After the harder electronic beats and vocals, we stayed in the electronic realm, but now a bit poppier. The three Hamburgers around singer and guitarist Lennart Salomon with keyboardists Florian Sikorski and Martin Weiland were guests at Blackfield for the second time. The audience became a bit more numerous as the set opened with the single “Flames Get Higher”.
Unfortunately, the weather did not improve at the beginning of the second festival day, and rain showers dominated the morning. Therefore, I preferred to have an extensive breakfast first and arrived at the festival grounds a little later. As a result, I missed the openers X-Divide, Frank The Baptist, and She Past Away. But by the time .com/kill took the stage, the sky finally cleared, and more people gathered in front of it.
I had seen Subway To Sally twice at Wacken Open Air, and this evening they were to conclude the first day of the last Blackfield Open Air Festival as headliners. Throughout the day, the sky was watched, and a storm was forecasted for the evening. Fortunately, it took a different path, so one could listen to the rock-medieval sounds of the seven artists around singer Erik Fish without getting wet.
I had previously known the guys around frontman Chris Harms mainly for the calm and classically acoustic “Swan Songs”. Today, it was to be shown that they could also strike harder tones. The amphitheater was now quite well-filled, and the weather was getting somewhat better. With the opener “Kill It With Fire”, the direction for the set was immediately set, and the audience was immediately involved.
Let's stick with EBM. After Spetsnaz, the Belgian veterans Absolute Body Control followed the same direction. Founded in the early '80s and disbanded in '84, the project by Dirk Ivens and Eric Van Wonterghem has been making music together again since 2006. This was especially interesting for fans of their older pieces.
Just before the Swedish EBM duo Spetsnaz was able to enter the stage the festival moderator announced a severe weather warning and they were hoping that they would not have to evacuate the festival as Cologne already was under water. Luckily, the severe weather passed by Gelsenkirchen and the party could go on.
Originally, at that slot the band Seasurfer should be playing but due to personal reasons they had to cancel on short notice. As substitute the Bottrop band Pre/Verse spontaneously stepped in. The electro-rocker mixed different sound elements what made it to a very attractive mixture.
With the Blackfield I went to a festival of the black scene which was something completely different to me. Unfortunately, it should take place for the last time ever this year due to several reasons (mainly financial ones) but that did not do any harm to the good atmosphere.
One of my wishes should be fulfilled on 14.01.2015 as on that evening I went to the Grugahalle to watch the self-proclaimed Kings Of Metal of Manowar live. Outside it was seasonable cold and it took quite long until you entered the venue. Luckily, I was standing quite near to the front of the schedule so that I was on time inside the venue. Some others had bad luck and finally entered right to the start of the concert. What was the reason for that I am not able to tell.
Already before the concert had started it was loudly chanted „Noch ein Bier!“ before the Swedish entered the stage after the used intro “The Final Countdown” by Europe and their own intro “The March To War”. After that, they directly delivered a broadside by “Ghost Division”.