Rare is the town in Latvia that so actively promotes itself as a place of music as does Liepāja. In guide books, marketing materials and brochures, Liepāja goes out of its way to remind readers of the importance of music and how very many musicians come from there, not to mention that it is the home of the always excellent Liepāja Symphony Orchestra. Along with the beach, the sea and, of course, the prison, music is one of the most compelling aspects of visiting Liepāja. Who can argue, when even composer Imants Kalniņš (among many others) states that Liepāja is the rock music capital of Latvia—not even Riga can compete.

Because it is home to so many great musicians and so much great music, it seemed only natural that an almost yearly music festival would be held in Liepāja. Appropriately dubbed Liepājas dzintars, the festival began in 1964 and celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2006 with a massive concert. In honor of this long-running tradition, MICREC at the end of 2007 released a two-DVD set celebrating the festival. The exhaustive collection features one disc with various performances throughout the years, as well as a short documentary feature on the festival. The second disc collects highlights of the 30th anniversary show.

The first DVD offers many fascinating glimpses of noteworthy and perhaps lesser known artists performing at the festival. The bulk of the clips are from 1991 and later, but there are plenty of interesting older clips, such as “Baletomānija” performed in 1987 by the Ensemble of the Region of Tukums (so called because the band at the time could not go by its real name: Pērkons). There is singer Ieva Akurātere’s historic and moving performance of “Manai tautai” from 1988, with many in the audience singing along and in tears. Particularly interesting is an all-too-brief clip from 1964 of the group Zvaigznīte (featuring Uldis Stabulnieks on piano and Gunārs Rozenbergs on trumpet) performing “Rotaļa.” And, of course, there is the inevitable performance of the Liepāja anthem, “Pilsētā, kurā piedzimst vējš,” performed by Menuets in 1994. I’ll probably have all of Liepāja breaking down my door for this, but I really could do without hearing the song for a long while. The title is repeated way too many times in the song for my tastes.

It is not just Latvian artists who performed at Liepājas dzintars. Many international artists appeared, too, including Dva Samoļota from Russia, performing “Bambula” in 1991; Mciri from Georgia performing a folk song in 1991; the New Murphy Band from Estonia performing “Let’s Twist Again” in 1992, and Išjunk Švieša from Lithuania performing “Opapā” in 1994.

Children get into the act as well. Children’s group Auri performed “Melanija” in 1991 (featuring Lauris Reiniks, who, although maybe at most 10 years old at the time, already had a breathtaking mullet). The Children of Liepāja in 1992 performed “Vīrs ar vijoli.”

At just under an hour, the documentary Es būšu, ja tu būsi (I Will Be There, If You Are There) is a very short overview of the history of the festival, including clips from interviews with many of the artists and the composers of Liepāja. The film is in Latvian with no subtitles and is directed by Svetlana Rudzīte.

I must say that one of the first things that strikes you when viewing the documentary is how old everyone looks now. Tumsa’s lead singer, Mārtiņš Freimanis, in his early 30s, is by far the baby of the bunch. Since the documentary is so short, it is too brief to do a proper history of the event, and limits the artists to rather brief sound bites. Overall, the documentary is slightly unfocused. But there are plenty of interesting tidbits, such as Freimanis recalling his pants getting pulled off at a concert, as well as Valdis Vikmanis, the former director of the Leipāja School of Music, giving his impressions of composer Imants Kalniņš as a student. Zigfrīds Muktupāvels, singer for Zodiaks and bet bet, also tells a story of how while he was a student in the music school (and, as he puts it, not a particularly good student), Vikmanis gave him a ruble to get some food since he was tall and thin and needed to keep his stomach working.

And that’s just the first DVD. The second DVD has highlights of the 30th anniversary show. Many of the performances are backed up by the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra, including the winner of the Best Vocalist award at the very first Liepājas dzintars in 1964, singer Zdislavs Romanovskis, who sings “Baltijas jūra.” Many performers and award winners at previous Liepājas dzintars festivals returned for the anniversary concert, including Zodiaks performing “Taisnība,” Credo performing “Sāpe,” Menuets performing “Alvas zaldātiņi,” Pērkons performing “Kamēr es tevi mīlēju” and Līvi performing “Dzelzsgriezējs.”

Sound and video quality is generally good, but on the first DVD, due to the fact that much of the footage is very old, the video is often grainy and the audio also uneven. Sadly, not all years were recorded or archived, so there are many great performances at the festival that are lost forever. Though I would like to have seen more clips from before 1991, the overview is still very thorough. On subsequent viewing, I usually skip over the children’s acts, the non-Latvian acts and some of the lesser songs—composer Uģis Praulinš, performing with the group Vecās mājas in 1991, and Ivo Fomins, performing with the group Libau in 1992, would go on to far bigger and better things.

It is hard to believe that even at two full DVDs, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Liepājas dzintars is one of the most important and longest running music festivals and this two-DVD set amply collects many of the highlights of this significant Latvian event.

One would think that heavy metal, full of aggressive notes and despairing lyrics, would have quite the following in Latvia, where the long dark winters and varied social problems would facilitate a particular fondness for this type of music. Tickets for seminal metal band Metallica’s July 2007 concert in Rīga’s Skonto Stadium sold out in a very short period.

Oddly though, local Latvian metal bands have had a much tougher time. Very few, if any, reach any kind of critical or commercial success. The only groups I can think of that have been somewhat successful are Dzelzs vilks (though some might call the group more “industrial” than “metal”) and Skyforger (which plays pagan folk metal).

A heavy metal band with a long history, not to mention a devoted if small following, is Huskvarn. From the band’s Web site, we find out that Huskvarn was founded in 1989. For those wondering, the name Huskvarn (or, originally, Husqvarn) was taken from of all things Husqvarna, a company that manufactures chainsaws and other power tools. This may very well explain the cover of the band’s first album, On the Road, featuring a zombie-looking guy holding a rather demonic chainsaw.

In celebration of its almost 20-year existence, the group in March re-released its first two albums—1992’s On the Road and 1995’s Bomb Brain Melodies—as a set of two compact discs. On On the Road, band members are Edgars Ķauķis (Blackie) and Ivars Talcis (Sheriff) on guitars, Normunds Orļonoks (Urbix) on vocals, Kaspars Žers (Long) on bass and Māris Balcers on drums. Orļonoks also is the principal lyricist. Bomb Brain Melodies features Orļonoks and Ķauķis joined by drummer Ēriks Šalapajevs, bassist Sergejs Karševs and guitarist Andrejs Mingačovs.

Huskvarn plays a rather ferocious type of heavy metal, often called “death metal,” mainly due to its relentless aggression both in music and lyrics, as well as (more often than not) unintelligible vocals, either screamed or growled. For this reason, this type of music is inaccessible to most listeners, except the very dedicated. Even though I was brought up on a strict diet of heavy metal, I myself found it a struggle to listen to these CDs all the way through. Where others may quickly dismiss this type of music as noise made by talentless hacks, I would strongly disagree with those sentiments. It is certainly a difficult task to be able to play the guitar or bang the drums at such a blinding speed, and it takes powerful vocal chords to be able to sing this type of music for a long period of time. Thankfully the lyrics for all the songs are included, otherwise it would be difficult to make sense of what they are singing.

On the Road features longer songs. Although there are only six songs, the album is nearly 40 minutes in length. It begins with “Dark Side,” featuring a somber introduction on keyboards, before launching into the first of many aggressive musical assaults. “Absurd Confusion” features a particularly shredding guitar solo by Talcis. The song “On the Road” also begins with an uncharacteristically melodic acoustic guitar before launching into an almost march-like, thundering distorted guitar riff.

With Bomb Brain Melodies, the group began writing slightly shorter songs, but what the band lost in length it made up with intensity. Compared to this album, On the Road seems almost melodic. I assume the title indicates that these songs should make your head explode, which I believe it will after too many listens. Bomb Brain Melodies begins with “Deliberately Lost in Infinity,” featuring a rather sinister introduction on acoustic guitar (reminding one slightly of Metallica’s song “Battery”). From titles like “Crazy Death,” “Bloody Nightmare” and “The Right to Revenge,” one can see the group has stepped up the intensity in its song writing. There are also three songs in Latvian—“Divas sejas,” “Pasaule mūsu palāta” and “Zudušais laiks”—though I probably wouldn’t have been able to tell that they were in Latvian without the lyrics sheet. The slower song “Follow Our Trail,” in contrast with most of the other songs, has a hopeful message, with the words “Together we’ll find all we need.”

I prefer On the Road to Bomb Brain Melodies mainly due to the fact that, ironically, On the Road features more melodies as well as tempo changes—and slightly more intelligible vocals.

A minor quibble about the packaging: To keep the albums separate, there are two separate booklets, one in the front cover of the CD and one in the back cover. Unfortunately, the booklet in the back cover is a few millimeters too large for the case, thereby leading to a slightly mangled booklet. There are also a few spelling mistakes here and there, which give the impression that this is not the most professional release.

The group continues to soldier on. Its most recent release of new material was 2006’s Sadistika.

It is admirable that Huskvarn refuses to compromise and plays the most aggressive music it can. The problem with that approach is that it leaves the group (and many other groups like Huskvarn) in a bit of a rut, which, sadly, makes many of the songs sound similar. Though it clearly takes a certain level of talent to be able to perform music like this, there is simply not enough to distinguish Huskvarn from the legions of other metal bands that sound virtually alike. On these albums, the group had yet to find its own unique sound and niche, which leads to rather generic songs, and two full CDs of this stuff was difficult to digest. If you like your music relentless and uncompromising, and are not too fussy about lyrics and originality, then this is the band for you. Otherwise, give this one a pass.