White sage. Rosemary too. The aroma fills the concert space and a procession files onto the stage, with one figure, founding member Kai Uwe Faust, holding the burning incense. These are herbs traditionally used to cleanse and bless a space. It’s silent, bar the sound of birdsong, and the stage is framed with foliage and tree props. The lighting casts a soft yellow glow and it’s as though they are walking into a forest clearing.
Heilung do not do half measures, and the performance, or ‘ritual’ as the band prefer to describe it, is an immersive and enthralling experience.
The band formed in Copenhagen and members hail from Denmark, Norway, and Germany. Researchers, as well as musicians, they strive for authentic reproductions of pagan traditions from northern Europe.
They draw on Iron and Viking age texts and runic inscriptions, and their songs are written in Old Norse, Latin, Icelandic and Gothic. Their instruments include ritual bells, buffalo horn rattles and drums, including one made of horse skin painted with human blood, while another made from human bone.
The ritual also features several Heilung ‘warriors’ with face paint and brandishing spears and shields. The real star of the show, however, is founding member and lead singer Maria Franz who looks like a mythological pagan goddess dressed in a white robe with fabric covering her eyes and antlers crowning her head. Her voice, somewhere between a haunting wail and an enchanting melody, is utterly captivating.
Whether it be a harmonious lullaby performed by Franz and her backing singers or Faust’s otherworldly throat singing, Heilung’s music is trance-inducing. It thrums with supernatural power, and the chanting gradually builds into climatic moments and then recedes.
Given the attention to detail and audience concentration that this event deserves, one wonders if it would be better suited for a theatre such as the Barbican or Sadler’s Wells. It’s a shame that sacred moments, such as the closing cleansing ritual where Faust once again blesses all the performers and wafts burning incense over them, is disrupted by shouts of ‘one more song!’ and the hubbub of people at the back. They ignore it, but it still breaks the atmosphere.
Heilung call themselves ‘amplified history’, but not only is this a preservation project, their ritual is a much-needed balm to soothe the soul. It reminds us to reconnect with nature and our sense of self, and for everyone in the room tonight, it is a medium to find healing and peace.
