My experience of an HELHORSE show is a messy one. Sometimes all you are in the mood for is to be as messy as you want, get as wasted as you like, dance like you don’t give a flying fuck who is watching. It was in the in the community of the Llŷn Peninsula in Gwynedd, north-western Wales that HELHORSE played the after party at HAMMERFEST. The beer was certainly flowing, instruments and people were falling over, women were going crazy. So yeah, it was messy by all accounts, as an afterparty should be, and it was SO much fun! We later heard the band refer to HAMMERFEST as a “Heavy Metal Las Vegas”.
HELHORSE hail from Copenhagen, Denmark and play and an electric blend of Stoner and Punk Rock. They are a band that thrive live, their energy is incendiary. See for yourself in the video for their last single ‘Hell Of A Ride’:
We caught up with HELHORSE lead vocalist Mikkel Wad Larsen and drummer August Vinther Ottsen earlier this year to talk about their local music scene in Copenhagen. Mikkel told us; “The music scene in Copenhagen right now is actually pretty vibrant, especially if we narrow it down to the metal scene. It’s very much alive! Prime Collective which is our management has managed to really stir up a lot of young talent and revitalise old acts, trying to get them to think in new ways. We have a lot of really good venues here, rehearsal spaces and most importantly we have an audience that is really interested. We sell tickets and people show up”.
It seems in the UK in some towns and cities people would rather save their money for a festival then attend a local gig. Mikkel continues; “Yeah, people do attend local shows here, but we also have a lot of festivals. In relation to how big the country is we have some pretty big festivals, Copenhagen Hell which is our biggest metal festival still has 20 thousand people at it, which is a lot for a niche festival. The cool thing is that the Danish bands that play at the festival are on the line-up at the same level as the international bands. We played there about three times, we played the main stage back-to-back with the likes of Trivium and bigger names, and that really helped us a lot.”
HELHORSE released their self-titled 11-track third album a year ago via Spinefarm Records. Mikkel revealed to us “We were actually quite surprised at the reception to the album from the UK, just because the UK has not been a focus point at the time. We have always wanted to come here, but nothing much had happened previously. Now slowly but surely we have been getting these really good reviews and people have been asking us to come play here, and Spinefarm UK has done an amazing job promoting us. The UK is a tough market but it seems to be slowly and surely building up. We want to come back if you will have us?”
We most certainly will, I say! Lastly drummer August announced to us “At the moment we are focusing on writing a new demo, I only just entered the band three or four months ago, I think it’s stirred up a lot of creative energy”. August seems a new driving force for the band, so it will be exciting to see what comes of the new demo. Mikkel continues “August is an amazing drummer, last year we had some big changes so that we could push forward even harder. Our first show with August was actually in London!”
Since we spoke to the band they have been confirmed to play support to their fellow Spinefarm Records band RAMMSTEIN in the Danish city of Horsens.
