Germany 2025 - Feuerschwanz - Knightclub

(Click here if you can't see the panel above to get all medieval…)

We've already lost a couple of this year's likely noisy contenders, in some cases for reasons our lawyers would prefer not to mention, but you can always rely on specialist label Napalm Records to give we hirsute types something to hang out coats on, as they're one of the few genre labels who really seem to understand what this funny old contest is about. And in veteran medieval metallers Feuerschwanz you'd have though they'd delivered us a safe pain of hands. But sadly not quite, in our book.

Beloved of metal festival goers across the continent, we were quite looking forward to seeing what they were going to offer - especially as the song's title blatantly hinted that some armour-garbed humour might be involved. And it kicks off pretty promisingly, too. A nice calm intro jolting into a good old chuggy bit of Eurometal seemed like almost the perfect start. They even got the gag in early. The problem is though, that they kept hammering it home, ad infinitum, from start to finish. So when German rapper of note Dag von SDP burst into the middle eight if felt like we were finally off the mobius loop and into something more interesting.

But then he even kicked into repeating the chorus over and over again. And they say Germans are rubbish at comedy…

And it's such a shame, because there's almost something for anybody to enjoy ever. Meaty instruments for the real music mob to furtle over, a schalger-esque chorus for the pop fans, and even some actual singing for the "It's all just noise!" brigade (who frankly would get hospitalised if ever they put my creaking iPod on shuffle). I still reckon it's probably the right choice for them for Basel, as it's big and bold and fills a yawning gap in this year's line up. But the ESC edit does feel like an awfully long three minutes.

Of course, you can never second guess the German public, as they're prone to choose the plucky sweet-faced newcomer over a field of well-known internationally noted acts. And they selection process seems even more convoluted this year than ever, so who knows. Hopefully they've got something even more entertaining waiting in the wings that doesn't sound like the needle got stuck in the groove after the first thirty seconds.

Yes, Knightclub / Nightclub! We bloody get it!