of exceeding the curfew.
Friday
Main Stage
Emil Bulls For the second time after 2002 the Crossover-band appeared on the Summer Breeze. Since then I haven’t heard anything about them before they returned to Abtsgmünd and succeeded. Again they impressed with an intense performance supported by a grooving sound. Especially the Megadeth-cover “Symphony Of Destruction” earned the support of the most spectators.
Dark Tranquillity A highlight became the appearance of the Göteborg-Melodic Death Metal-icon. Neverminding the rain the band around Mr Activity Mikael Stanne became celebrated from the opener “The Treason Wall” on. They also presented a couple of songs from the new album “Character” like “Lost To Apathy”, “Through Smudged Lenses”, “The New Build” and “My Negation”. The band concentrated on younger classics like the opener, “White Noise, Black Silence”, “The Wonders At your Feet”, “Monochromatic Stains”, “ThereIn” and the (in its deepest sense) final “Final Resistance” to which the crowd went as crazy as they had done to the only performed oldie “Punish My Heaven” before. This time they didn’t play the live-evergreen “Hedon”. A very strong song choice just consisting of killers! And a killer show in deed!”
Opeth To me as to many other fans the Progressive Death Metal-band from Stockholm was the true headliner! Starting with “Deliverance” the enormous crowd celebrated one of the nowadays most innovative bands of hard music. Hits like “The Drapery Falls”, the “Damnation”-ballad “To Rid The Disease”, the new opus “The Grand Canjuration” from the forthcoming album “Ghost Reveries” and the set closing and fan-fave “Demon Of The Fall” made the decision easy to headbang and to party. The humour of frontman Mikael Akerfeldt seemed to be too difficult for the supporters being in ecstasy. Nobody understood when he passed the ball with the chorus of Manowar’s “Metal Warriors” to the supporters to complete it. The guest-drummer Martin Axenrot (known from Bloodbath) fitted to the line-up like the new keyboarder Per Wiberg. Despite my high expectations Opeth ruled whith one of the very best shows of this year’s festival-summer!
In Extremo One of the biggest medieval Folk Rock/Metal-formations or maybe even the biggest one began with “Erdbeermund” and “Hiemali Tempore” and were supported by one of the hugest audiences with a high portion of women. Besides introdocing a few tracks from the new “Mein Rasend Herz”-output like the title track “Poc Vecem” and “Nur Ihr Allein” of course they preferred playing classics like “Vollmond”, “Spielmannsfluch”, “Omnia Sol Temperat”, “Gier”, “Ai Vis A Lo Lop”, “Palästinalied” and “Herr Mannelig”. People felt animated to dance and party. Supported by a lot of pyro effects this performance should have satisfied all show approaches. For another time the band gave all to make their fans happy and after 75 minutes a cool show was done.
Pain Stage
Maroon It was up to the Metalcore-fivepiece from Thüringen to be my personal wake up-call Friday morning and this plan shouldn’t fail. From the first tone there was action on stage as in front of it. This was necessary because of the 30 minutes the band just had. Shouter André Moraweck outed himself again as a spitting front-lama and a wonderful entertainer: “Hallo Österreich (Hello Austria)!” And they were one of the few lucky Friday-bands playing while sunshine.
Norther Melodic Death Metal similar to Children Of Bodom was celebrated in the afternoon. Of course I’m talking about the Finnish band Norther around fronter Petri Lindroos who is also known from his second group Ensiferum. They won many people to support them and showed the reproach only being a copy of COB is exaggerated. The band I also enjoyed supporting Dimmu Borgir and Hypocrisy on club tour a few years ago convinced me again.
The Exploited After the phenomenal Opeth-appearance on the Main Stage usually the British Punks couldn’t have impressed me. But with their simple attitude they actually did. And obviously most visitors had been caught by the performance of the hyperactive fronter Wattie and Punk-hymns like “Fuck The System”, “Beat The Bastards” and “Sex & Violence” because suddenly most people were singing its simple choruses. There weren’t that many Punks or The Exploited-fans around. Cool gig!
Saturday
Main Stage
Barcode My saturday’s wake up-call was the Hardcore-institution Barcode from Aarhus who brought stuff from the new album “Showdown”. The boys including Hatesphere-fronter Jacob Bredahl who played guitar had fun acting on stage and motivated some madmen to create a moshpit between 11:00 and 11:30 a.m. Is this the new world record of the earliest moshpit? With the final Judas Priest-cover “Breaking The Law” they appreciated the metal-factor of this festival.
Caliban In the afternoon the metalcore-genre leaders welcomed a big audience. By “Revenge” from the new “The Split Program 2” (a split-cd shared with the other leading German Metalcore-band Heaven Shall Burn) as by “I’ve Sold Myself”, “Senseless Fight”, “My Little Secret”, “Stigmata” (including a wall of death) and the last played song and new hit “The Beloved And The Hatred” the fivepiece feeded the hungry crowd. Combined with classics like “Forsaken Horizon” and some organized circlepits the fans had the opportunity to freak out. The new fourstringer Marco replacing Boris who had decided to concentrate on his own band Deadsoil fitted to the band. Just the backing vocals of guitarist Denis weren’t the real thing. For several times he missed the tones, in contrast to my neighbour who surprised me singing all vocals clearly whithout missing one tone. Not every band can call such fans their own.
Such A Surge In contrast to the nowadays esteemed Caliban Such A Surge’s very successful era happened in the end of the 90ies. But the music hadn’t changed whether the group around the two fronters Olli and Michel is trendy or not. After all the rain there had developped a little pond in front of the stage. By the title “Alles Muss Raus” some madmen got animated to jump through it most time of the gig. Like that one the group concentrated on material of the younger days. Courageous because to noone’s surprise they earned the most support for their rare played classics like “Under Pressure”, “Gegen Den Strom” and “Schatten”. Besides that fronter Michel and bassist Axel were spontaneous and appeared with corpsepaint. Nice joke!
Subway To Sally For the first time a festival band which didn’t own a headliner position took care just to let exclusive partners in the photo pit. Because of the rain-caused sea in the Main Stage photo-pit most media didn’t care. But by the way this behaviour is more than ridiculous. The show was much better than their 2003-Summer Breeze headliner-appearance had been. While their openers “Veitstanz” and “Knochenschiff” they had fight against a horrible sound which got improved while the next numbers. By “7” the Potsdam-sevenpiece introduced the new single from the album “NordNord Ost” two days before its release date. The rest of the concert Eric Fish layed an accent on their Folk Rock/Metal-classics like “Mephisto”, “Henkersbraut” and the oldie “Sag Dem Teufel” animating the bunch of people to participate in the singalongs. With “Falscher Heiland” and the often demanded “Julia Und Die Räuber” the sevenpiece closed a jubilated show.
J.B.O. The Comedy Metal-band from Erlangen appeared for the third time in Abtsgmünd. Despite some routine aspects ‘the pinkest band ever’ became celebrated for another time. From their first title and Manowar-hommage “Verteidiger Des Wahren Blödsinns” over the Luciano Pavarotti meets Sepultura-version of “Roots Bloody Roots” as the own compositions “Bolle” and “Ein Guter Tag Zum Sterben” till the final song “Ein Fest” (held in the melody of the Pet Shop Boys-hit “Go West): The spectators were amused and partied which was probably the best way to forget the rainy day and the wet clothes.
Lacuna Coil After two years being on tour, mainly in the USA including the Ozzfest, the sympathic Italians had evolved a lot. So the headliner position was absolutely justified. They mainly focussed on their still current longplayer “Comalies” by “Swamped”, “Humane”, “Tight Rope” and the final video-single “Heaven’s A Lie”. But also the older albums found their consideration by “No Need To Explain”, “My Wings”, “Halflife”, “Senzafine” and “To Live Is To Hide”. Milano’s finest attracted a number of fans and let them go crazy like I had never expected it. The very tight and profedsional evolved band around female (Christina Scabbia) and male (Andrea Ferro) singers also presented a very interesting song which showed the band’s progress they had made while their US-tours. It had some alternative so-called Nu Metal-parts without denying Lacuna Coil’s roots. By the way it was also interesting to observe how especially young female fans in the first rows held up high self-labeled transparents with inscriptions I usually expect at casting-band-shows. Anyway, the new song as the whole concert made me curious about their forthcoming album!
Pain Stage
Suidakra What happened? After their triumphal shows as last year’s Dong Open Air-headliner and on Wacken’s smallest stage this year I expected another live-triumph in Abtsgmünd by the Melodic Death Metal-fivepiece from Düsseldorf. But somehow it didn’t work. Although supported by a piper their performance became boring by the time. Guitarist Matthias apologized himself to some backstage-catering-persons because of his behaviour the night before. Whatever happened, short time after the festival he got kicked out of the band for some personal reasons. Hopefully the next time they can entertain more musically!
Disbelief The perhaps best German Dark Metal-band of our times came with a new killer album with the nice title “66Sick” and played a well-balanced set between songs from this release like “Sick” or “Rewind It All (Death Or Glory)” and older ones like the ”Spreading The Rage” – video-single “To the Sky” or the oldie “God? Master!” from the self-titled debut-longplayer and left no live-action-wishes open. The only obstacle was the rain. But those fans who decided to stay got rewarded by fronter Jagger and Co with a fantastic gig.
Symphorce While the other band of Brainstorm-singer Andy B. Franck it really rained a lot. And also this formation kicked ass with original Power Metal like there is no other in Germany except for … Brainstorm. Andy showed his agillity again running around always busy to entertain the crowd supported by his brilliant voice. His bandmates took also care about the stage-action and with “Nowhere” they offered a brandnew song. And so they finally reached their goal to let the people forget about the weather for 45 minutes. My personal irony was: I had three opportunities to watch Symphorce on a Summer Breeze-festival (2001, 2003, 2005) and of course I reached my goal while that appearance when just the monsun was coming down. Whatever, they were worth it!
End Of Green This band from the close town of Aalen had been a steady guest in Abtsgmünd. And this year they should perform an especially strong show while the place in front of the Pain Stage was crowded. The fivepiece presented songs from the new great longplayer by “No Coming Home”, “Dead End Hero” and “Drink Myself To Sleep” to which they got celebrated as to the hits of their former albums like “Highway 69” and “Death In Veins”. The band was happy throwing a lot of T-Shirts into the audience. A very strong appearance!
Tristania The Norwegians showed like they had done in Wacken two weeks before they had found back to their old live-form. Front-beauty Vibeke Stene was supported by two male vocals again and caught many male eyes with her moves on stage. Besides performing some new “Ashes”-material it – of course – were the older tracks like some “Beyond The Veil”-material and the debut-track “Angina” which got played as the last title sounding more familiar and earning the loudest reactions.
Pain First of all PeterTägtgren’s Electric Metal-band surprised by female musicians on guitar as on bass, actually both are even from Germany. Whatever: Most men being the latest two hours before visually spoiled by Vibeke Stene and Christina Scabbia didn’t feel bad about this change. Musically the fourpiece started into a furious set by “Supersonic Bitch” and “End Of The Line”. With the title track, “Bye / Die” and “Same Old Song” they also introduced material from the new album “Dancing With The Dead”, covered The Beatles by their familiar interpretation of “Eleanor Rigby” and of course their set contained a best of-section with hits like “Greed”, “It’s Only Them”, “Shut Your Mouth” and the set finishing “On And On” and “Suicide Machine”. After their first Summer Breeze-appearance in 2002 when they finished Friday this year Pain closed the whole festival, both of course on the fitting Pain Stage. And almost like three years ago it was a cool gig!
Conclusion:
My personal little jubileum of my fifth Summer Breeze became one cool party agai!. It also set the conclusion of the summer festival season for another time. The weather was much better than the year before, but it wasn’t the familiar Summer Breeze-holiday-heat like usually. Nevertheless the festival felt like holiday again because of a nice as relaxed Summer Breeze-team and visitors fulfilling the same qualities. About the speculations if the organizers will move to another bigger place than in Abtsgmünd we can just imagine it will be a hard decision anyway: A bigger festival ground could guarantee the opportunity to host more visitors, camping grounds directly right next to the festivalsite and generally more new organizing options. On the other hand the old place has been one important factor for the typical Summer Breeze-flair and most of the nice helpers come from there or neighbour towns and villages. Like I pointed out it will be a hard decision! Anyway we will be there to keep you informed celebrating the 2006-edition of the Summer Breeze wherever it will take place! See you there!
A very special thanks go out to David Gregori, Andrea Blum & Timo and the brothers Grimm (no joke, that are their names)!!!!!
At the Summer Breeze 2005 rocked, drank and partied Tobi Wan Kenobi, Issel, Linda and Börgers!!!!!