Dark world music band Heilung performed a sold-out ritual at the Palais Theatre in Melbourne on Wednesday 6 November 2024 as part of their second Australian tour. Founded in 2014 in Copenhagen, Denmark by vocalist Kai Uwe Faust (a German tattooist who specialises in Old Norse tattoos) and Danish producer Christopher Juul, they were joined the following year by Juul’s girlfriend: singer Maria Franz. The band’s name means healing in German, and their tribal music is based on texts and runic inscriptions from Germanic peoples of the Iron Age, and Viking Age. Heilung has describe their music as “amplified history from early medieval northern Europe”. Their music is usually about Germanic deities, The Jotnar, and valkyries, with references to the early ages of European Civilization made by using texts from historical artefacts and historical poems. Many items used as instruments are what were available to humans in the Iron Age, such as drums, bones or spears, and the languages include German, English, Gothic, Old High German, Icelandic, Latin, Old English, Proto-Norse, Proto-Germanic, and Viking age Old Norse. Heilung released their third studio album Drif in 2022, which peaked at No. 9 in the German album charts.
