The Enmore Theatre buzzes tonight with the anticipation of something otherworldly, an energy unearthly yet somehow ancient. It’s Heilung, the “amplified history” ritual collective that has, since 2015, thrown genre labels to the wind and summoned the primal roots of humanity’s musical spirit. Heilung translates from German as “healing,” but what they offer is more like a cultural séance: a transportive connection back to the Iron Age, casting a spell that feels both familiar and foreign.
The crowd—a sea of fur hats, Viking garb, and cloaks—holds a tangible reverence, as though we’re stepping into something sacred. Earlier this year, Heilung took this ritual to Glastonbury, shaking its storied grounds with their unconventional, immersive sound, and tonight, they’ve brought it to Sydney.
Opening the evening, Faroese singer-songwriter Eivør, known for her stunning range and electro-pop infusions, sings her way into the audience’s core. Her voice, trained by the rolling landscapes of Syðrugøta, envelops the room.
The night, however, belongs to Heilung, a collective that evokes the past with drums, some painted with human blood, bones as instruments, and rattles that could summon spirits. They start in a ceremonial circle, where each movement and note feels like a bridge to the ancestral realm. The musicians seem less like a band and more like a shamanic cohort.
The stage—swathed in green light, adorned with foliage, horns, and the warriors’ shields—exudes a sense of ritualistic gravity. Instruments crafted from goat, deer, and horse skins pulse with the heavy energy of ritual drumming, each beat stretching back through centuries of human history. Their costumes evoke the spiritual traditions of the circumpolar Eurasian peoples, and as they perform, the air itself thickens, becoming an experience that defies musical classification. The sound is indefinable—neofolk, industrial, or maybe just otherworldly. With drumbeats that shake your chest, throat singing that sends a chill up your spine
At one point, the collective form a circle, they are adorned in warrior garb and they’re wielding spears and shields. It’s sensory overload, a hypnotic trance of throat singing, layered voices, and ritual noise that consumes the Enmore crowd entirely.
Heilung has one more show here before heading to Brisbane and Auckland, and if there’s one thing to be said: beg, borrow, or steal a ticket—this is something you have to experience for yourself.
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