Leading Danish rental company Comtech suppled 68 Robe BMFL Spots to the main Helveti stage at the 2016 Copenhell Festival in Copenhagen, Denmark. They 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. 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.
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.
At the atmospheric Copenhell site, 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. They 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 Mitch 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.
Jes also likes the large lenses and the big chunky light-source. “It is a look that really works for this genre of music,” he commented, adding that the true BMFL multi-functionality is an asset generally to festivals, giving maximum flexibility to any event with a multi-artist line up. He further mentions the ruggedness of the fixture and the fact that BMFLs can – and do – take some serious abuse at a gig like this!
56 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 as they brought the 2016 festival to a raucous finale as part of their The End tour. In addition to being the main profile fixtures on the rig, seven of the BMFL Spots were used as truss follow spots for Sabbath; a trend that’s becoming increasingly popular as it provides a perfect match, colour wise, to the rest of the rig, and the intensity is more than enough to do the job.
For Comtech they have proved an excellent investment and Jes says he’s also looking at adding some BMFL blades to rental stock soon.