Saturday was Metal Night at Stadtgarten. Did the genre matter to all those people with picnic blankets and (what seems to be a new, increasing trend) folding chairs? Friday and Saturday nights are free music nights, until the end of August. What kind of music? The best kind for many – free music! Walking gradually from the grass embankment towards the stage though there was a likewise gradual shift from blankets and wine to band t-shirts and beer. Rockers Dream Ocean and Gun Barrel were about to blow the cobwebs from the trees.
As it turned out, there might even have been reason for Champaigne bottles this evening. It took only a few minutes for Dream Ocean‘s front-lady (or is that a sexist description these days?) to show she does not have the conventional whiskey soaked pipes of a seasoned hard-rocker. In fact Turkey-born Basak Ylva makes her living in Hannover singing opera to support her Symphonic Metal project Dream Ocean: “Playing my own music is not a side-job – it’s an absolute necessity” as she explained in ‘metalheads.de’.
Part of that theatrical aspect of opera carries over into the performance for sure. The backing taped music to which the band enters the stage has a ring of ‘Harry Potter’ theme about it (the later darker episodes naturally!). When the band itself gets going, if you can imagine Ozzy Osbourne producing ‘Phantom of the Opera’ then you will have a good idea of the music. On the subject of Ozzy, Ylva was keen to point out the late Sabbath frontman’s contribution to Metal music. “We recently lost our Prince of Darkness” she said, and sang the power-ballad from 2001 ‘Dreamer’ in his memory.
The rest of Dream Ocean’s set was largely from Ylva’s own hand, with the addition of a rock-opera version of Turkish rock-icon Sebnem Ferah’s ‘Firtina’. Ylva’s own compositions were pretty powerful too. Even though it really is all about the singer musically it’s great to see the whole band lending visually to the live presentation each with his own zombified make-up style. Bassist Sebastian Heuckmann looks particularly threatening shorn of hair and bushy of beard. I wasn’t sure of the extent of backing tracks at times, but if they were at a minimum then kudos to everyone for putting out such a powerful and bombastic (in the best sense of the word) sound. They took the audience rather by surprise, but the startled faces were happy ones by the end of Dream Ocean’s set.
Gun Barrel, from Cologne, will not have taken rock fans at Alter Zoll by surprise. They have been breathing fire into 70’s style hard rock since 1998 and are one of the regions most popular Hardrock bands. Vocalists have come and gone. I remember fondly hearing them some years ago at Rockaue with my all-time favourite rock vocalist from the area Patrick Suhl. Current man out front is Vinnie. The Man goes more for a Freddie Mercury hair-cut rather than the customary long mane but I’m pleased to report, has the lung power of Freddie. I’m thinking now how wonderful it would have been for Vinnie and Dream Ocean’s Basak to have done an impromptu ‘Barcelona’. A missed opportunity!
A set that reminded me of my ’70’s concert-going youth. Brightly coloured Spandex trousers courtesy of Drummer Paul Bendler with long manes of hair courtesy of guitarists Rolf Tanzius, Jan Niederstein and Tom Kintgen. A solid row of Marshall amplifiers is naturally also a pre-requisite of any serious rockers reviving the ’70’s sound (even though, as Lizzy’s Scott Gorham once smilingly admitted after once meeting with the Status Quo roadcrew, they weren’t necessarily all switched on – never mind up to ’10’).
However high the amps were set tonight it was plenty loud enough for a late evening at Stadtgarten that lacks the benefit of Kunstrasen’s rigourously designed sound-baffles. It was good to see a mix of older and newer faces in the band too. Elder statesmen Rolf Tanzius and Tom ‘Tomcat’ Kintgen bookended new drummer Paul Bendler and even newer vocalist Vinnie with the ever smiling Jan Niederstein somewhere in-between, but looking like he’s just stepped out of a timewarp from Hammersmith Odeon. The only 21st Century give-away was the FGN logo on his ‘Les Paul’.
Suffice to say that time has thankfully not mellowed Gun Barrel one iota. The new men have actually given the band renewed energy and it’s looking good for the new cd ‘Dezibel Demons’ and maybe even the next 25 years.
