10.-11.08.2024 - M'era Luna Festival 24, Hildesheim (Germany)

It is 20:45 and the M‘era Luna 2024 is slowly heading towards its end but not before regular VNV Nation has not played. That was besides Schwarzer Engel and ASP the band that I absolutely wanted to see live. Since meanwhile 34 years the project of Ronan Harris already exists and has produced 11 albums. He was supported on this evening by three musicians: one drummer and two keyboarder.

I was somehow surprised. After Lord Of The Lost the field in front of the stage emptied at first but even when the first sounds of Epicas intro “Alpha Anteludium” could be heard it was still really manageable what had gathered to watch one of the biggest bands in symphonic metal. Who already had seen at least once the Dutchman live knows that there from show point of view very much is offered. This time the stage was dominated by big wheels at the sides that were turning from again and again and two gigantic snakes that even spit fog and fire from time to time. Apropos fire: Of that there is always plenty of present at Epica, so today although the temperatures were not asking for that explicitly.

Lord Of The Lost and my ways only crossed once: 2015 on the Gelsenkirchen Blackfield Festival. To that time with only very limited resources taking place at the afternoon the concert nowadays is totally standing in contrast to it. The band is much more known today, especially due to their appearance at the European Song Contest one year ago. But back to the M’era Luna at Hildesheim.

Back on the Main Stage where it was only me but also many others waiting for the performance of Schandmaul. And there you could see: singer Thomas Lindner was standing on stage again. Additionally, there was also Georgij Alexandrowitsch Makazaria, former singer of the band Russkaja. And why he was joining the band got obvious after the first song “Krieger”. It was then when Lindner directed some words to the audience, telling them from his cancerous disease which he, at least momentarily, got better of. Unfortunately, a wretched side effect of the therapy was, and that could not be overheard, that his voice was not yet back to old strength whereas he handed over the singing part currently to Makazaria. On keyboards and guitar he was already getting in on the act as if there had never happened something to him.

After the folk sounds of dArtagnan it went across towards the Club stage to attend a real contrast to the band before. Das Ich was put on my schedule, a primary rock of the dark alternative scene which was founded originally already in 1989 and since then was formed unchanged by basically Stefan Ackermann and Bruno Kramm. Live these guys are supported by two further keyboarders. Very funny I found the idea of putting the synthesizer onto small rollable tables with which the musicians were hoofing around the stage and dancing again and again around singer Ackermann. This was lively taking part in it himself by his snatchy dances, grimacing and smirking with the audience. Also the announcements in-between had something amusing when he had to admit that he had lied during his song “Engel” as there would be so many nice angels in the audience.

Sunday morning and the sun was shining brightly across the festival area. So, I took it easy as it was already announced that it would be getting very warm again and so the final day started with the folk-rock sounds of the Nuremberg band dArtagnan. They had only short time ago released their latest album “Herzblut” but instead started with “Freiheit & Tod” of the 2022 album “Felsenfest”. By that they were directly getting down to the nitty gritty. Very enthusiastic singer Ben Metzner changed again and again between singing and playing the bagpipe, jumped and swirled around like a dervish across the stage surrounded continuously by columns of fire.

As I admired the terrific show of London After Midnight for longer than initially planned, I was only able to arrive towards “Fürst Der Finsternis” at the Main Stage. So, I missed the first appearance of the Berlin a cappella choir Stimmgewalt. You can’t have everything.

Spontaneously, I remained at the Club Stage, although I also wanted to watch ASP in each case. London After Midnight canceled last year their show on short notice and so it was now that they were able to make up for this. Preparations had finished when directly the video screens at the back of the stage started playing advertisements for the upcoming album which went seamless over into the first song “Hot Stuff”.<

After the day has mainly taken place only on the Main Stage and was characterized by guitar soundsI now went for the first time over to the smaller Club Stage in order to listen to the hard electronic sounds of Suicide Commando. The Belgian is surrounded by his live backstop and barks his songs with his typical Dalek-voice towards the audience.

After Hämatom I took a little break in order to eat something to be invigorated for the second part of the day. This should start with Saltatio Mortis who released this year their new album “Finsterwacht”. Of this there was performed the equally named title track as opener. The heat of the day slowly reclined but in order to not cool down the guys were turning up the heat even more. Directly from the start they were having a handle on the audience and there was a giddily atmosphere on and in front of the stage.

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