Heilung are always a delight to see live – their “rituals,” as anyone who has caught them on tour will call them, drive right to the center of your heart with booming drums and captivating on-stage performances. Earlier this year, Metal Insider had a chance to visit their ritual in Dallas, and we took some time to contemplate the best moments of a Heilung show and what there is to look forward to in 2023.
From the first moments of their opening ceremony (“Remember that we all are brothers. All people, beasts, trees, and stones, and wind. We all descend from the one great being.”), the audience is transported to an entirely different place for the show’s duration. Heilung’s rituals are a sensory overload, and that’s a massive part of the draw – to attend the show and let it overwhelm oneself is a fantastic feeling.
The cross-section of attendees at Heilung performances is always a joy. There is tons of crossover appeal to folks who don’t consider themselves metalheads, which was immediately evident while standing in the eight-block-long line to enter The Factory at Deep Ellum to attend the Dallas, Texas, show earlier this year.
Letting the haunting voices of Kai Uwe Faust and Maria Franz and the tones from the wide variety of handmade instruments pierce your eardrums and rattle around in your mind is magnificent. All while smelling the incense burning – just taking it all in is a beautiful experience.
Setting sights to 2023, Heilung has some shows planned in The Netherlands (two shows at the 013, my favorite Dutch venue) and France, as well as a short UK run and two shows in Australia. This carries the band through March, so one can only hope they will make their way Stateside again in the latter half of the year.
