A Shirt on Sunday: HRH Metal – O2 Academy, Birmingham – 16-17/2/2019

A year after our first foray into the world of HRH festivals, Iain and I are back in Brum for our second HRH Metal. The difference is that we are commuting from Iain’s, which turns out to be economically sound, but not the best fun for Iain as he’s the driver. Having successfully navigated our way into the heart of the black country and found some free parking, we start at the pub.

Suitably fed and watered we hit the venue. The O2 Academy is un-changed, as is the format: three stages, with staggered start times and a mix of all forms of heavy metal. We manage to see…

Final Coil –Probably my favourite band of the weekend, featuring the least metal-looking hair-do of the weekend. The band are a cracking mix of modern metal and Led Zep riffage with some incredibly crunchy bass lines. I’m looking forward to their upcoming album.

Final Coil

Eradikator are Metallica copyists, but don’t hold our interest.

Eradikator can't compete with the footy

Temnein are a fantastic French death metal band, their singer reminds me of Bellowhead’s Jon Boden, both in looks and in charisma. He watches the audience with a twinkle in his eye and pronounces us “Very British”. The band are tight as anything and given that neither Iain or I really like this genre, we love the band.

Temnein

Atorc kick off the day on stage 2, and as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, deliver a great performance let down by crappy sound. Iain is confused – he’s never encountered folk-metal before.

Atorc

There now follows a selection of average bands and we end up outside chatting to Atorc and random passers-by. Time passes.

After dinner it’s Donkerkarnuffel. Coming from the theatrical end of death metal, they are zombie clowns, led by a ringmaster figure. They’re entertaining enough, and the singer plays his part well. The occasional bits of fairground music and comedy car horns certainly help, but they’re still playing death metal and it’s just not my thing.

Donkerkarnuffel

Red Rum are pirate metal, and while fairly enjoyable they’re on the second stage and the sound is crappy.

Red Rum

Then we have Trollfest. Six hairy Norwegians dressed as Disney princesses, with the singer in ‘normal’ dress and the world’s largest balloon crown. This is thrash metal folk music (which is different to folk metal) with saxophone, accordion and all sorts of chaos. At one point the band won’t start playing until a section of the crowd sits down and has a conversation. There’s a Brittney Spears cover. The bass player leads a conga through the entire venue, and all in all they are a mind-boggling end to the day.

Trollfest

Sunday starts like Saturday. We meet some nice people in the pub and thus miss the first band of the day again, and there are far fewer photos. Our first band is Rustlung. Enjoyable, but nothing special.
Fury fail to inspire, as do Netherhall, so we go in search of food.

It started to rain, so we took shelter in a buffet restaurant called Jimmy’s Chillis. During the meal it was observed that some of the food was cold and new food just being dumped on top of old. But we were hungry, so ate anyway. I spent Monday bitterly regretting that we hadn’t just gone back to the reliable Chinese restaurant of the night before.

We got back for Acid Reign – one of Ian’s favourite bands from back in the day. They were so early on the modern metal scene they got to create their own genre – ‘Apple-core’. The singer is a nutter – phoning a sick band member from the stage so we can say “hi”, and trying to climb up the speakers until a security guard utters the dread words “Health and Safety” and beckons him down. Undeterred, he took the stairs and finished the set singing from the balcony.

Devilment are a band I wanted to see, fronted by the singer from Cradle of Filth. On record, the new album The Mephisto Waltzes is a wonderful slice of majestic black metal. In concert, it’s all a bit sludgy, and the singer has a habit of uttering what Iain labels as ‘baby notes’. Still like the record though. They also do an interesting cover of Midnight Oils' 'Beds Are Burning'

Devilment

Last band of the weekend are Decapitated. Listening on Spotify I’d figured we’d last one song then hit the road. Instead, we stayed to the end. This is thrash metal in the style of Slayer, but with incredible precision. You can hear the mathematics of the music. On top of this, the guitar player delivers incredibly beautiful solos in weird scales. The whole effect is blistering.

Decapitated

So, a mixed bag of bands – not as many great discoveries as last year. At the end of this year of dipping my toes back into the world of metal, I can say that I still don’t like about half of the genres, but there are diamonds in every corner if you have the patience to dig them out. So I’ll stop doing these HRH festivals. Well, apart from the next one…

Videos

As ever, ripped off from wherever I could find them.

Final Coil posted a video on FBook.

Acid Reign

On the night

Decapitated

On the night

Trollfest

Different Festival; same lunacy

Atorc

Weird snippet from a year ago.

Temnein

Music video, rather than live - but gives the idea.

Donkerkarnuffel

Music video, rather than live - again gives the idea.

Devilment

Music video of top song from the album - gives the idea.