WOA Metal Battle: Herning & Aalborg

author PP date 12/04/12

In connection with the Wacken Open Air: Metal Battle contest we've sent out a short email questionnaire to the bands attending. We were a little late on the first weekend, so all of these were answered after the Aalborg and Herning shows. But most importantly, it gives you a sneak peak into how three different bands prepared for the qualification stop last week: Electric Hellride (winners), Spit Rusty, and Dreadlord.

Electric Hellride

RF.net: Thanks for doing this interview. Please introduce yourself to the readers!
Casper: We’re a four piece band from Copenhagen called Electric Hellride and we deliver groovy and direct metal with elements of thrash, death, sludge and traditional heavy metal.

RF.net: What is the main reason you are participating in Wacken Open Air: Metal Battle? To gain more exposure? For the Wacken slot? To see how you measure up against your fellow peers?
Casper: We also participated last year and it was great fun. The main reason we applied to be a contestant was because of the cool venues in the Battle. Some of the places would normally be quite difficult for an upcoming band to land a gig on so this is a cool opportunity. To play Wacken would be cool but it’s a tough competition to get there so for now we just focus on having some great gigs here in the Danish version of the Battle.

RF.net: How have you prepared for the qualification show?
Casper: Compared to our participation last year we have had more live shows close to the qualification show and we feel we’re doing our best on stage at the moment. Besides from that we haven’t done much other than putting together a cool show lasting exactly the 25 minutes we were given.

RF.net: What are your expectations of the qualification show?
Casper: Actually we have already played our qualification show in Aalborg. We’re happy to say that we will play the Metal Battle-finale in Copenhagen. Before the show in Aalborg we did feel that we had a fair chance to go on in the competition but we were absolutely not certain that we could actually do it. We had a great night with a lot of positive feedback – both at Studenterhuset but also at the afterparty at Rockcaféen.

RF.net: How do you see your chances of winning the qualification?
Casper: There are still so many great bands to play in the rest of the qualification rounds. It’s all very open. We believe we can do it if we play our best and are able to get the crowd to headbang and party with us. We won’t be disappointed if we don’t win. We’re not blind to great metal and we’re sure that the band winning will be a great band deserving the spot.

RF.net: What do you think about your competition (the other bands)?
Casper: The show in Aalborg the 4th of April was very diverse. Viking/folk metal from Vanir and a lot of party and dancing – as always. Brutal death metal from Rotting Hope. Quite oldschool in style and that’s a compliment. The band didn’t seem that experienced on a stage yet, though. Spit Rusty was great rock n’ metal with a talented vocalist who had a voice you wouldn’t expect for the genre. Process was some tight shit! Great musicians and some death/thrash with a lot of groove, technical parts and also quite melodic. It was all so different which made it hard to guess which band the jury would settle on.

RF.net: What do you have to do to impress the crowd and the jury to win the qualification?
Casper: The members of the jury are also metal fans just like we expect the crowd to be. So it’s not like you have to impress the jury on one hand and the crowd on the other. We have to do a show with a lot of action and well played metal. Most importantly we need to do our very best to get the crowd to take an active part in the show.


Dreadlord

RF.net: Thanks for doing this interview. Please introduce yourself to the readers!
DR: Hey fellow metal heads, we are Dreadlord, a brutal death metal band from Copenhagen and where formed in 2008. We are inspired by bands such as Origin, Dying Fetus, cannibal Corpse, Suffocation, Nile and so on. Our name Dreadlord comes from an early idée in my (Anders) band in 2005 “the lords of dreadfulness” witch was changed the same year to “Dreadlord” and existed until 2007, so with a new line up in 2008 we decided to keep the name but change the music from old school death metal into the more brutal style we play today.

RF.net: What is the main reason you are participating in Wacken Open Air: Metal Battle? To gain more exposure? For the Wacken slot? To see how you measure up against your fellow peers?
DR: Our main reason is the exposure, We believe the most important thing for a band is to gain fans. But of course we would love to play at Wacken open air.

RF.net: How have you prepared for the qualification show?
DR: We have prepared as usual, for us its just another gig, the competition part is just a new factor, but we don’t see the competition part as something you can prepare for.

RF.net: What are your expectations of the qualification show?
DR: Well our expectations were to meet up with other cool bands and we did so. For the competition we expected to win if the judges were into brutal death metal and they weren’t, so that’s how it went.

RF.net: What do you think about your competition (the other bands)?
DR: We did a good show and had a lot of good response from the crowd and that’s what we can take with us from a good night at Fermaten. Cheers, Anders “DREADLORD”


Spit Rusty

RF.net: Thanks for doing this interview. Please introduce yourself to the readers!
Martin: Spit Rusty is a new Danish act. The band plays unbridled contemporary hard rock – without compromises. Inspired by classic rock, grunge and heavy metal Spit Rusty has in short time been able to generate an eclectic and pretty original formula.

RF.net: What is the main reason you are participating in Wacken Open Air: Metal Battle? To gain more exposure? For the Wacken slot? To see how you measure up against your fellow peers?
It’s quite simple really: we love playing shows! Some friends recommended WOA to us – so we signed up!

RF.net: How have you prepared for the qualification show?
We are a hard rock band, so we have chosen some of our not so mellow songs for this particular show. Some in the audience will probably still think we are too soft for a metal competition, oh well.

RF.net: What are your expectations of the qualification show?
We will do our best to bring loads of energy and a wild performance and unleash it all on stage. We expect nothing – but we hope people will like it.

RF.net: How do you see your chances of winning the qualification?
We really don’t think much about the competition aspect; we just hope the audience will enjoy our performance. In reality our chances are probably quite slim, because many wont regard our music as being true metal (which is in fact correct).

RF.net: What do you think about your competition (the other bands)?
We don’t know any of the other bands, but we look forward to their shows!

RF.net: What do you have to do to impress the crowd and the jury to win the qualification?
No idea. We just do our best and keep our fingers crossed.

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