September 7th – 9th, 2023
Balver Höhle, Germany
Photos By: Elisabeth Otto
Words By: Dennis van ‘t Hoofd
METAL IN A CAVE… LITERALLY!
Have you ever been to a metal festival in a cave? The answer to that question for most metalheads probably is no, unless you have visited Prophecy Fest in the German town of Balve, at the north end of the Sauerland, near Dortmund. From Thursday September 7 until Saturday September 9 the Prophecy Fest took place in the Balver cave for the fifth time since its’ first edition in 2015.
The Balver Cave is a naturally formed cave that has been in use by humans since the early stone age. The small scale underground Prophecy Productions label festival with approximately 1.400 visitors from over 40 countries had been sold out for months and fans were anticipating the return of Portland, Oregon post-black metallers Agalloch, who would close the festival with their very first reunion show after eight years of silence.
It proved to be a hot weekend, not only because of the searing sun, but foremost because of the heavy dose of black, doom and folk metal and gothic rock that was presented during these three days. Inside the cave the temperature was pleasant, yet once in a while you would get a drop of moisture from the cave ceiling on your head or worse, in your beer.
Prophecy Fest is organized by Martin Koller, owner of Prophecy Productions, and intended to be a family meeting with some dear friends. The bands programmed on the festival are mostly from the Prophecy Productions roster with the addition of some other bands not on their roster, like My Dying Bride, Amenra, Darkspace or the aforementioned Agalloch. Furthermore the festival does not have real headliners, all bands are equally important, including the new and upcoming bands on the second stage.
The second stage, by the way, was introduced for the first time this year and bands that played the second stage played two short sets between the breaks on the main stage. A concept that does not work in favor of the second stage bands in my opinion; they were degraded to a sort of breaktime-clowns. Just when the band warms up, they have to stop playing again. Also, the small corner in the cave in which the stage was placed wasn’t optimal for the sound and not suitable for a large crowd. Unfortunately, English 81-year old shock rocker Arthur Brown had to pull out of the festival on short notice since so unfortunately no God of Hellfire who brought us fire this weekend, but longer sets for the remaining bands since no replacement was booked.
DAY 1
The festival opened on Thursday with a welcome drink and barbecue on the nearby field, with acoustic performances from US post metallers Illudium, Dutch dark folk act Thurnin, New England occult rockers 1476 and German neofolk artist Vrîmuot. Due to work obligations we could not be there on Thursday unfortunately, but we made sure to be there in time on Friday.
DAY 2
YEAR OF THE COBRA
For Year Of The Cobra the honor to kick off the first day on the second stage in the cave. Mr and Mrs Barrysmith from Seattle deliver stoner doom with only drums, bass and contrasting clean singing on top of that. Very effective and very heavy. The bass sound is so heavy that the cave shook on its’ ground and I was looking for rocks falling down from the ceiling, but fortunately only moisture came down.
LASTER
The first band to hit the mainstage is Laster, a three-piece from The Netherlands, obscurely masked men dressed in black playing avantgarde post black metal. Or ‘Obscure Dance Music’ as they call it themselves. Their ingenious shoegaze influenced black metal is full of dreamy melodies, weird tempo changes and counter rhythms and topped off with clean vocals with harsh black metal screams. Even though their new album ‘Andermans Mijne’ isn’t out yet, Laster present three songs of their new record today.
DISILLUSION
Disillusion from Leipzig, Germany are pulling everything out of the closet to bring a big show today. With the addition of a trumpeter and a cellist they play songs from their latest album Ayam amongst others and their music ranges from melodic death metal to progressive metal, at times Disillusion sounds pretty mellow too. The audience really seems to like what they are doing judging by the reactions.
While the first bands are playing, a huge line starts to form in front of the huge merchandise stand organized and run by Prophecy Productions themselves. It is like a label store where you can buy all the labels’ releases, records, CDs, tapes, shirts and memorabilia. The line is enormous and seems to move at a meter per half hour. A lot of people enter the queue and wait patiently, it seems like they all want to buy merch at the same time.
1476
After playing their acoustic set one day earlier on the opening day, 1476 from Salem, Massachusetts play a full rock set a day later on the second stage. The four-piece around frontman Robb Kavjian offer a high energy rock show tonight that lights a spark in the audience. Between all the metal bands that are playing today, 1476 works refreshing somehow.
THE VISION BLEAK
German horror metallers The Vision Bleak are playing their 2004 debut album The Deathship Has a New Captain in its entirety. I am watching the band from a distance and singer Konstanz looks like Me And That Man’s Nergal with his western hat. With their gothic infused metal they know how to entertain the crowd.
DARKSPACE
With the next band, the atmosphere turns completely dark. Darkspace from Switzerland take over the stage with their dark industrial space black metal. A heavy wall of sound propelled by fast drum computer patterns rolls over the audience and leaves the audience grasp for air. The corpse-painted musicians guide the audience through dark space with their spacey riffs.
CRONE
Crone is the last band to play on the second stage today. With former Secrets Of The Moon singer Phil Jonas and former Embedded drummer Markus Renzenbrink and bassist Daniel Meier in their ranks the band consists of well-seasoned musicians. Their second album Gotta Light? was released almost exactly a year ago and tonight the dark rockers from Osnabrück treat the Prophecy Fest audience with a loud and energetic show. Or actually two, because Crone play two sets between the main stage bands as well.
MY DYING BRIDE
Even though the organization claim to have no headlining act, to me My Dying Bride feel like the headlining band of the day. Back in the early nineties they were one of the forerunners of the doom metal genre and albums like As The Flower Withers and Turn Loose The Swans are genre defining albums to this day. The West Yorkshire men (and woman) around founding members Aron Stainthorpe and guitarist Andrew Craighan luckily stay true to their roots and play songs from their early albums to this day.
Tonight they play eight tracks from seven different albums, whereby most tracks are more than twenty years old. Only ‘Your Broken Shore’ from their current album The Ghost of Orion was played. With ‘Your River’, ‘Like Gods of the Sun’, ‘The Cry of Mankind’ and ‘Turn Loose The Swans’ My Dying Bride play a great old school set that sure leaves no fan unsatisfied.
The band plays a rather static show with the occasional headbanging, but there is enough headbanging in the audience to compensate for that. Stainthorpe’s distinct vocals grab you by the throat and make you take part in his sorrow. My Dying Bride sounds massive in the Balver cave and set the bar high for the closing band of the night.
AMENRA
Around half past twelve Amenra take on the mainstage to bring us more sorrow and life’s pain with their heavy and suffocating doomy post-metal. Singer Colin Van Eeckhout kneels on the stage with his back to the audience and the band begin to play their cataclysmic rollercoaster of pounding repetitive rhythms and heavy crushing riffs. Van Eeckhout screams and spits out his despairing words in English, French and Flemish sharing his misery with the audience. Every now and then the bands slows down and the eerie silence of a band sucking all the energy from the crowd can be noticed.
The five Belgians from Kortrijk grasp full attention of the audience. Apparently you don’t need a frontman who looks you in the eyes, Van Eeckhout only rarely turns around when he is singing clean vocal parts but clearly gets away with it. In this day and age when you can perform a show with a hood on, you can just as well turn your back to the audience, right? The band will have their reasons for this I guess. Apart from this sidenote, Amenra put on a convincing show living up to their position on the billing.
E-L-R
Is it coincidence or not? Swiss atmospheric post-metal trio E-L-R toured with Amenra a few years ago and now they are playing the same stage that their Belgian friends played the night before. E-L-R released their second album Vexier about a year ago and today they are playing it almost in full with the addition of ‘The Wild Shore’ from their debut album Maenad. Just like Amenra, E-L-D sound incredibly heavy, yet E-L-D add some atmospheric doom metal and groove elements to the sauce, making their music quite easy to get into when you’re not familiar with them.
GOSPELHEIM
Don’t let Gospelheim fool you with their German sounding band name and black metal logo, they are from Manchester, England and play gothic rock/metal instead and have their debut album Ritual & Repetition out since last year October. Today they are playing two short sets on the second stage playing most of the songs of their debut album in front of an energetic crowd in the back of the Balver cave with their new guitarist Chris Taylor from Cairns. The place is packed and Gospelheim seem to have a lot of fans already.
DAY 3
SLAGMAUR
And the award for the best costumes on this festival go to Prophecy Productions’ new signing Slagmaur from Norway! Especially the drummer who plays with a Baphomet mask that looks really cool. But costumes only don’t make a great show. The band is quite static on stage and the lack of eye contact with the audience due to the masks reduces the interaction between band and crowd. The singer is dressed in a monks’ robe and a raven’s mask is holding up a book acting like a dark wizard and I am sure you don’t want to meet their guitarist General Gribbsphiiser late at night in a dark alley.
Slagmaur’s heavy mid-paced avant-garde black metal is really something special. Definitely not your everyday true Norwegian black metal. Most of the songs Slagmaur play today are from their last album Thill Smitts Terror from 2017, but Slagmaur concludes their impressive set with ‘Wildkatze’ which will be on their forthcoming still unnamed album.
SATURNUS
Denmark’s melodic doomsters Saturnus have been around for thirty years and only three months ago they released their fifth album The Storm Within, after a decade of silence. Today they present us three songs from their new album including ‘Even Tide’ where November Doom’s singer Paul Kuhr is invited to the stage to sing with Saturnus singer Thomas A.G. Jensen backed by keyboardist Mika Filborne. It is probably the bitter sweetest song of the weekend and a highlight to Saturnus’ show.
GRÀB
For Bavarian black metal outfit Gràb Prophecy Fest is their baptism of fire. The band around former Dark Fortress singer Grànt and guitarist Gnast play their very first show ever today. Zeitlang is their debut concept album they released two years ago, and they play it in full this afternoon. Musically Gràb is rooted in mid-nineties melancholic black metal and while the expectations to their show are (maybe too) high, Gràb forget to make a lasting impression.
NOVEMBERS DOOM
Novembers Doom gigs on European soil are pretty rare. Even though the Chicago-based doom metal band has been around since 1989 and has eleven studio albums under their belt, their first and last European tour dates back to 2006 when they toured with Agalloch and Saturnus. We’ve seen singer Paul Kuhr earlier today doing guest vocals with Saturnus, but here he is with his own band Novembers Doom. The five American doomsters are on fire today playing an old school set encompassing a good cross section of their repertoire, with songs from their early albums until more recent work from Nephilim Grove. Novembers Doom are a lot heavier than their friends in Saturnus and I must say I enjoyed their show a lot!
VEMOD
Vemod from Trondheim, Norway are playing for the fourth time on Prophecy Fest. After twenty-three years of existence the three-piece still only have one album out, Venter På Stormene from 2012, but are about to release their follow-up album The Deepening. Their atmospheric repetitive black metal works really well in the cave and it mesmerizes the audience like the captivating northern lights!
DARKHER
The dark, melancholic heavy doom of Northern English composer Jayn Maiven and her solo project Darkher deliver an intriguing performance in anticipation of the Agalloch reunion show. With her long red hair, black dress and her haunting voice she casts a spell over the audience with effective doom laden guitar riffs and pounding drums.
AGALLOCH
The Grande finale of Prophecy Fest 2023 is the exclusive reunion show of the legendary Portland, Oregon based Agalloch in their original line-up. In May 2016 the band split up because of differences within the band but in April of this year they announced their return to the stage and the first show would be at Prophecy Fest. All weekend long fans with Agalloch shirts could be seen walking around, so their popularity in the Prophecy audience in undeniable, and fans have travelled from afar to witness the return of John Haugh (guitars / vocals), Don Anderson (guitars) and Jason Walton (bass) on stage. Accompanied by new drummer Hunter Ginn they played their first show in eight years’ time. The cave was packed with fans impatiently awaiting the return of their heroes. After the curtain dropped and Agalloch opened their set with ‘Limbs’ the audience was treated with a greatest hits setlist that lasted over one and a half hours, covering all of their five studio albums. The festival weekend reached its climax with a delirious show of Agalloch with their fans drifting away on the hypnotic sounds of the band.
CONCLUSION
What better way to conclude a great weekend with great weather, a great location, excellent organization, top notch bands, old and new friends and good food at the food stands? Thank you Prophecy Productions for a great and enjoyable festival! Next year the festival will take place in the first weekend of September and DOOL, In The Woods and Empyrium have already been confirmed.
Check out the festival website here.