15.08.2023 Heaven Shall Burn

Junkyard at Dortmund (Germany)

At 20:45 it finally was the time and Heaven Shall Burn entered the stage to the sounds of the intro “Awoken” from the 2008 released album “Iconoclast (Part I: The Final Resistance)”. When they were over it seamlessly went into “Endzeit” and with the first words sung the crowd in front of the stage directly started moving. Already during the winter they toured through the bigger venues together with Trivium and now they continued this during the Summer Battles Tour 2023 also in smaller locations. Due to that there was no big show on stage with fire and the usual hoo-ha but that was also not needed at all. The band on its own already put across so much energy that there was no limits in the audience and in such small locations where you are really close to what is going on the concert experience is anyhow much more intense.
The set was of course dominated by the opus “Of Truth And Sacrifice” that meanwhile already has reached three years but overall a great cross section. Especially with “Behind A Wall Of Silence“ of the 2002 album “Whatever It May Take” you could really enthuse fans of the first hour. Again and again singer Marcus Bischoff came to the front and held short speeches between the songs. So, for example before “Voice Of The Voiceless“ that was dedicated to all the people that campaign for animal rights. The hair was weaving in the audience and also the first crowd surfer flew across the people after a short time which were then received by the security. After it really got extreme during “Godyva” there was also a heartily thank you directed to them by Marcus Bischoff. Meanwhile it got dark and due to that the big battleship on the led wall at the stage background together with the strong colours of the light spots formed a very impressive picture. After “Numbing The Pain” of the 2004 opus “Antigone” Marcus Bischoff summed up, how great it was to tour again and additionally told some things that had happened in the near past. As they had to finish in time it happened what would happen: the last song. That was not chosen for no reason as it was 10 years ago that Heaven Shall Burn covered the most classic song of Blind Guardian “Valhalla” on their album “Veto”. To that jubilee the band had made a video that was released short before the concert. Although the song was not sung that sustained as on the original but with respect to volume the audience was in no way inferior to the ones at Blind Guardian concerts.
I had seen Heaven Shall Burn already live before but always on the Wacken Open Air with huge stage and flame show in front of a big audience. Generally, this is from optical point of view way more impressive compared to such a small stage. But just that was the appeal of this evening that made it that special: To be on eye level with the band, the experience was way more intense and you saw much more details. The atmosphere was besides that genius and also the very suitable atmosphere within the junkyard ambient was doing one last thing. All in all a great evening an I went home being a happy camper.