Copenhell 2019 – Ten Years In Hell – part 2

DAY 3:

Day number three was opened by Matt Heafy and Trivium on the main stage, and the chaos around it. The inflow of crowd surfers during their show was the highest until that moment at Copenhell. Trivium delivered a high-quality performance as they always do. Matt is an amazing performer, he has this ease in getting connected with the audience, so even those not familiar with Trivium were able to enjoy the performance.

After a faster introduction of the day, it was time for something softer to go on the Hades stage, it was time for the British djent group Tesseract. With Daniel Tompkins on vocals, Tesseract played a totally different setlist than during their latest headline tour — which was mostly built around their last record ‘Sober’. Tesseract’s performance started with a big part of ‘Concealing Fate’ and finished with ‘Juno’. The highlight of the performance was Daniel Tompkins’ first attempt to jump into the crowd, which ended up with an unplugged wireless microphone, after which Danny quickly returned to stage laughing on his failed attempt.

The next show on the Helviti stage was the only Danish show performance on the main stage at Copenhell 2019 – the hard rock band Pretty Maids. The band still has many fans and not only in Denmark, which was clearly visible by assessing the number of fans gathered in front of the stage. Pretty Maids did not disappoint, they entertained the audience with all of their hits including ‘We Came to Rock’, ‘Future World’ and ‘Love Games’. May√be the guys are getting older, but they have proved they still got rock in their blood.

Bæst, another Danish band, much heavier than Pretty Maids, was for me one of the most anticipated performances of Friday. Mostly because I have had the bad luck of missing their previous shows in the area. The performance was simply crazy. The vocalist Simon Olsen behaves as if he just drunk a six pack of red bull and tries to transmits his energy into the crowd. This show kept the security guys busy, as the army of crowd surfers started to arrive in the front of the stage pit. I was not disappointed with my first meeting with Bæst and I will be sure to catch their next show.

Alien Weaponry was something exotic I just had to see. Coming from New Zealand, the band started the show with the haka dance and a lot of references to the Maori culture, including sections of the lyrics that are sung in Maori language. The young guys’ performance was an interesting experience, and it was obvious that the band members were enjoying the show as much as the fans.

One of the first headliners of Friday was Lamb of God, led by Randy Blythe. The band nailed this show, delivering one of the best performances of the day. ‘Uncle’ Randy was executing his usual routines, jumping, kicking, and screaming. The stage was still soaked in the sun, which took out a bit out of the dark power that usually accompanies this type of performance, but Randy and company couldn’t care less. They started with ‘Omerta’, and the audience went into total craziness when Blythe introduced the next song, ‘Walk With Me in Hell’. The circle pit was for sure the biggest one of Copenhell 2019. I think for many metalheads there, Lamb of God show was the highlight of the day. Before leaving the stage, Lamb of God ‘s vocalist invited all the fans to join the show of his friends from Clutch on the stage located right from the Helviti.

Clutch was the next in the schedule and I need to mention, it was my number two band of the entire Copenhell 2019 following Tool. Neil Fallon and company started with ‘Ghoul Wrangler’ with a lot of fuzz and pantomimic expressions of the crazy lyrics done by Neil. And this was the best party you could receive. Quickly after that, Clutch played another great track: ‘Noble Savage.’ The biggest surprise was delivered in the final section of the set, where the band introduced a special guest. This was none other than Randy Blythe of Lamb of God. The audience went crazy seeing their idol again. This time without extensive jumping, Randy performed one of the oldest Clutch songs presented this evening ‘Passive Restrain’. The whole show closed with ‘Gimme the Keys’, and one could witness only smiling fans moving back to the main stage for the main course of the day.

Slipknot, the crazy, masked metal gang gathered the biggest crowd of the entire festival. It looked like everyone who was on Copenhell premises showed up to see this crazy band. First, we could only see the stage hidden by a huge banner with the band’s logo, and clouds of smoke coming from behind. Then we could hear the ‘(515)’ from the tape, which smoothly transitioned to first notes of ‘People=Shit,’ and the banner sharply pulled up after no more than 30 seconds of the song. This started a massive pogo dance with the audience starting to jump, cheer, and scream together with Corey Taylor. The hits were coming one after the other, as expected for Slipknot ‘s  good portfolio of great festival songs. ‘Before I Forget’, ‘Psychosocial’ or ‘Duality’ were combined with the material from Slipknot’s upcoming album. The stage set-up was quite simple for Slipknot ‘s standards, but there were still a lot of things happening on stage: fire, running, crazy percussion sets, it was all there. The evening was closed with ‘Spit It Out’ and ‘Surfacing’ and all the fans could go home. Corey Taylor delivered a great show as always, and all the props to Copenhell for booking Slipknot as one of the headliners.

DAY 4:

The final day of the festival was set as a total mixture of styles and with no much time to rest. The schedule for the final day was perfectly planned and the shows were starting one after another on the two big stages.

The day started with a bit of folk metal played by Eluveitie. The mixture of classic instruments like the Celtic harp, violin, hurdy-gurdy, and all kind of pipes and whistles sparked with metal tones spread out throughout the audience. They delivered positive vibes for the start of the day. In their brief set, Eluveitie delivered a few hit songs including the amazing ‘The Call of the Mountains’ or ‘Worship’ which is another connection to Randy Blythe, who added vocals to the album version of the song. This year Randy was all around the Copenhell.

A slight change of style occurred on the main stage with the performance of funk metal veterans from Living Colour, followed by another style change with legendary Glenn Hughes performing classic Deep Purple hits from when he played with MK3 and MK4.

After this short break from metal sounds, Amon Amarth took us back to the world of heavy sounds. These crazy Swedish Vikings initiated the journey through the cold seas with ‘The Pursuit of Vikings’, with most of the audience chanting ‘Oden! Guide our ships’. The next song, ‘Deceiver of the Gods’ featured the first fire spectacle of the day, flames were thrown in the air following the rhythm of the song. ‘Guardians of Asgaard’ featured the guest performance of LG Petrov from Entombed. The Viking show was closed with ‘Raise Your Horns’ and ‘Twilight of the Thunder God’.

Next performance was a special event prepared by Copenhell called ‘Ten Years In Hell’ to celebrate 10th edition of Copenhell. Musicians from the most popular Danish bands, including members of Bæst, Pretty Maids and Hank Shermann from Mercyful Fate, performed hard rock and metal standards of AC DC, Motorhead or Death. The show was quite interesting and transitioned like a massive karaoke while the whole audience was singing along.

Rob Zombie was the last performer I saw on the main stage (I have decided to skip Scorpions since I saw them twice on the same tour already). Rob was supported by two ex-Marilyn Manson musicians: marvelous guitarist John 5, and drummer Ginger Fish. Covered under his hair and huge hat, Rob Zombie looked like a character from a post-apocalyptic movie. He kicked and danced while delivering his best hits, including ‘American Witch’, ‘Living Dead Girl’, ‘More Human Than Human’, and ‘Dragula’. Poor Rob had the sun shining directly in his eyes for a major part of the set, and asked the crowd several times: ‘Denmark, does this sun never set?’. The show was closed with two cover songs: ‘Enter The Sandman’ and ‘Schools Out’. The whole show was much better than the performance delivered at Copenhell a few years ago, so it was strong return from Mr. Rob.

The last show for me on this year’s Copenhell was Dimmu Borgir, which added the final component to the total mixture of styles on the final day of the festival. The show featured a nice light showcase, lighting up the dark space in front of the stage. This was, for me, a nice closure of Copenhell, a proper dose of metal music after all this different genres presented during the day.

Copenhell 2019 delivered a huge mixture and variety of styles. Maybe it was not as extreme as last year, where we even got some classic music!. But the festival organization proved once more that they don’t want to close themselves in the metal festival frame and keep aspiring to expand into other hard music genres. In my opinion, that’s a very good move, and this year everyone was able to pick something for themselves. To the “Copenhell guys”: Thank you for the accreditation, good job and see you next year!

Text & Photos by Kasper Pasinski
Managing Editor: Elsa Marques

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