The second band that I was strongly waiting for. Unfortunately, bass player Peter “West” Haag died in 2023 after a short and severe sickness. The band remembered him initially with the West Fest and in 2024 they announced that the name West as well as his instrument bass will not be filled anymore. Instead, a new guitarist Annika “Rose” Jaschke was presented as backstop of the band. But before the gig could be started several things went wrong.
It has been three years meanwhile since Oomph! and Dero Goi went separate ways. After Andreas Crap and Robert Flux initially continued to compose on their own, after some time Der Schulz joined them as new singer. 2023 the first album “Richter Und Henker” with the new constellation was released. From that the opener “Soll Das Liebe Sein?” was played and the band entered the stage dressed in fur coats. Quite brave as the sun was burning and it was oppressively hot.
During the performance of Schwarzer Engel Alexx Wesselsky was standing next to me and watched the show. At that it was good to see, that he had recovered from his surgery after an intestinal perforation that happened beginning of June. Die Herren Wesselsky normally play old or rarely played songs of Megaherz and Eisbrecher paired with cover versions. Today there should be old Megaherz classics on tap.
Friday noon as one of the first artists of the 2024 edition of the M’era Luna festival Dave Jason also known as Schwarzer Engel was allowed to enthuse the not very small audience in front of the Main Stage. I was following this project already for some years now and also some of his albums. So it was the time now to finally convince myself of the live skills of the singer.
Spontaneously the best band in the world announced mid of August to go on their tour “Herbst Ihres Lebens” through smaller venues of the republic. Two weeks later it already started, and I was able to get tickets for the final concert on 14.10.2023 at the Turbinenhalle at Oberhausen. As it could be expected the tickets were out of stock in no time and this appointment sold out. Luckily, they did not sell that many tickets for this location as they did when I was there the last time for a concert as at Saltatio Mortis it was that crowded that you could hardly move anymore. This evening it was a lot airier and more agreeable. As often, so also today Die Ärzte played without any support acts which can be gotten over taking the normal length of their sets into consideration.
At 20:45 it finally was the time and Heaven Shall Burn entered the stage to the sounds of the intro “Awoken” from the 2008 released album “Iconoclast (Part I: The Final Resistance)”. When they were over it seamlessly went into “Endzeit” and with the first words sung the crowd in front of the stage directly started moving. Already during the winter they toured through the bigger venues together with Trivium and now they continued this during the Summer Battles Tour 2023 also in smaller locations. Due to that there was no big show on stage with fire and the usual hoo-ha but that was also not needed at all. The band on its own already put across so much energy that there was no limits in the audience and in such small locations where you are really close to what is going on the concert experience is anyhow much more intense.
The sun was still shining brightly from the sky and so did the jacket of Matt Heafy. After the intro “X” of the album “In The Court Of The Dragon” faded out the identically named title song directly boomed from the stage. The backdrops and covers were just as colourful as the front man and he made straight clear that he was really bent on playing this evening. The tongue was again and again sticked out and permanently he swirled from one end of the stage to the other.
After it had been quite changeable across the day it was getting sunny towards the evening and so the guys of the Scottish band Bleed From Within could enter the stage at best weather. The Junkyard provided a worthy setting for the upcoming hours due to its unusual setup of the location (everything outside was built from old containers and scrap). Because also Trivium and Heaven Shall Burn were on the agenda it unfortunately had to start very early at 18:15 in order to satisfy the noise protection requirements for the open-air concert.
On this evening it should get again a little bit more special. On two Wacken Open Air festivals I had already seen this Scottish combo whose name often led to irritations. This due to the fact that it is not the Californian rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers what many erroneously read but about a Scottish Rock N’ Pipes band.
Because of corona their gig at the Fabrik at Coesfeld was rescheduled and many seemed to avoid the risk of joining crowds as the gig was unfortunately not visited very well. Nevertheless, around 20:00 good mood passed its way when the seven men and one woman entered the stage and brought to peoples minds that they really were bent on their show.
It has been nearly exact three years since my last visit at the Metallica concert on the Maimarktgelände at Mannheim. It seemed like ages ago that corona has brought to all of us and I really missed being in the middle of a crowd in front of a stage. Also Saltatio Mortis have imagined it differently when they announced in 2019 their anniversary concert to their 20-years existence that should take place in 2020. To that time it should happen at Cologne at the Palladium on two evenings, then it was postponed to 2021 and then once more to 2022. To be even more ensured that it really can take place it was additionally moved to Gelsenkirchen into the Amphitheater where it could take place open-air in order to minimize the risks of infections even more. A positive side effect of that was that it now only needed one evening and additionally due to the larger capacity of the venue even more people could join.