Concert review: Saltatio Mortis & Alestorm, RuhrCongress Bochum, 25 November 2023

So this show was a double first timer. One I had been waiting for for several years (roughly since 2007 or 2008) and one that I hadn’t known until now that I needed to see them. Given that I came with a „Let’s see what happens, I have no expectations“-attitude, that concert was a very damn good one.

For this show, we arrived – as we thought – pretty late (it turned out we were still quite early because there once again was poor communication – there were different times given depending on where you looked. At least this time the later time was the right one). We planned to have a chill evening because my company wasn’t in a good shape health-wise, so as soon as we got in we looked for places at the far back of the venue, so we could throw our stuff there, sit down between the sets and just enjoy the show without going too wild.

When I first went to a show at this venue, it was half equipped with seats. It made the venue very wide and not very deep. For Saltatio Mortis and Alestorm there weren’t any seats, which gave the venue more depth (and the wheelchair area was now placed at the back where people hopefully could at least see something), so this time it made a much bigger impression. It still won’t make it to my list of favourite venues and in the future I’ll definitely check in advance if there are seats for the concert or not and only buy tickets if there aren’t any 🤷‍♀️

We mostly bought the tickets because of Alestorm – them together with Saltato Mortis seemed like a nice package. I’d never seen any of those bands live before, which is in hindsight such a waste. And Alestorm had been on my list since around 2007 or 2008, when I once almost went to one of their concerts but the dude I wanted to go there with had to cancel because he didn’t have time. I’ve been listening to Alestorm since their very first album Captain Morgan’s Revenge. I mean … pirate themed metal from Scotland? Why not?

Unfortunately, by now, they are on my „Potentially endangered teenage faves“-list. It wasn’t until this year that I heard about the racist group chat their singer had been part of. And this is definitely a thing that has made me hesitant. I’ve read his apology, I decided to believe it for now, but mostly because this band is somehow so unique that it’s hard for me to let go of them. I guess if I’ll ever hear anything negative about them again, my heart will break into a million little pieces because fuck that, Alestorm slaps.

So … yeah, damn was I looking forward to seeing them live. And I guess I wasn’t disappointed. Especially given the fact that their singer Chris performed with a broken arm, yet they still managed to pull off a great show. Setlist-wise there was a very damn strong beginning with Keelhauled, which is definitely one of my favourite songs. After that, it became a tiny bit weaker in my personal opinion – probably because I haven’t listened all too much to their latest album. But I still got to hear some bangers like their Hangover-cover, We are here to drink your beer, P.A.R.T.Y. and Mexico. And then the best and worst thing at the same time happened: They played my personal absolute favourite song Zombies ate my pirate ship. But they didn’t play it alone. Nope, they got a special guest for that song. That song was a feature with the German musician Patty Gurdy – and why not bring her on stage at a show in Germany?

The thing is: I’d seen Patty before. It wasn’t good. I love hurdy-gurdies, they’re my favourite instrument, but I’m not a fan of Patty’s vocals. And to me personally, her live vocals are rather poor. So I didn’t like her part in the performance at all. 

So actually when Alestorm had finished, I didn’t quite know what to think. I had somehow enjoyed the show, but I have to admit that I had expected a little more. I’d probably still go see them again. And hope that next time Chris doesn’t have his arm in a sling. Or hasn’t engaged in racist, sexist conversations again.

Next up: Saltatio Mortis. I didn’t quite know what to expect, but I hoped they would be good. Actually I believed they would be good, but I was still prepared to be disappointed because I recently had learned the hard way not to arrive with too high expectations.

Thankfully, Saltatio Mortis delivered. I knew surprisingly many songs given the fact that I only started listening to them quite recently and mostly know their newer songs. They included a few covers, like Die Ärzte’s Schrei nach Liebe and, for me personally an absolute delight, Electric Callboy’s Hypa Hypa (my personal favourite of all Hypa Hypa covers). Other songs I remember were, of course, Taugenichts (of course as it was the Taugenichts-tour…), Odin’s Raben, Loki, My Mother Told Me, God of War, Keine Regeln, Pray to the Hunter, Alive Now, Ich werde Wind and several others that I somehow knew but now can’t remember. And I have to say that their performance of God of War was one of the most epic live performances I had seen in 2023. Probably because this song itself is simply epic as fuck.

Also I got to row the boat. It was a short boat, we were only two people because obviously we always end up being surrounded by people who are either not in the condition to row, or simply too boring. Same thing had happened at Amon Amarth in summer. But if I get to row a goddamn viking boat I’ll row my damn viking boat, even if I have to do it entirely on my own! (As long as it matches the song and the vibe I mean. And nothing speaks against rowing during My Mother Told Me.)

I also must say that I absolutely loved it how Alea went on a crowdsurfing journey throughout the hall during one song, followed by their photographer and how he later joined the circle pit towards the end of the show. And until that day I hadn’t even noticed that they actually have two bagpipes. Yeah, sure, why have only one if you can get two. They were super entertaining, the stage layout changed several times throughout the set and got very creative and yeah, all in all it was just a cool performance.

Our „we’ll take it easy“ turned into „party hard“ for me and at the end of their set, which was more than TWO HOURS (!!!!!!!!!) long, I was close to being knocked out. For the last two songs, I just felt a very strong urge to lie down on the ground and just … exist. Because I couldn’t continue anymore. Saltatio Mortis turned out to be an unexpected hardcore workout. Unfortunately, sitting down turned out to be a bad idea because I sat down in a puddle of beer that had been dripping from one of the higher ranks and had, unnoticed by us, drenched my beloved Amon Amarth coat completely. Ew.

So in the end, I got to see two great bands with great performances and my personal consequence was to buy tickets for next year’s MPS in Bückeburg (first date) because there’ll be Subway to Sally, Versengold and Saltatio Mortis and if that isn’t a damn great line up for a medieval market …