Sunday 25th of November, Metal history is made by the appearance of BROCAS HELM live in Athens. This, their long awaited European live debut (even though they are in their 3rd decade of playing gigs), was played in the most deserving country - Hellas!

Support came in the form of BATTLEROAR, RAGING STORM and DREAM WEAVER - 3 excellent Greek bands who proved that Hellenic Metal is a force to be reckoned with!! These bands are a definite must to hear live as they are strongest in this environment. BATTLEROAR are playing together for less time than the other bands but played a solid set. These guys have a distinctly tight, MANOWAR sound and are destined to become one of the great Greek Metal bands. Next, RAGING STORM! What a performance!! This aptly named 5 piece CLASSIC Heavy Metal band literally assaulted our senses with 100% pure Heavy Metal!! These guys have to be one the better HM bands in Europe at the moment, hopefully they will not remain in typical Greek obscurity... HEAVY METAL UNBOUND AND FREE!!!! Last up were DREAM WEAVER, these guys are awesome musicians and play quite technically. They truly showed their years of experience (10 years!!) with an extremely impressive set of classic HEAVY METAL anthems!

Just when we were getting the feeling that the night could not get any better BROCAS HELM took the stage...the previous night I had the honour of watching these almighty legends rehearse in BATTLEROAR'S band room which was more like a private gig for those in the room than a rehearsal (we even heard some songs that were not played at the gig including a secret song that I am not at liberty to discuss..heh) However, it was far greater hearing them live on stage in front of the dedicated Greek crowd!!! BROCAS HELM deserved this night after so many years of refusing to sell out. And they sounded perfect!! Over the next two hours they played almost everything from their two LP's, Ghost Story demo and Skullfucker 7". (It would be an easier task to list which songs they did not play!) The highlights were the obvious Hells Whip, Ghost Story, Ravenwreck, Black Death, Into the Ithilstone, Into Battle, Time of the Dark....just too many to mention. The surprises were that they played The Chemist and a cover of Emerald by Thin Lizzy (fantastic!!) To me, Brocas were at their strongest playing Skullfucker and Blood Machine- absolute KILLER!!! They played two new songs - Drink 'N Drive (a quirky song aimed at Mothers Against Drunk Driving in the US) and Drinking The Blood of the Priest which was awesome!! What a night!!

Many hails to all those who travelled to see them, hails to Brocas for flying over during uncertain times and mega hails to Heavy Metal Mania Productions for organising it! Heavy Metal is about music and is at it's best played live so I wondered where all the big collectors with $$$ for rare records were on this night!?!? Jim Schumacher declared in between songs that it was the BEST night of his life and I know what he meant...

Rowena O'Sullivan / November 2001

This review was taken from www.metal-treasures.at/home.htm