Heilung – A cyberpunk reimagining of ancient culture

It’s a boring cliché that the film isn’t as good as the book and the recording isn’t as good as the concert but… well… you haven’t really experienced Heilung until you’ve seen them on a stage. It’s not that the music alone lacks in any way, just that the show – and describing it as mere entertainment somehow devalues this extraordinary event – takes on a dimension that expands and fully illustrates the music in a palpable way.

Even describing this ritualistic performance as theatrical feels in some way to devalue what is, in effect, a window into ancient culture and its rites and ceremonies. Wiki notes that Heilung’s music is “based on texts and runic inscriptions from Germanic peoples of the Iron Age and Viking Age” and is an “amplified history from early medieval northern Europe”. As such, it would be easy to satirize (imagine a Monty Python skit) and for the show to turn into some sort of grotesque caricature, and when members of the ensemble began trickling onstage with bizarre masks and antlers and ferns sticking up atop their heads, for a brief few moments I wanted to laugh. But that laugh was wiped right off my stupid face with the sheer impact of the performance.

We’re getting ahead of ourselves though. Faroese singer-songwriter Eivør had opened the show with a striking and dramatic set of songs that would have been perfect for an episode of Vikings, and in fact, one of them had been composed for Viking TV show The Last Kingdom. She has a distinctive vocal style that swoops and soars into the stratosphere and occasionally dips and detours into strange percussive techniques. She made for a superb entrée to the main act.

Heilung, it turned out, had a surprise up their sleeves: the show started with a Maori haka. It turns out that on tour, the group make the effort to track down First Nation tribes and incorporate them into their opening ritual. This was an amazing thing to witness. Taking the haka out of its normal, rather stratified contexts felt electric, and electrified the tradition. It wasn’t token, but quite the opposite. After the haka, members of the Maori troop participated in the opening ritual, a serious business and in contrast to typical concerts, where the audience expects to be entertained right from the word ‘go’. It felt like this sold-out audience understood the concept, and psychologically partook of the ritual.

When the ‘entertainment’ did begin, it was instantly intoxicating. The full width and depth of the stage was utilized, and from one song to the next there was seldom a lull in the grand theatricality of it all. On record, the group sound a little like Dead Can Dance with a more tribal aspect and some demonic-sounding throat-singing. In live performance, the music is made much, much more vivid by a combination of impactful lighting, well-thought-out choreography and props, and bizarre costumes. It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen before, which makes it so much harder to describe, but for the visuals alone it would have been worth the admission price.

Depending on the demands of the song in question, the stage would have five or nine or 16 people on stage at any one time, playing instruments or acting out tribal rituals. The main female singer was striking in a costume that vaguely resembled Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride, with her white dress, long red hair and oddly disturbing mask. The master of ceremonies (for want of a better description) handled some of the vocal work and appeared to direct the action onstage. One chap to the left of the stage seemed to deal the electronics, while way at the back at either side of the stage two percussionists stood attacking huge drums with great relish.

My friend Zak, with whom I attended the performance, afterwards made a crack that it reminded him of the risqué hippy Broadway show Hair, due in part to the nudity. And it did indeed feature several topless females participating in the rituals and was presumably the reason for its R18 rating. (My 10-year-old daughter desperately wanted to go to the show, but alas…) Or perhaps the rating related to the ritual “killing” of one of the women and subsequent “rebirth”. Who knows?

In performance, the music felt much more genuinely tribal, and ancient, even though of course it had new technology flowing through its veins. It’s essentially minimalist, with swathes of empty space leaving plenty of room for the monstrous percussion, guttural throat singing and female vocals. The relentlessness of the drumming reminded me of the 1970s German band Faust while the intentional repetition/incantation summoned the ghost of the French band Magma. It’s tempting to view Heilung as existing completely in its own universe, given how shockingly different they are from everything else on the music scene, but there are somehow connections. Similarly, the throat-singing has an almost death metal aspect.

As a dedicated atheist for whom a “spiritual” experience is a really good Indian curry, I’m naturally sceptical about the kind of illusions that can evoke an ancient culture with all its rites and rituals and magic. But Heilung (meaning ‘healing’), for me, wasn’t just an exciting show that left my surprised jaw on the floor (metaphorically speaking) but was genuinely moving. In fact, at times I was so emotionally impacted by it that I felt ye olde tears welling up. Perhaps the 6 per cent Viking that Ancestry.com says is in my bloodline found something in Heilung, something ancient and deep, that it identifies with.

See them, if you get a chance.

+ Heilung performs one more show at the Kiri Te Kanawa theatre, Aotea Centre, Auckland on Monday November 18. Eivør performs her own show at the Tuning Fork on Tuesday November 19.

https://www.aucklandlive.co.nz/show/heilung

https://www.tuningfork.co.nz/all-events/eiv%c3%b8r-tickets-ae939869