I am a dwarf and I am digging a hole, diggy diggy hole, diggy diggy hole.
This is exciting times for metal in 2024. You can get just about every genre imaginable, and it seems someone cooks up a new shtick every week. We have seen an assortment of different types of metal this past month of April alone, with Folk metal, pirate metal, Viking metal, symphonic metal, black metal, speedmetal, death metal and many others.
Tonight, we get Wind Rose with support from Xandria at the Rickshaw Theatre in Vancouver Canada. Wind Rose can be classified as Dwarven, Power folk metal. Unlike Canadian band Killer Dwarfs, Wind Rose dress the Dwarf part with pagan like clothes, and sing predominantly about Dwarven tales.
The Italian band is comprised of 5 players who are Federico Gatti (drums), Cristiano Bertocchi (bass), Federico Meranda (Keybaords), Claudio Falconcini (guitars) and Francesco Cavalieri (lead vocals). They have been telling their stories through song from 2012 as they have 5 albums in the discography with the latest being Warfront from 2022 (Napalm Records). The biggest claim to fame for this group is a cover song called “Diggy Diggy Hole” which was originally done by The Yogscast which is a gamer YouTube channel. No doubt it has given them beaucoup streaming numbers of over 54 million views, which is amazing exposure, but how does this band come off in a live performance? I am here to find out.
They start this SOLD OUT show off with “Army of Stone” from the Warfront album and wow, did this audience blow up as the front end of the band (less the keyboard, and drummer) stood on risers and bellowed out these powerful vocals. This audience was prepared for this battle with inflatable swords and axes, as they moved on with “Fellows of the Hammer”. I don’t think I have EVER seen a crowd at the Rickshaw Theatre so jacked, as they were jumping like mad with hands waving in the air.
“Drunken Dwarves” at song 3 and keyboard player Federico is not afraid to get out from the back end of the stage and be the cheer leader to get the crowd even more berserk. This song is incredibly fun, as this MONDAY crowd is cosplaying as a Saturday crowd.
“Mine Mine Mine” is such a fantastic song to listen to live. Like I mentioned, the vocals happening from Claudio, Christiano and Francesco are absolutely monstrous as they fill every corner of the Rickshaw richly. This is my favorite song of the night.
Moving along with “Gates of Ekrund”, “The King Under the Mountain” and “The Battle of the Five Armies” which is influenced by the Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien. I think J.R.R. would be impressed. After a couple of War songs, with “The Art of War” and “Tales of War”, vocalist Francesco states “It’s sold out tonight, which means one thing, that VANCOUVER BELONGS TO THE DWARVES!”. It certainly was, as the audience never ceases their exuberance the entire 13 song set.
Ok so here we go, its song 11, and they finally get to “Diggy Diggy Hole” from 2019’s Wintersaga album. I think most bands would’ve waited to the last song on this but these guys were nice enough to let this one out abit sooner than I expectedNear the end of ‘diggy’, they take off the guitars and use a backing track for the rest of the song to celebrate with the crowd. It was a total frenzy, believe me. . I told my wife I am going to see Wind Rose and they have this “Diggy, Diggy song” and then she showed me a tic tok video of our cat scratching our shower stall obsessively and that song was the sound bite.
Vancouver concert goers were pretty setlist savvy though tonight, and they knew what song was up to bat, as none left after the “Diggy Diggy” song, like I see with other bands that have might be enjoying such a YouTube wind-fall.
They do 2 more with “Tomorrow Has Come” and “I am Mountain” which were the 7th and 8th song played from the Warfront album tonight. Would this band be selling out shows without “Diggy Diggy?”. They definitely have the chops on all their other songs and Francesco working the crowd as well as he does, probably would be still a very popular tour. I think that is what got me about this performance tonight; as I was thinking we would be working through a bunch of filler to get to the big hit song as many bands do, but I was impressed with the entire song selection and how well they perform them live. The crowd reaction was the best I have seen at the Rickshaw Theatre in many years, which is usually is the tale of the tape, as these guys certainly can bring it. Check these tour out, it could be one of the best this year!
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