Festival season is officially underway. There’s something special about the first day at Copenhell. The asphalt hasn’t yet been coated in four days’ worth of beer, your voice is still more or less intact, and the battle vests look almost freshly washed. Wednesday is the day you have to remember how to walk 25,000 steps with a pint in your hand. And this year’s opening certainly didn’t disappoint.
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Disclaimer: Apropos Magazine received access or a review copy. As always, we share our own impressions — unfiltered.
Six stars
Dogma – Madonna has always been a little black metal
I can’t imagine many better ways to start a sunny Wednesday than with four nuns in corpse paint.
Dogma is one of those bands that makes you wonder how much of it is concept, label and marketing. The band describes itself as documentary, cult and sect all at once. It sounds almost like a Netflix series that was pitched a little too hard.
But then the thoughts stop there.
Because it worked.
Corpse paint and a 28-degree heatwave look like a terrible combination on paper, but the energy was scorching from the first minute, and the crowd showed up in surprisingly large numbers for one of the festival’s earliest slots.
The smartest move came almost immediately.
A cover of Madonna’s Like a Prayer probably shouldn’t work at Copenhell. But if you stop and think about the lyrics, Madonna has actually written something that is almost more black metal than half the black metal scene. It was funny, theatrical and the perfect way to set the stage for the festival’s first day.
★★★★☆☆
Tom Morello – “Didn’t he just play here?”
I heard several people say exactly the same thing.
“Didn’t he just play?”
It almost felt that way. Morello also visited Copenhell a few years ago, and on paper this looked like a repeat.
Luckily, it wasn’t.
Morello is still one of rock’s most original guitar minds. He can make a guitar sound like a DJ deck, a turntable or a printer about to explode. He works the cables, switches the guitar on and off, pours screws over the strings and somehow makes the whole thing make sense.
The last time, he seemed almost too eager to be the frontman.
This time, he seemed more at ease in the role.
The concert was built as a finely tuned greatest-hits set, packed with Rage Against the Machine and a few detours into Audioslave. Comfort food? Yes. But very, very good comfort food.
One of the nicest moments came when a young guitarist was invited onstage to play Morello’s iconic Arm The Homeless guitar. Several people around me thought he was Morello’s son. Whether that was true or not, he played outrageously well, and Morello looked like a man enjoying the chance to stand slightly in the background for a moment.
It was one of those small moments that sticks with you.
★★★★★☆
Six Feet Under – exactly how your parents think metal sounds
Six Feet Under are kind of funny.
If someone who had never heard metal before were asked to imagine death metal, it would probably sound something like this.
And that’s actually a compliment.
The band, fronted by former Cannibal Corpse vocalist Chris Barnes, delivered exactly the heavy wall of sound you’d expect. It got a little repetitive along the way, and a couple of technical issues took some of the momentum out of it.
But in the blazing sun, it still worked. Sometimes everything doesn’t need to be complicated. Sometimes it just needs to be heavy.
★★★★☆☆
Wednesday’s other highlights
Wednesday also brought strong performances from Konvent, who once again showed why they belong on the biggest metal stages, while Mammoth delivered one of the day’s most tightly played rock shows.
The festival also got underway with solid sets from Alice Cooper, Mastodon and, of course, Iron Maiden, who brought the first day to a suitably gigantic close.
Reflection
One of the best things about Copenhell is that the festival doesn’t try to be anything other than what it is.
You can start the day with black-painted nuns, hear one of the world’s most inventive guitarists in the afternoon and end the night with the world’s biggest heavy metal band. It doesn’t necessarily make sense on paper.
But it does on Refshaleøen.
And Wednesday was a reminder of why Copenhell is still one of Denmark’s most complete festivals.
