The Rockharz festival had a very wide palette of metal t dish out from, clearly evident as we went from Faroese Viking metal (Týr) to Hungarian groove metal, very reminiscent of Soulfly, at the hands of Ektomorf. I have for some reason always thought this band was German, don’t know why, but now I got corrected.

“I wanna feel your anger!”
- Zoltan ‘Zoli’ Farkas (vocals/guitar)

I have actually heard some of Ektomorf’s music before, but must admit that I have never really delved deeper into what they do, for no special reason really. Now then, the perfect time to check them out had arrived, and I was looking forward to what I guessed would be 45 minutes of crushing heaviness and energy...
Around me was a pretty large crowd, but at the same time it wasn’t nearly as packed as it had been to many of the earlier shows I had been to. Maybe this was because the band’s music was heavily borderlining the dreaded metalcore genre, which must be shunned at all cost by true metalheads, or maybe it was just because they were a little bit too far away from the festivals main focus-group (whatever that was)... No matter what, the fans that had shown up were not about to disappoint the band and let them think that the Rockharz audience was a boring one.
In a very short time after the beginning of the show, one of the wildest moshpits of the festival was created, and at the request of frontman Farkas everyone present was soon wildly jumping and shouting along to the music.

The band, although not really bringing anything new to the table, knew exactly what they were doing, and were clearly packing a lot of energy as well.
Farkas had found a very good balance between playing music and addressing the audience. As he spoke in English I could finally understand what was said; many of the bands at this festival were German, and therefore spoke German as well which I don’t really get... Admittedly, Farkas may not have had something very insightful to say, but what he said worked under the circumstances, and he managed to get almost everyone singing/screaming along to I Know Them, and he also had time for a dedication which went out to his good friend Danko Jones in the form of the song The One. Jones also lends his vocals to this song on album.
In general, a lot of the songs of the set came from Ektomorf’s latest album Redemption, but as it was all new to me this didn’t make much of a difference. Sadly though, even with all the energy in the world, I just didn’t find this quite as catchy as I had hoped, and I even ended up going away to sit in the back for the end of the show. Ektomorf were pretty much everything I had thought they would be (except the German part of course), but it just wasn’t enough to hit home this day...

Setlist (incomplete):

Show Your Fist
I’m In Hate
I Know Them
Sea Of My Misery
Fuck You All
God Will Cut You Down
Outcast
The One