Leading Danish rental company Comtech suppled 68 x Robe BMFL Spots to the main
Helveti stage at the 2016 Copenhell Festival in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Comtech has been a lighting, staging, video and rigging supplier to the popular Live
Nation event which has grown year on year since its inception in 2010.
Staged in the charismatic old B&W Shipyard (Burmeister & Wain) in Refshaleøen,
the former industrial heart of the city, the huge piles of rusting steel and other
nautical relics are awakened noisily each year by the very best of heavy, hard and
death metal music.
The three day event is enjoyed by an audience of 18-20,000, who this year were
treated to industrial strength performances by main stage headliners Black Sabbath,
the Scorpions and King Diamond along with many others across four performance
spaces including the Hades and Pandemonium stages.
Comtech – one of Denmark’s leading rental specialists – started purchasing BMFLs in
2015 and Robe’s signature high power fixture range has proved a fantastic
workhorse for the company which works across many sectors with an emphasis on
concert touring, music and festivals.
Copenhell 2016 was a particularly busy period for Comtech, which actually had 122
BMFLs out on the road at that time on a variety of other shows and events, which
included The Apollo Stage at Roskilde Festival staged the following weekend (LD
Sune Verdier) and on tour with popular Danish singer Christopher (LD Kristian
Holm), classic dissident singer and performer Kim Larsen (LD Fut) and duo Krebs &
Falch (LD John Skaeg).
At the atmospheric Copenhell site, overlooked by a massive printed version of the
event’s wolf eye logo attached to one of the colossal old shipyard buildings,
Comtech project manager Jes Christiansen, explained that they looked at the
requirements of the main headliners – the Scorpions on the Friday and Black
Sabbath on the Saturday … And produced a lighting production design which
incorporated these and also kept the overnight re-rigging requirements practical!
Both Manfred Nikitser, associate LD and lighting operator for The Scorpions and
Michael Keller, LD for Black Sabbath were happy to use BMFL Spots, which were
chosen by Comtech for this because they can be seen onstage in daylight … even
when the sun is shining brightly!
Fifty-six of the BMFLs on the Helveti stage were distributed across the three main
overhead lighting trusses for Black Sabbath, with 12 on the floor … and all were
used extensively as the maverick rockers – led by the legendary Ozzy Osborne and
with original members Tony lommi and Geezer Butler also in the line-up – brought
the 2016 festival to a raucous finale as part of their “The End’ tour.
For Comtech the MBFL Spots have proved an excellent investment and Christiansen
says he’s also looking at adding some BMFL blades to rental stock soon.
