Written by:	Bad English
Published:	March 03, 2017
Event:	Wacken Metal Battle Luleå (Website)
Location:	Lillan, Luleå, Sweden
Organizer:	BD Rock & Metal

Two concerts in one review.

Event name: Klubbkväll Ebeneser #2

Intro

Event name: Klubbkväll Ebeneser #2
Where: Luleå
Club: Kulturcentrum Ebeneser
When: 11 February
Tickets: SEK 100

The venue is 100m away, or a 1m walk from Luleå's major city bus stop, where you can catch any buses traveling within the city, and approximately five minutes' walk from the Luleå bus station, from which you can travel outside the city limits. Add two minutes and the railway is the same in any direction.

Am I the only one who doesn't take a mobile phone and credit card to gigs? I arrived at around 20:00, before everything started, to see the sound check and I looked around at all the folks there. Chilling out with Tjers Bryggeri, black ale and IPA; two beers for a concert is enough. You don't need to get drunk, but to enjoy the music! That's the most important thing. A few beers open you up, but at the same time, too much can make you drunk and then the music isn't important anymore.

Mike Machine - hard rock, heavy metal, glam rock, glam metal - Piteå

Mike Machine is a nice band; their outfits were a bit of a mix of black metal and '80s glam. I liked them and they kicked ass, just like seeing some '80s glam icons having changed one member of the lineup and then coming back after a long silence. The first thing I noticed about them, which was true of all the bands that night, was that they had real cables plugged into the guitar on one end and the amp on the other; no wireless units at all. It's so old school and I like when bands do that. If I recall, all the bands had the same. I give my respect; an old school fucker like me can see the difference!

Vanity Insanity - hard rock, heavy metal, glam rock, glam metal - Umeå

When W.A.S.P. meets Skid Row and a ballad saves the day - that's Vanity Insanity. In the middle of their set, the band played a ballad, something a bit like Skid Row's "Quicksand Jesus." The band was great; the sad thing was that I didn't know the lyrics or the songs. It was simply an unknown band to me. Like I always tell people, you should check out the music scene that has developed since you left high school. There are much better bands out there than the old ones who can't put out a decent record after 10 years in the business. Better than Mötley Crüe today, anyway. Simply kickass - and their last song was a cover of Motörhead's "Killed By Death."

Yxmord - death metal - Kiruna

Death metal's biggest problem is that when you listen to a CD it needs to have a good studio mix and master to have a good sound. Many death metal demos have mono sound; a lot of tapes from the '80s sound like shit. Most demo sounds in other genres you can enjoy. It's a dilemma for all bands: to get a good record deal, they need to prove themselves at concerts, but for us to make the most of their shows, they need to have a CD out that we can enjoy before attending gigs. Dilemma, right? Of course, it's like armchair football lovers who just criticize, while the experts, who are but a few, make the real analyses. It's the same in music. Another thing I don't like in extreme metal genres is when the singer of an unknown band screams or growls the next song title. It's hard to understand, and sometimes you want to take the music seriously.

All the instrumentalists displayed a high level of musicianship. The drummer was like a zombie, in a trance or a coma; his eyes were so weird, as if he had just woken up from death, but he was able to do some great, insane drumming. He might have been the best drummer I have ever seen in action so up close. The bass and guitar were at the highest level; the singer had an axe (hahaha). The only song I recognized was Entombed's "Wolverine Blues," which they played first. I could see how their vocalist sings; it all comes from the inside, deeper than from the lungs, from where the sun never shines, unless you do an autopsy and open up the corpse's lungs for some death metal medical reasons.

Outro

Time to bitch! Yes, it's time. People are always bitching that nothing happens in Luleå, but when bands play, people don't show up. I was hoping to see at least 50 more people there. Bands like W.A.S.P. must bring 700-1500, Accept and Sabaton more like 2500-5000. If I were in a band, I would refuse to play live for only a few people, and if I were an organizer, I would never set it up. We'd be wasting our free time. Let others do it. The only reason why people can't go to the gigs must be work; otherwise there's no excuse. The bands waste their free time and their own money to come and play!

Some people were there just for the party (ehhh), and some came late and went home early. Maybe death metal was to blame? We metalheads don't deal in genres; we like all heavy, black, doom, thrash, death, gothic, at least 4-7 genres or more. If you're a loner, you won't survive so far north anyway. Seems like some people haven't checked out the music scene since they left high school. It's sad. 100 SEK is cheaper than the cinema, hockey, football, anything else; some overrated places like All Star, Savoy, and so on ask 100 to enter. For 100 SEK, I can buy a good imperial stout and stay home and listen to good music. Well, I spend more money on music in a month than I do on girls in a year. Those who spend 5000 SEK every month for more music know what I mean. Now it's time to end my bitching.

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Wacken Metal Battle Luleå

Intro

Event name: Wacken Metal Battle Luleå
Where: Luleå
Venue: Lillan
When: 18 February
Tickets: Free

This is another place close to Smedjan where all the major buses stop and can take you all over Luleå, though it's a bit longer distance to the bus station. I decided to go to Heroes Rockbar to have a pint, since Bishops was crowded. It was close, so I went there early to see some people. Sadly, there was no beer - at least, not for free. You had to pay for it. The organizer said it was the best crowd he had seen in Lillan in ten years or so. I would ask if family members count as a crowd; mostly people showed up just to see their friends' bands. I donated some money to the bands, though; it was cool, since they used their own money to come. Let them have some free beer. I like that they changed the order up. There was some kind of draw to see in what order the bands would play. There was no major sound check, just a little bit before the bands played.

Reaper's Mark - melodic death metal - Gällivare

This was awesome old school shit. Blue jeans, black t-shirts, tattoos, long hair, and standing in the crowd headbanging when other bands were playing. What have bands come to lately? Luleå bands The Everdawn, The Moaning, and Gates Of Ishtar made it to the top of the underground and even higher in the mid- and late '90s. This band would be able to do the same, if only we didn't have too many bands and the music meant more these days. This was a kickass opening act, four energetic songs with great guitar riffs, intros, atmosphere - basically super awesomeness.

Beneath My Feet - metalcore, nu metal - Luleå

I'd never heard of them, and they are not my cup of tea. I'd never listen to this music unless someone paid me. Onstage, the band was active, moving so much, putting on a show. It was like a hip-hop show in some way; as performers, the band was great. Young, energetic, jumping around, they all seemed to be in good shape. They had two singers, like 3 Inches Of Blood, but here, both singers were able to perform clean vocals. Their performance was why the band won!

Baruk Khazad - melodic death metal, folk metal - Luleå

The band says they play dwarf metal. In my eyes, that makes them the winner!

"Charge your horses across the fields
Together we ride into destiny
Have no fear of death, when it's our time
Oden will bring us home when we die!"

This band could fit in Amon Amarth's tour ship to warm up for them. Musically, it's Amon Amarth mixed (lyrically) with Korpiklaani. The band was awesome as live performers, basically the same as Amon Amarth! The singer had the type of Roman clothing that senators would wear, mixed with pagan ornaments and colors. Nice axe microphone, too. Three songs, all more or less about trolls and dwarves who live in the Swedish forests (yes, they do, they are real). Nice blood-and-paint outfits, and better than the first band that performed. Simply a blast.

Enemy Within - progressive death metal - Skellefteå

Now, I'm confused, because they singer said that Enemy Within played in Luleå three years ago. I sort of recognized the name. I don't remember how; maybe I saw them live, I can't recall, but visually I didn't recognize them. The band had a banner near the stage with their name on it, and they were they only band to have a keyboardist. The singer said that their original drummer, Andreas Mollwing Wikberg, could not play that night, so they asked Roger Markström from Feral to step in. Now I want to zoom in on this drummer's chest, because I saw a tattoo there, and from a distance it looked to me like "AIK" (kanske han är gnagare, who knows) or maybe "SAIK." Anyway, the band sounded like melodeath mixed with Evergrey. The keyboards sounded a bit out-of-place in the second song.

Outro

I'm not completely happy, since I was hoping Baruk Khazad would win, but life is life. It's hard to be old school today. Money is everything, so we have holes in our jeans and stinky, old leather jackets and we call our music "metal." The other band's performance was better and more metal, but what can I say happened but that the Swedish fighting men with battle axes and long hair scared away the other Europeans with their appearance?

I hope the next events will have even greater attendance!

P.S. A cautious, provocative comment: if the whole jury had long hair and old school metalhead outfits, the result would have been different!

P.S. 2 Now my life is at risk because I openly criticize everything and everybody here and there. So what? Come and get me.

Thanks to SSUS for proofreading.