My newcomer highlight of the festival was right in the beginning: ELVELLON. The band is great! I’m still overwhelmed. They got an EP out called “Spellbound” with five songs on it and I guess, they played them all in their 20 minute set. The artwork is kind of romantic but the music is symphonic metal. Vocalist Nele Messerschmidt has a really nice voice! A little lower than the usual opera singers and I think she was a bit nervous on stage – who wouldn’t be? The set was a mixture of epic sounds, a ballad and a fast song and the band showed itself at it’s best. ELVELLON’s performance was good so far but I think I spent most of the time admiring Nele’s beautiful long hair. Keep that band in mind! They already won the newcomer contest of the festival – that’s why they played there – and I am pretty sure if they keep it going, they’ll become a rising star in female fronted heavy metal.

I thought about watching SPIELBANN, but for me, the band is too much into medieval music… So up next for me was THE OTHER, a horrorpunk band from Germany. Their stage clothes and make-up were pretty cool – they dressed up like ghouls or zombies or whatever and they sound like a mixture of 50s, punk and gothic. It was a nice party to warm up a bit – as if this was necessary with nearly 30 degrees Celsius! THE OTHER have a lot of fast songs like ‘My girl’, ‘Back to the cemetary’ and ‘Beware of ghouls’, but also mid-tempo ballads like ‘Puppet on a string’ – a bit melancholic. I have to check their new album “Fear Itself”.

Fashion and the old man.

As I already mentioned in my pre-report, M’Era Luna is also about lifestyle and fashion and so we visited a fashionshow and went on a big shopping tour. Check out my fashion report about that stuff!

I watched some songs of DEATHSTARS but it was too early and I stood too far away from them. Headliner and next highlight of the day was ROB ZOMBIE then. He played a cool gig and seemed to me he was having a lot of fun! I loved his cover versions of ‘Blitzkrieg Bob’ and ‘School’s out’! He also performed some songs of his former band WHITE ZOMBIE and – of course – his own party hits. I enjoyed his gig a lot! First time for me seeing him live. But a 75 minute set is not enough for this party. I wanted to dance more!

After ROB ZOMBIE, there was another band from Germany playing called ASP. I think, all of their lyrics are in German and they are pretty dark so there was not that much party anymore, but people enjoyed it. And – best of it – I was able to see SPIELBANN, at least the singers. They entered the stage to perform ‘Werben’ with ASP. Also a cool thing on a festival: ASP presented a new song called ‘Astoria’. But coolest songs were ‘Ich bin ein wahrer Satan’ and ‘Ich will brennen’ – the band’s party songs. To calm people down, they closed their set with an acoustic song.

Sunday

Sunday started with EBM sounds and the day was even hotter than the day before. TYSKE LUDDER was a good one to wake up and get the festival feeling on a Sunday. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get close enough to the stage to admire the cuties from DOPE STAR INC., but the boys did a good job and played a lot of songs from their new album “Terapunk”. Their glam punk attitute is pretty nice!

I fell in love with TYING TIFFANY! The girl is so beautiful and rocks like hell! She was jumping across the stage all the time and it was obvious that the loves what she does. Many people tried to get to Hangar Stage to watch her performance but there was not enough space for all of them, so some watched it from outside – there was a big screen outside (Hangar is an indoor stage). Also nice: JOACHIM WITT. He was famous for a song called ‘Der goldene Reiter’ from times of Neue Deutsche Welle (like Nena) but now he playes really dark pop music.

Best party was at NACHTMAHR gig. The Austrians killed it with beats, beats and beats and forced people to dance like there was no tomorrow. Check out ‘BoomBoomBoom’ and ‘Tanzdiktator’ and you know what I mean. They had girls in uniform on stage (also have a song title ‘Mädchen in Uniform’) and a screen behind them, so the show was pretty good! Oh, and let me talk about the stage itself for a minute! M’ERA LUNA created a pretty steam punk like stage decoration in combination with a light show (remember, we are indoors) and that was really, really beautiful! NACHTMAHR talked a lot to their fans and wanted them to give more and more until the big final with ‘I hate Berlin’. Everyone inside of Hangar was sweaty in the end – including me!

The reason why we are here.

After dinner, there was only one band left… NIGHTWISH entered the stage with ‘Shudder before the beautiful’. The show was great! Floor Jansen was so good and I think she had a lot of fun. They had a lot of pyro stuff on stage and there were so many people in front of the stage! NIGHTWISH played a lot of songs from their recent album “Endless forms most beautiful”: as I said the opener, ‘Weak fantasy’, ‘My walden’, ‘Elan’ and ‘Yours is an empty hope’.

Marco Hietala, who normally sings background vocals, doesn’t have much to sing anymore because Floor can do it all. Most talented singer on the planet I think and best choice for NIGHTWISH. I saw a lot of concerts and they’ve never been so good. It seems like they really enjoy to be on stage together and that has never been the case with Tarja and Anette Olzon wasn’t the ideal singer either.

For us old fans, it was great to see NIGHTWISH perform ‘She is my sin’ and later – yes, they really played it! – ‘Stargazers’. How long ago is it that they had that one on their setlist? I was happy! Also ‘Amaranth’, ‘Storytime’ and ‘I want my tears back’ from Olzon era sound great when Floor sings them. NIGHTWISH seemed to close their gig at M’Era Luna with their 10 minute song ‘Ghost love score’ in which they used a lot of fog and Floor enacted herself on stage like a top model. Great! As a bonus, they played ‘Last ride of the day’. Wow! That was a great concert. I can’t wait to catch NIGHTWISH on the road when they go on tour again in fall. Good for every other band: There was none to perform after NIGHTWISH… That would have been suicide.

So M’Era Luna 2015 ended with the best band they could have booked for this year’s edition and everybody went home happily. Also read my fashion check!