Ah, Týr. How long has it been old friend? Too long, too long.
Yes, as you can imagine, Týr was one of the bands which sold the entire Rockharz festival to me. As they sadly don’t frequent Denmark anymore, I guess travelling to the middle of Germany was the move which had to be made on my part to see them again…

Admittedly, 40 minutes of stage-time under a blazing sun might not sound like much after such a journey, but I did not concern myself with that; I was going to see them, and that was all that mattered at this point. So happily I went, and as I arrived some 5 minutes before playing time, I found the band already present and well underway with the soundcheck. So I waited.
And I waited. And waited. Something was clearly not working the way it should up there, and as the minutes were ticking away, we got more and more baked by the early afternoon sun. Soon, the fire department was called in and hosed us down with some icy cold water from their trucks, and it looked like the fireman who did it had as much fun as the people getting wet. After a few minutes where we had had time to cool down he shut the water off, raised his devil horns to the sky and rode off with his big, red truck. And up on the stage, Týr was making a soundcheck.

It would be some twenty minutes or more before the band could finally start, and as they kicked off with the opener of the new album The Lay Of Thrym, the song known as Flames Of The Free, my thought was still; ”All this time, and still no backing vocals?”; admittedly, the rest of the sound was great, the best I had heard so far (and this was the third day of the festival), but you see, the real problem lay not with what the audience heard, but with what the band did not hear. Nothing was working on stage, preventing the band to properly follow each others rhythm, something which is especially important in those new high-speed songs they’ve written. I could tell the band wasn’t happy with the situation either, but it seemed nothing more could be done, and they had to begin playing at some point.

As mentioned, the band couldn’t help but be affected by the situation; Kári Streymoy had to really concentrate on himself and his band-mates, keeping his focus only the stage so that it couldn’t reach out to the crowd, and Heri Joensen and Terji Skibenæs seemed pretty shut off as well, compared to how they usually are. Only Gunnar H. Thomsen delivered a powerhouse of a performance which was quite incredible to behold! This guy can be pretty wild at times, but this was something far above the ordinary, and his presence lifted the show so much you wouldn’t believe it!

Sadly, and here I not only speak for myself, but for the plentitude of people I had seen around the place wearing Týr t-shirts, having Týr patches stitched to their vests, or simply having Týr written all over their faces and bodies (and yes, there were a lot of them!); all of us present at this gig of gigs, had one final nasty surprise in wait…
After having tried our voices tentatively out in the fast Hold The Heathen Hammer High, and warming them up with much more success in By The Sword In My Hand, the concert was over.
Yes, I’m sad to say that after missing 20 minutes at something which was out of their hands, the band couldn’t be allowed one extra second of play-time in the other end, and we were left with only five songs heard. I guess you can imagine how devastated we were. There was also a sincere apology issued from Joensen as he was packing up his gear, and as a small token of appreciation he threw a setlist out to the gathered mass so that we could see all they had planned for us…

Setlist:

Flames Of The Free
Tróndur Í Gøtu
Sinklars Vísa
Hold The Heathen Hammer High
By The Sword In My Hand