Heilung live in Sydney – review and photos
Heilung are more than just a band, they are a sonic and visceral extension of life itself. It’s music as Amplified history, the stories, rock carvings, songs, dress, and mythology are similar all over the world in our ancient history.
Heilung brings all of that together in a single mind-blowing performance. With members from Denmark, Norway, and Germany, Heilung’s folk-based music is rooted in texts and runic inscriptions from Germanic peoples of the Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Viking Age. 13 performers, a support crew of ten, 30 instruments, bronze age weapons, and human bones and animal skins. The human bones and animal
skins, more fitting to travel by Viking ship, rather than the challenges of air travel.
I’m sure any band would be nervous to take these pieces through customs, especially with the strict biosecurity of Australian airports. A huge production, given the stage decoration and the giant drums and deer horns and branches that decorated the stage of the Big Top.
After releasing their debut album ‘Ofnir’ in 2015, the trio’s success was birthed at Castlefest in 2017 for the now legendary debut of their live ritual that was captured on video (and watched almost 8 million times since).
The tour has been called The First Heilung Ritual Down Under, and their debut in Sydney Luna Park Big Top has certainly set the scene for the remainder of the tour.
The performance started with green and yellow lights covering the stage matched with billowing smoke, dry ice and the smell of an ancient concoction of incense. The lights illuminated stage filled with giant drums on frames, branches and skins, huge music stations with handmade instruments and bells that were unrecognizable to the modern eye. Drowning sound effects welcome 12 figures emerging from the
smoke and forming a circle facing one another and holding hands. Viking-looking men and bare breasted women with black tribal paint stood for what felt like 10 minutes before commencing of the smoke ceremony and a ritual comprising of a prayer.
The performance then went to their stations and the first song ‘In Maidjan’ started. The song felt more like a war than a musical, performance. Several songs in ‘Krigsgaldr’ mesmerising, melodic vocals from the two male and one female vocalist, all in many different languages. Others were more like war dances and cries and rituals with men holding shields and spears rushing toward the front of the stage to terrify the onlooking audience. The most memorable was synonymous with a sacrifice performance with a woman rope tied to a giant metal spear.
The atmosphere was intense and powerful, the entire audience seemed transported back in time to be part of the battle. The drums and instruments shook the room like thunder and you felt every beat of the tribe rhythmic vibrations in your chest.
The almost two hour performance culminated in a final closing ritual with the audience leaving exhausted, inspired and healed.
Words by Benjamin Pirrie. Photos by Adam Davis-Powell.
