”Hello Metalcamp, are you ready for some metal?!”
- Rowan ‘Roodbaert’ Middelwijk (bass)

Due to the positive history we have with this band, we were willing to give Heidevolk another open-minded chance even though their most recent show (which we had seen) at Metalfest had been a complete disaster.
They were the first band out on the last day, well for us anyway, it was their given task to wake us up after the hard Amon Amarth and beer filled night from the evening before, a daunting task to say the least!
Still, when the band entered the stage and began playing Nehalennia, it was with all the energy that had lacked the last time around, and things were looking good so far.
Heidevolk only had 30 short minutes to grab us, and to help them they had the smallest crowd I had seen thus far at this years’ Metalcamp, so we can easily say that the band had its work cut out for it. Thankfully, it would seem they were once again up for the task...
In the short time they had, Heidevolk managed to squeeze in six songs, and still had the time to chitchat with us in the empty spaces in between and introduce some of the songs, although since I’m no master at South Guelderish I can’t always say what their song-titles mean.

Heidevolk, or more precisely Joris Boghtdrincker and Mark ‘Splintervuyscht’ Bockting didn’t nail the vocal harmonies very well this day, but apart from that both music and sound-mix was working in the bands favour, and even though the two vocalists didn’t hit it on a purely technical standpoint, their performance weighed up for the auditory shortcomings. It was especially entertaining to watch Boghtdrincker as he spent a lot of time doing very masculine power poses, but for all the testosterone flying off the stage, he couldn’t help but wear a big grin at the same time as the connection with the audience became more and more apparent.
Within the two final songs of the set, Boghtdrincker and Bockting finally began to get their harmonies in order, and as the sound now finally matched the rest of the performance, Heidevolk really began to shine – up till this point it had “only” been great fun, but now we were getting epic!

Yes, the crowd was far from packed, but on the other hand the people who had shown up were the exactly right ones for the show. Already early on there was a loud chanting along to the deep chants of the band, and the feeling was manly enough to grow a long and thick beard on even the most innocent teenage girl! If this strikes you as a gay sauna-club or something, you’re barking up the completely wrong tree, heck, I would even say you were in the wrong forest! This was just good old male bonding with beer and drunken sing-along’s, male bonding which was open for anyone no matter what sex you were born in, as long as you had a drinking horn by your side and your fist in the air!
Even though there was no real split, the band still wanted to try out what their fans were made of (and with), and thus held a girls against boys screaming competition after Saksenland. The song itself had made us good and warm, and without revealing a winner I will stick to saying that both sides performed admirably.
Drinking and shouting wasn’t enough for all present however, there were those of us who felt a need to get more physical, and so it wasn’t long before a long line of dancers had formed which moved in and out of the rest of the crowd like a large snake, growing ever longer as it went along. People were simply loving this, and I can understand why. This was a complete 180˚ turn-around from Heidevolk’s last gig!

The only thing missing to make this a full ten pointer was the Normaal cover Vulgaris Magistralis, the ultimate test of masculinity, and I can only say that this is how you fucking open a festival!

Setlist:

Nehalennia
Ostara
Saksenland
De Toekomst Lonkt
Als De Dood Weer Naar Ons Lacht
Krijgsvolk