LIVE REVIEW: Powerwolf @ The Roundhouse, London
For years, conventional wisdom dictated that the UK wasn’t interested in power metal. Bands that could headline festivals in Germany were rarely mentioned in our magazines, and if you wanted to see someone like BLIND GUARDIAN live, you’d have to go abroad to do it. Judging by the frankly insane queue that forms outside The Roundhouse tonight though, those days are long gone. A line of black-clad headbangers stretches right down to Camden market and there’s a tangible excitement in the cold night air. POWERWOLF are in town, and everyone’s in the mood for a big old singalong.
Once we get indoors, we’re treated to multi-national four-piece WARKINGS, a band who clearly think that subtlety is for cowards. Coming across like the Horrible Histories of power metal, they get the night off to a silly but entertaining start. Fight and Hephaistos are blood-pumping anthems, and their tongue-in-cheek nature makes them easy to like. They might look what would happen if LORDI did a classics degree, but it’s hard not to have a good time. The closing Gladiator is a misstep though, it’s alarmingly similar to the POWER RANGERS theme.
Rating: 7/10
One short beer break later and POWERWOLF walk onstage to a thunderous reaction. The German quintet have spent the past twenty years conquering mainland Europe and it’s England’s turn to fall under their spell. They’ve played London before, but tonight feels like a turning point. The crowd’s enthusiasm never wanes, and as they bellow along to every lyric, POWERWOLF start to look like a band on the cusp of greatness.
It also becomes clear how many great songs they have in their repertoire. Faster Than The Flame is a wicked opener, Incense And Iron is an early highlight, and Dancing With The Dead is a turbocharged, Gothic-tinged mini-epic. Each chorus seems to eclipse the previous one, and there’s even a remarkably moving moment with Where The Wild Wolves Have Gone. On the surface, it’s melodramatic nonsense about dead werewolves, but it’s strangely poignant too. They do a remarkable job of wringing genuine emotion from an otherwise ridiculous idea and it’s proof that POWERWOLF have an extra depth that sometimes gets overlooked.
They’ve also mastered the art of making mid-sized venues feel like arenas. Jets of flame erupt from the stage, Falk Maria Schlegel runs about like a corpse-painted Flava Flav, and hooded monks prowl the stage with lit torches. It’s an absolute spectacle and as Atilla Dorn leads his devotees into a booming Army Of The Night, POWERWOLF momentarily seem like the best band in the world.
They cement their triumph with explosive renditions of Sanctified With Dynamite and We Drink Your Blood, before Werewolves Of Armenia brings the night to a close. Subtlety didn’t get a look-in but it’s been a glorious celebration of heavy metal. It remains to be seen if POWERWOLF will continue their upward trajectory or if they’ve reached a glass ceiling, but in a nutshell, that ruled. London is power metal country now.
Rating: 9/10
Check out our photo gallery of the night’s action in London from Karolina Janikunaite here:
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