Rockfreaks.net

support Hellripper + Wayward Dawn + Vulvatorious
author AP date 13/07/23 venue Pumpehuset, Copenhagen, DEN

Concert frequency is at its lowest here in July, but a number of bands still in the midst of their summer festival circuits are turning up here and there across the European continent, playing headlining shows on their off-days in order to make ends meet. Two of these outfits, Midnight from Cleveland, OH, and Hellripper from the Scottish Highlands, are in the Danish capital city tonight in order to provide refuge for its gig-starved metalheads, who, after a month of nursing their Copenhell hangovers, are aching to bang their heads and mosh again. And fortunately for them, the amount of heavy entertainment has been doubled by a coinciding metal concert taking place in the venue’s beer garden, Byhaven, in the hours leading up to the main event. I thus turn up earlier than I usually would to a show, eager to catch two domestic groups I am yet to have seen live despite countless opportunities to do so in the past few years.

Vulvatorious

Coming across not so much as a conventional band as an art project assaulting the scourge of toxic masculinity, Vulvatorious is taking no prisoners from their male-dominated audience. The band’s set opens with “Cunt War”, a track fusing grinding crust punk with the dark melodic edges of black and death metal that has an appropriate title, considering the diabolical figure that glaring at us from the stage, clad head to toe in latex and sporting a huge black mohawk, an upside down cross tattoo on her abdomen, and eyes that resemble those of Art the Clown in the infamous “Horrifier” cult film series. Yes, this stage persona of vocalist Ditte Krøyer is a terrifying sight — and not surprisingly, it is her maniacal antics and facial expressions that carry the brunt of the group’s performance, reducing the four musicians flanking her into little more than supporting actors and actresses, for better or worse. They provide an instrumental backdrop that, whilst not exactly groundbreaking in the wider tapestry of the metal realm, gets the job done and even yields a number of quite memorable elements like the epic guitar lead that erupts during the penultimate, black metal-style track.

Be that as it may, however, without Krøyer’s confrontational showmanship, which sometimes also involves her dropping into the crowd to mosh amongst the spectators, Vulvatorious would be condemned to be swiftly forgotten on the basis of their musical merit. Even the clarion call against those who perpetuate oppression and hatred that is the band’s 2021 demo cut “FUCK YOU INCEL” would sound hollow through the pipes of anyone other than Krøyer, while in her hands, it ignites a minor riot, with plenty of people joining in on yelling its punchline: “Fuck you incel! Fucking die!". Indeed, the rebellious anti-patriarchal and anti-fascist messages in Vulvatorious’ music are a testimony to the transformative power of music when wielded as a weapon for change, but there is a pressing need to wrap the empowering lyrical content into a more innovative package if the band hopes to unite more people beneath their banner.

Wayward Dawn

Perhaps empowered by the knowledge that this will be their last opportunity to convince their capital city fans of their worth before embarking on an indefinite hiatus, the four musicians of Wayward Dawn are brimming with confidence as they enter the stage unceremoniously and immediately unleash “Disorienting Verminosity” — the opening track off their 2022 outing “All-Consuming Void”. Locked in a synchrony of intense headbanging, bassist Kasper Szupienko, as well as guitarists Rasmus Johansen and Jakob Kristensen deliver their death metal tracks with an infectiously youthful energy to which the crowd quickly succumbs, resulting in moshing and windmilling galore. But while the band’s dedicated showmanship is a sight to behold, the same cannot be stated about songs like “Cage of Resentment” and “Isolation”, both of which are groovy and extreme enough to elicit movement within the audience, but neither of which contains the sort of hooks to render them into memorable pieces of music. Wayward Dawn’s musical creations are very much death metal done by the books; a ferocious storm that slams into the crowd with unrelenting force, but dissipates without leaving a truly lasting impression. Luckily, there are a number of exceptions to this rule, particularly in the latter half of the set.

“Ridicule”, taken from Wayward Dawn’s 2020 sophomore outing “Haven of Lies”, bristles with an atavistic fury that is only amplified by the quartet’s throwing their entire beings into playing it, while the combination of a thunderous double pedal groove by drummer Lukas Nysted and dense riffage by the rest of the band in “Bottomless Pit” provides the perfect fodder for a wall of death to form and explode into a vortex of violent moshing and crowd surfing. The second last song, “House of Mirrors”, is another highlight, once again showcasing the quartet’s knack for crafting riffs and rhythms that keep the audience in a perpetual state of motion. Thus, even though most of the material to which we are treated today (including the aforementioned “All-Consuming Void” played in its entirety) caters primarily to Wayward Dawn’s diehard fans, the concert is delivered with such intensity and ferocity that it makes even a casual attendee such as myself regretting the group’s imminent and, let’s be honest, likely permanent farewell.

Hellripper

It is almost as though this Scottish four-piece paid attention when I wrote, in relation to their previous visit to Copenhagen, that guitarist and vocalist James McBain’s constant jests about playing a fast song next wore out pretty quickly. There is no such banter to be heard from the man tonight — in fact, there is very little banter of any kind in between the nine tracks to which we are treated. Instead, McBain and his hired guns blaze through their setlist at a velocity that certainly makes them deserving of the speed metal label. From the first notes of opener “Spectres of the Blood Moon Sabbath”, taken from 2020’s “The Affair of the Poisons”, the three standing musicians are teetering on the very edge of the stage, rapid-firing riffs and blackened leads at their eager audience — perhaps too eager, even? “That’s not us, that’s Midnight!", McBain remarks in bemusement after someone has made a personal request for the next track after “Hell’s Rock’n’Roll”, before he opts for “The Nuckelavee”, which is a prime example of his penchant for merging unrelenting speed and epic, ashen melodies. “We don’t have much time”, he admits in its wake with a hint of mischief in his eyes, before ripping out what seems like a slightly sped-up take on “From Hell” off the band’s 2017 outing “Coagulating Darkness”, much to the crowd’s delight.

Speeding up songs that tend to subscribe to breakneck rhythms by drummer Max Southall in the first place lends Hellripper’s performance here an almost ironic sheen. The pace at which songs like the fan favourite 2018 single “Nunfucking Armageddon 666” are delivered leaves little time for proper pronunciation, its chorus simply morphing into what sounds like a single syllable along the lines of “Nunfuckenarmsixsixsix!”. The intensity of the performance has long since infected the audience with a desire to wreak some havoc, too, and as a result, stage dives are happening at a frequency that makes it difficult to tell musician apart from fan. “You can jump off here, you can mosh, you can crowdsurf. But you cannot stand still!", McBains roars, delighted by the action, and it isn’t long before both he and bassist Clark Core are riding atop the sea of fervent metalheads themselves, bidding us goodnight by setting the venue ablaze with “Headless Angels” off their 2019 EP “Black Arts & Alchemy”. As far as my opinion goes, Hellripper’s music remains too rooted in the founding principles of speed metal to make much of an impression on me, but what they lack in variety, the four musicians make up for with a fiery performance tonight, rendering that somewhat disappointing show at BETA last year into a distant memory.

Midnight

There is a palpable buzz hanging in the air as the lights are dimmed and the hooded menaces of Midnight emerge from backstage and, without wasting any time on pleasantries, unleash their opening track, “Funeral Bell” off their 2012 sophomore outing “Complete and Total Hell”. The trio seem hellbent on preserving their reputation as a potent live act, and ignite the stage with their customarily energetic showmanship. Bassist, vocalist, and lone official member Jamie ‘Athenar’ Walters roams the stage like a wraith, pounding the right speaker with his fist in tandem with Ryan ‘Iron Possessor’ Steigerwald’s hi-velocity drumming, whilst guitarist Matt ‘Sorg of Satan’ Sorg kneels before a wildly headbanging, female fan, playing a blazing solo right in her face. Everything about the band oozes attitude, their mischievous bravado and the groovy, rock’n’roll edge of their blackened speed metal tunes like “Fucking Speed and Darkness” off 2020’s “Rebirth by Blasphemy” creating an electrifying atmosphere. Not surprisingly, the crowd is ravenous for more, and the three musicians are thrilled to cater to our desires with a career spanning setlist delivered with fierce abandon, and with few, if any, breathing breaks in between.

Midnight has always been a band that gives everything they have in the live setting, and as such, virtually every song that is aired tonight features some kind of theatrics. In “Szex Witchery”, taken from last year’s “Let There Be Witchery” album, Sorg performs a guitar solo behind his neck, while in the titular, somewhat slower piece “Satanic Royalty” from the band’s 2011 début album, Athenar hovers over the right side of the audience, clutching and tossing the suspended right speaker. The group’s antics rub off on members of the crowd as well, with a steady stream of stage divers leaping into the sea of horns and banging heads during the likes of “Violence on Violence” and “Crushed by Demons”. In the latter, Athenar offers the neck of his instrument to a particularly intense fan upfront, and then proceeds to reward his and everyone else’s dedication by whispering a surprise addition to the setlist into Sorg and Steigerwald’s ears: “Devil Virgin”, which thus receives its long due live début. Rocking and raving like madmen, there is no abating the band’s energy, as they roar through this and the subsequent, appropriately titled “You Can’t Stop Steel”, always teetering just on the brink of riotous ecstasy. “Bang your f**king heads!", Athenar commands before letting loose the thunderous “T.A.P.” off the band’s 2017 album “Shox of Violence”, and then concert is then brought to its conclusion by the marching rhythm of “Unholy and Rotten”, which sees virtually every head in the audience banging in a resounding approval of another enthralling performance by speed metal’s rowdiest purveyors.

Setlist:

• 1. Funeral Bell
• 2. Fucking Speed and Darkness
• 3. Black Rock’n’Roll
• 4. Szex Witchery
• 5. White Hot Fire
• 6. Satanic Royalty
• 7. Lust Filth and Sleaze
• 8. Violence on Violence
• 9. Crushed by Demons
• 10. Devil Virgin
• 11. You Can’t Stop Steel
• 12. T.A.P.
• 13. Unholy and Rotten