High Voltage – Victoria Park, London, 23-24 July 2011
When asked if he could see anything as he peered into Tutankhamen’s tomb for the first time, archaeologist Howard Carter simply replied, “yes, wonderful things.” Such was High Voltage 2011 – a feast of treasures with simply too much for a mere mortal to take in.
That said, I kind of backed the wrong horse from the start. Of the two openers on Saturday I opted to watch MICHAEL MONROE on the Main Stage. Although the one-time Hanoi Rocks glamster is pretty much the perfect festival party-starter after three songs I got the feeling that I’d heard all there was to hear, and as the set had barely started there was time to wander over to the Prog Stage where Finland’s VON HERTZEN BROTHERS were much more interesting, if a tad more prog rock than prog metal for me; that said, their eclectic mixture of styles easily won over an ever-growing crowd. ATTICA RAGE lived up to their name and kicked things off on the Metal Hammer Stage, although after ten or so minutes it was back to the Main Stage for SKIN, who seem as confused as their fans as to whether they are a going concern or not. Nice tight performance, despite vocalist Nev MacDonald hitting himself in the mouth with his mike and bleeding profusely towards the end of their thirty minutes. But, unbelievably, no ‘Unbelievable’! In fact, their set was a bit ploddy, to be honest. Britain’s RAVENS CREED set top work thrashing away on the Metal Hammer Stage, and one of the day’s personal highlights was listening to them in a portaloo near the stage – an awesome, true metal experience if ever there was one. In contrast, RIVAL SONS were laidback, bluesy
and derivative, delivering a bland slop of Zeppelin with almost no character or passion. The first real disappointment of the day, the Long Beach quartet really need to go back and work on their stagecraft if they want to make any serious headway. QUEENSRYCHE followed the LA youngsters onto the Main Stage with a competent and polished set, although they could be writing new albums until Armageddon and still when the Four Horsemen turned up they’d only want to hear songs off the first four albums. By this time, incidentally, the shortcomings in sound on the Main Stage were very apparent, turning ‘Damaged’ into an unrecognisable dirge and rendering ‘I Don’t Believe In Love’ and follower ‘NM156’ almost inaudible. Someone wake up the soundman! The personal highlight of the day was back on the Prog Stage where 
ANATHEMA turned in a performance of sheer virtuosity and sublime brilliance. “Challenging, innovative and majestic” was how my colleague described their show, and I’m not going to argue with that. Having wowed the crowd with the likes of ‘Thin Air’ and ‘Closer’ they asked for five more minutes to complete their set, but the stage manager, he say no… Straight back to the main stage for the pantomime tribute act that is THIN LIZZY these days. The second biggest cheer of their set was when the soundman finally got the PA working midway through ‘The Cowboy Song’, by which time they had been on stage for quite some time. The biggest cheers came with every invocation of Phil Lynott’s name, naturally, and there appeared to be a belief from Scott Gorham, Brian
Downey, Darren Wharton, Ricky Warwick, Marco Mendoza and Richard Fortus that the great man was gazing down with benevolence from his cloud in Heaven; on the other hand, he might just be shouting ‘you’d have thought the lazy feckers would have written their own songs by now!’ Thin Lizzy are slick, predictable, and dull. And you have to wonder if Mike Monroe had actually heard ‘Don’t Believe A Word’ before as he crucified the sax solo. SLASH’s solo album is a work of outstanding ability and one which transfers beautifully to the stage, especially with the voice of Myles Kennedy fronting all the songs but one (‘Doctor Alibi’ being sung by bassist Todd Kerns). So why did ol’ Saul Hudson have to dig up four Guns N’ Roses songs (‘Nightrain’, ‘Rocket Queen’, ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ and ‘Paradise City’) when he could have dipped into either of his old Snakepit albums for some back catalogue material? Everyone else loved them, but it all seemed a bit pointless to me: either drop the cheap crowd pleasers and highlight your own strengths, or beg Axl Rose to reform GNR as a real band once more. The timings allowed a quick peek at the last few minutes of Sweden’s glorious GRAND MAGUS, and damned good they were too. With Metal Hammer Stage headliners Electric Wizard stuck in Norway because of chaos following the atrocities there the Swedes should have been given a longer slot; instead, 
Rival Sons played a full headline set to close the stage, meaning that most people focussed their attention on JUDAS PRIEST’s last ever UK festival appearance. Allegedly. Never a band known for variation, the set was the same as they’d played every other night on the UK tour, opening with the ‘British Steel’ coupling of ‘Rapid Fire’ and ‘Metal Gods’ and wrapping things up with ‘Living After Midnight.’ New guitarist Richie Faulkner is a mini KK Downing anyway and fits in beautifully (especially as it was not him but Glenn Tipton who was out of tune at the beginning of ‘Victim Of Changes’), and with the same well-worn raps from Rob Halford (“Saturday night and the Priest is back” etc etc) you know you’re in the company of old friends. Good to hear ‘Never Satisfied’ played live though, even if the crowd only version of ‘Breaking The Law’ was rubbish.…
Sunday: another day, another 1:30pm – to the Prog Stage for PALLAS, or the Metal Hammer Stage for FURYON? The latter get the nod and serve up a functional blend of traditional metal with a twenty-first century twist. HEAVEN’S BASEMENT open the main stage and show why grunge pulling the toilet chain in the early Nineties had been such a good idea as they wheel out Eighties cliché after Eighties cliché. Back on the Metal Hammer Stage THE TREATMENT announce that they’re up for the Best New Band in Classic Rock, which means another take on rehashing Seventies classics. Nice if you like that sort of thing. SAINT JUDE, like Rival Sons the day before, are very competent but don’t seem to have the faintest idea how to work a crowd; thank heavens then for GENTLEMANS PISTOLS on the Metal Hammer Stage, whose inspired
material and honest-to-goodness delivery proved that metal could be in safe hands for years to come. MICHAEL SCHENKER hit the main stage with the evergreen instrumental ‘Into The Arena’ and followed it with the likes of ‘Another Piece Of Meat’, Rock You Like A Hurricane’ and ‘Rock Bottom’ as well as showcasing two new songs in ‘Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead’ (sung by Doogie White, with his own name on his t-shirt, just in case you didn’t know who he was) and ‘Hanging On’. Guests came and went and the massed ranks for the final song ‘Doctor Doctor’ saw the five-piece band (with Michael Voss 
on vocals and Herman Rarebell on drums) joined by Pete Way, Rudy Schenker, Doogie White and Jeff Scott Soto. Phenomenal: life doesn’t get much better than that. THUNDER, on the other hand, were, well, Thunder; they recorded a good album once and have never matched it so still base the bulk of their set on it. Five of the afternoon’s eight songs came from ‘Backstreet Symphony’ (opening with the title track itself and picking up ‘Higher Ground’, ‘Gimme Some Lovin’’, ‘Love Walked In’ and ‘Dirty Love’ along the way) with just the exquisite ‘River Of Pain’ and the less interesting ‘The Devil Made Me Do It’ and ‘I Love You More Than Rock ‘n’ Roll’ making up the time. The age-old complaints still ring true though: too many singalongs, too much messing about, too many elongated intros or endings… ‘Dirty Love’ is a great song, but the fact that it marks the end of the set makes it even more welcome to the ear. Half-an-hour later BLACK COUNTRY COMMUNION wipe the floor with everything
the day has offered so far. Tight, inventive and exciting (even if Joe Bonamassa does wear beige, and in his baseball cap looks like a school caretaker), BCC have the crowd eating out of the palms of their hands, and when Bonamssa straps on a ‘V’ and they scorch through ‘BURN’ as their final number the whole park 
erupts. In their hour they manage to showcase both albums and each member of the band, and of everyone on stage Jason Bonham’s performance was the star turn. Magnificent. Just time to catch the end of NEUROSIS’s doom-laden dirge-filled monsterfest before DREAM THEATER rounded things off. Not sure about giving newbie Mike Mangini a drum solo thirty minutes in – that was a tad cruel – but ‘Peruvian Skies’ is a personal fave so I’ll forgive them anything. Never a band to put a foot wrong, Dream Theater pull out all the stops on a set of sprawling epics and exciting masterpieces like ‘Forsaken’, opener ‘Under A Glass Moon’ and ‘Count Of Tuscany’, as well as the ever-welcome ‘Ytse Jam’. It’ll be interesting to see how the new album ‘A Dramatic Turn Of Events’ fares come September…
© John Tucker July 2011 - all photos by Keith Shapland