Extreme Music Blog

I am still suffering from a heavy hangover. Yesterday was more than just a simple concert. This was our way to say goodbye to a friend who passed away in a tragic accident at the beginning of the year.

But first was a football match which I wanted to see in the stadium (VfB Stuttgart vs. 1 FC Nürnberg). Of course this was already the time when the first beers had to be eliminited. The match was bad and the stadium looked kind of weired with a big hole on one side (they are currently tearing down and rebuilding one tribune after another). But it was fun to be there with some friends. Right after the stadium it was time for the concert. And it was a tribute – the last concert of the 22 Coltsuckers after their singer “Vadder” died in his car which caught fire in January. And the place was crowded with poeple who knew him not only as a musician but also as a friend.

We missed the first band LÄBERKNECHT because we had to pick up some people and of course because of the next beers. But we will have them at the METAL NIGHTS in December with BRESCHDLENG. So I will report about this band later this year.

I already saw INNER STRENX or shared the stage with them – I cannot remember. Guess it must have not been as good as yesterday. They put up a decent show with heavy groove metal. I did not see that much of them, actually, but the few songs I saw of them convinced me. They really rocked!

There was only one band this evening everybody was waiting for: THOSE TWENTY TWO COLTSUCKERS. They used changing singers this evening to replace Max. And hell yeah – it worked! This was heavy southern rock as dirty as it could be.  I was not able to hold back anymore and found myself in front of the stage all the time (except when I needed another beer – guess I poored half of it on other people this evening – but well I was not alone with that). Everybody was celebrating – the band was no longer the band on the stage – people came on stage, even poeple without any clothes but 22 COLTSUCKERS stickers on their intimacy. Everybody was drinking heavily, beer was sprayed all over the place and in the end there were some people (from the audience) laying on the stage – totally done. At the end noone cared about reason, all restraint was gone. I remember me standing arm in arm with a close friend (who was also really close to Max) in front of the stage rocking our butts off. I wish that this moment would have lasted forever… This was a decent way to say farewell to a friend. His former girlfriend (also the mother of his son) came on stage and thanked everyone for the support. This was a heavy moment – no way to resist the need to cry.

I was both happy and mournful after this last live event. So I had a lot more beers with some friends. My head reminds me today – obviously it was too much alcohol…

Rest in peace, brother!

02.04.1976 – 07.01.2009

THOSE 22 COLTSUCKERS homepage / myspace page: http://www.coltsuckers.de

As promised this is a new update.

After a short night and some usual work it was time for another very special live event. Having packed some parcels for the mailorder I went Stuttgart downtown to a club, Merlin, where usually a lot more softer artists show up on stage. This time IKARISCHES ENSEMBLE claimed the boards that mean the world. I met up with some friends there and we had a relaxed beer first in the beautiful garden of the club. But then the band plugged in their guitars…

The music and live appearance is really hard to describe. You see a three piece, a drummer, a bass player and a very skinny guitar player who is also doing the insane vocals from time to time. As you can read on their homepage the band interpretes classical compositions which are writing for totally different instruments like piano in a very own, new way, transformed to drums, guitars and even vocals. But they also use these parts as basis for own compositions. All in all the music sounds very maniac, really insane and is very hard to follow. Some cues of the instruments even seem to be totally random – but be sure they are NOT. The only band that comes up to my mind when being ask how this sounds like is Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, but less fluently, with a bit more Jazz influences, less vocals and without any visual support (a Sleepytime Gorilla Museum show must be more like a theatre play I guess). A highlight was definitively a five piece interpretation of a composition which was transformed as described above. I did not understand the name of the composition unfortunately. But it had a weired timing and beeing musician myself I know how hard it must be to play this very staccato music in the right timing. Plus the band did it sight-read from a partiture.

Unfortunately the band has played more new songs this day which are lacking of vocals. But the encore was an old song which really works well live and you can even almost bang your head (which of course noone does on Jazz concerts, hehe).  I guess that most of the people attending this (free!) show were musicians or at least very into music, so they gave the artists a round of applause and went kind of enthusiastic when the band left the stage to get them back for the encore.

Conclusion: This was a very special evening, with very special music in a very special club. Something different to all the metal and rock shows I usually attend.

After the show I went straight home to build up a new bed – seems like an unnessecary side-note? Well this was kind o hard to do alone and the night went off… so not much sleep again.

IKARISCHES ENSEMBLE homepage: http://www.ikarisches-ensemble.de

IKARISCHES ENSEMBLE song samples:

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Nécrologue à l’innocence
(2004)

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Ewige Wiederkunft
(2004)

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Gnomus
(2005)

A pretty weired package came up for this date with MORNE, a doomy and noisy post-crust five piece from the US / Massachusetts, and BORN/DEAD, an old school punk outfit – also from the US but California.

I decided to team up with some friends for a beer or two and for some live music. We met up at the Komma in Esslingen where I have not been before but which I knew from a lot of other event announcements. It turned out to be a pretty alternative kind of venue where a lot of punk events take place, located aside a river with a small hydropower plant based on an old water mill. The event itself did not start before 10 PM so we had a nice time talking about doom and some upcoming events.

BORN/DEAD started with their set and I really did not expect anything neither any special genre. They played pretty violent old school punk with little crust influences. If you listen to early Exploited records you will get an impression of their sound. But it is played quite well and has a lot of power. Unfortunately the small size of the venue made it necessary to turn up the volume of the guitars to compete with the drums. To get an imagination of the size of this room you may imagine that the 40 paying visitors almost filled the room in front  of the stage. So it was very loud and so after some songs, the primitive sound of BORN/DEAD and the heat in this small room made me leave. But they did a good job anyway!

The band which was more for me – MORNE – started shortly afterwards. And hell first this sounded like a drone band. With the first vocals it became clear why this band was playing with a punk band. They surely have some little influences of punk in their sound, but more doom, maybe post hardcore / metal and drone. Like their support, MORNE played a quite short set of about 45 minutes. But they came back for an additional song which means ~7 minutes. It is really hard to describe the intensity of their sound, I guess you have to experience it – check out their myspace page!

After all this was a really nice evening with some new sounds and sounds which I have not been listening to for a very long time. Nice side effect: I have met some guys I have not met for a very, very long time (years). Plus I will go to this venue again, the really relaxing atmosphere is attracting me.

MOURNE  on myspace: http://www.myspace.com/mornecrust

BORN/DEAD on myspace: http://www.myspace.com/borndeadpunx

Tomorrow I will be back with the next report – IKARISCHES ENSEMBLE – a great youngster band mixing metal elements with a solid jazz basis. They prefer jazz venues mostly. I am really excited about their sound and looking forward to it…