German power metal band Powerwolf finally blessed London on Tuesday night and fans were left howling with pleasure.
A year after being rescheduled, the band hit the Roundhouse in Camden supported by WarKings as part of their WOLFSNACHTE 2022 (“Wolfs night”) tour.
WarKings opened with a fantastic set. WarKings – not that well known (here at least) – are a German/Swiss/Austrian power metal band who occasionally partner with melodic deathcore vocalist Melissa Bonny. Their music is themed around history’s and fiction’s greatest warriors and wars. The band even dress for battle: Steffen Theurer is a Spartan on drums; Markus Pohl, a Crusader on the guitar; Chris Rodens, a Viking on bass; and George Neuhasuer, a Roman tribune on lead vocals.
WarKings faced a hesitant crowd to start with, but soon won them over. They opened with ‘The Last Battle’ before bringing out Melissa Bonny to lend her vocal talent to ‘Spartacus’ and ‘Maximus’. ‘Spartacus’ had everyone chanting ‘Die for Spartacus’ with fists in the air. ‘Monsters’ was up next. A newer song, it takes a step away from the battlefield but Melissa’s vocals killed it.
WarKings’ strongest song was ‘Fight’ because of how it fired up the crowd. It started with the Roman Tribune chanting “We will fight, We will fight, We will fight”. The audience, like a legion at the dawn of battle, returned: “Fight, Fight, Fight”.
Their final three songs were ‘Hephaistos’, ‘Sparta’ and, their closer and most popular song, ‘Gladiator’.
Even as WarKings finished, the air crackled with excitement for Powerwolf. Over a year since their Call of the Wild album, fans were eager to hear this music live for the first time.
Powerwolf are possibly best described as a power metal band who sing about “things that go bump in the night” like werewolves, vampires and witch hunts. But don’t think darkness. Powerwolf is one of the most fun loving and banterous band around.
In their music, creatures of the night are joined by a hostile twin theme of Christianity. And their music ripples with underlying satire. They dress like warped members of the clergy (but are far from being a Christian band).
Powerwolf opened with a flurry of flames in a fantastic pyrotechnic display and then kicked-off with the song ‘Faster Than The Flame’. The audience felt the heat from the flames and this lit the powder keg of their excitement. The crowd exploded into mosh pits and waves of crowd surfer that carried on throughout the show.
From their oldest to their latest, the band’s every song hit the target with their wild fans.
Frontman Karsten Brill, better known as Atilla Dorn, jammed with the crowd between each number. He fuelled the energy with jokes, banter and crowd participation. At one stage, he had the audience sing the melody of ‘Armata Strigoi’, breaking it down into four parts, with standing fans competing against seated fans. Attila and Falk Maria Schlegel (real name Christian Jost) even treated the audience to a little waltz before ‘Dancing with the Dead’.
With the main set’s faux ending, the whole place chanted ‘One more song, One more song’. This led to the “encore set”.
The first number was ‘Sanctified with Dynamite’, always a fan favourite. Then ‘We Drink Your Blood’. Powerwolf have always been good at writing songs that allow the audience to join in. The crowd of 1,700 people began chanting ‘blood’ as it started. You know headbanging and mosh pitting followed.
Powerwolf’s last song was their oldest on the set list: ‘Werewolves of Armenia’. When played previously bandmembers lead one side of the crowd in competition with the other. But this went one further. As the crowd took their sides, they split down the middle to form a ‘wall of death’. In this wall, both sides faced each other like soldiers on the opposite’s sides of a battlefield, howling and chanting, vying to make their side the loudest. And as the first guitar chorus sounded, the two sides smashed into one other forming the biggest mosh pit of the night.
Powerwolf ended the night to huge applause and cheers before gracefully taking a bow.
Thus ended the metal mass of London.
Powerwolf have just announced a new album to be released in April next year. I can’t wait.
