Spiritbox’s Wacken debut is a Big Deal. Put aside the festival’s reputation as the world’s biggest heavy metal festival and its built-in audience of some 80,000 dedicated metal fans, Wacken has also shown its capacity to crown hot new talent in recent years, footage of Ukrainian metal heroes Jinjer playing an early morning slot in 2019 to an apparently full field helping cement the sense the band had truly ascended around then-new single Pisces.
Granted, Spiritbox already have a leg-up in that department. The sheer viral success of Holy Roller in 2020 catapulted the band to star status almost overnight, and they’ve spent the subsequent four years cementing themselves as the bright new hope for metal’s next gen with their sublime debut album Eternal Blue. Needless to say, their Wacken debut is long overdue.
But as the saying goes, good things take time and if there was a sense of nervousness to the band’s debut performances in the UK, such jitters have long since been left in the dirt by now. “We’re Spiritbox and we’re here to wreck your fucking day,” declares an imperious Courtney LaPlante, commanding the crowd to go harder.
Opening on Cellar Door, the band go hell for leather in a hail of blastbeats and howls. But where previously their more melodic elements have felt lesser compared to the sheer bluster and titanic force of their riffier, more breakdown-friendly side, the likes of Jaded show decided shifts towards more anthemic, radio-friendly ubiquity that could truly turn the band into an all-conquering force.
With only Circle With Me and unstoppable rager Holy Roller appearing from their debut, Spiritbox seem to be sending out a clear message; Eternal Blue is old news, and only the beginning of what this band could possibly achieve.
Although seemingly cutting their set short – the schedule has them on for a further 20 minutes – the fact they depart on the neck-bothering brutality of Hysteria leaves no sense of being short changed, the crowd braying for more as Spiritbox affirm themselves as one of metal’s brightest new bands. In, out and no fucking about. Talk about a blitzkrieg.
