Extreme Music Blog

This is kind of a different live report from me as a musician. First I had to prepare everything because I am the one who is always coping around with the business things of the band like merchandise etc. This was also the first time we went to a gig with my car which has enough space for the equipment stuff – well sometimes it is very headstrong but at least it is big for harbouring all the equipment.

When we arrived at the town hall (which should be renamed to village hall because Neckarbischofsheim is quite small but nice) LICKSALT had already finished their set and SKEPSIS were preparing the stage for the show. I made some shots with my cam (EOS 300D body with the kit zoom lens). Again I am not satisfied but there are some good pictures – I need to get a fast lens for live photography – and maybe a new cam (if this was not so expensive – damn!).

Thrash deathers SKEPSIS had the handicap of a session guitarist who had two or three weeks to learn the songs. But he did a good job although you could hear that there is no perfect harmony and sometimes the songs seemed to break up. But the band tried its best and the vocalist showed his energy. Nice side note is that they had a female guitar player who was like the rest of the band still very young. Guess she will be a very talented musician in the future. The songs were a quite usual mix of death and thrash but at some parts you could see me nodding my had because they grooved. So a nice to see band for sure.

SKEPSIS

After a really long changeover ABSTINENZ showed up on stage. They have build up an image of a typical black metal band on stage. The micro stand was a cross turned upside-down with barbed wire (whichs setup took half of the time for the change over except of beer drinking on stage). But no drummer. So they were playing with drums and keyboards from tape. The sound was very undifferentiated but the black metal they played was not too bad although I prefer more sophisticated black metal at the moment. After a guitar string broke they stopped playing asking for someones guitar – too bad because it was already late.

ABSTINENZ

So it was up to us now to enter the stage. The micro stand with barbed wire was still standing there and the singer of ABSTINENZ did not seem to care. Well we did a fast change over like we always use to do – concentrated work – do not keep the last band waiting. Short line up check and go for it! We had decent problems with the sound on stage. No kick on the drum monitor (it was not possible to have it louder) so Hannes was somehow trying to play without hearing what happens on the drums except cymbals. Tommy used his new guitar which is a hybrid for distored and clean sound (with two separate pick ups and electronic ways). He used two amps (one for clean and one for distorted sound). Like expected there were some technical problems with effects etc. I could not hear my voice on the monitors because I had suggested to take it completely away to avoid the feedbacks we had during the line check. So it was really a blind flight. After some songs the bass drum mic went straight off the drum raiser. The drum “carpet” was just a blanket so the whole drum kit was sliding forward and we had to adjust everything from time to time.
To come to a conclusion about our gig I have do say that it was fun dispite of the technical problems and not played too bad if you keep in mind that we only rehearsed one time after the first gig with this line up in June…

Last band of the day were the local heroes AGORAPHOBIA – fortunately they were chosen to be headlineres because they are quite known in this area, although it looked different on the spread flyers. Straight forward old school hardcore combined with (thrash) metal is something you can not call special these days. But AGORAPHOBIA were active for a very long time in the underground so they knew what to do and the people went crazy. I hate violent dancing so it was difficult for me to judge if the crowd was happy or just trying to abreact. Anyway AGORAPHOBIA were filling in the right slot and put up a decent headliner show.

AGORAPHOBIA

My guys wanted to leave already so we put everything back in the van. I was happy with this evening but the headache during the drive home was horrible. And today German elections. I almost was too late for using my right to vote…

A special thank you goes off to the two guys driving almost 200 kilometres to this concert just to see us – you rock! There is no better compliment for a band like us!

After some days of silence I am back with a new report – this report is about an event I organized together with my live crew as part of the METAL NIGHTS concert series. The preparation of this and other events were also the reason for no new updates.

I was really nervous about this day although it must be something like the 50th show I did as organizer. But this time was different – a sold out small venue with a capacity of 300 people as upper limit. I was afraid about the space in the concert room so together with the venue we decided to change the stage to give the poeple more room. It was okay for the bands as well and it should crop up that this decision was right…

When I arrived at the Club Zentral in Stuttgart city centre about 2pm the nightliner of the tour was already parked aside of the building, everything was already unloaded so I welcomed all the people. The funny thing was that I knew most of them.
Of course AHAB can be entitled as quite good friends now (not only because half of the band is signed to Supreme Chaos Records with DEAD EYED SLEEPER) and because Heci was staying at home to await the birth of his son (who saw the light of the world the day before this show b.t.w. – his name is Jonas), Markus – guitarist of my band THE EXORIAL and A&R at Supreme Chaos Records – joined the nautik team as live session member.
Then there were the guys of FJOERGYN who I have not seen for years. With my band KARKADAN I have played with them on the legendary Nightmare Before Summer festival 2006 in Thuringia (before this festival has to call it quits – unfortunately! – one of the best locations you can imagine – an old summer camp in the mountains in East Germany) and I only have seen them once since this time.
And last but not least DORNENREICH with whom I am in close contact since the plans for this tour started beginning of the year. Very nice people. I hope that I can work together with them in the future, again…

As time went by everything was plugged in, built up and prepared. My crew did an awesome job, again!
When the first people arrived I had to realize that the new barcode scanner I have bought does not work as well as the old one (which was stolen) because of different quality of the barcode print outs depending on the printer it was printed with – but the new e-Ticket system was great anyway and we got everything flowing after a while. Hope to get the scanner problem fixed until the Secrets Of The Moon show…

FJOERGYN

Speaking of the music… Is there something you can do wrong with a great audience in a packed, nice small club with great sound due to a very good sound engineer? FJOERGYN proved that you can do it even better than just doing a decent job. The audience was really enthusiastic about the music of these charismatic guys who had to concentrate to play their well arranged pagan and folk influenced extreme metal underlayed by a lot of symphonic additions which came from tape. And I have to admit that the guys rocked this evening which was rewarded by the attendees with a great applause and with a rush on their merchandise.

AHAB

Now it was time to slooooooooooow down! With sounds of water as intro AHAB entered the stage to spread their nautik mournfulness. You could see fascinated listeners everywhere in the audience. And it surely was a great show they did – pure funeral doom madness. Have to attest a great job to my guitarist as well. Slowly and heavily the fog was flowing on the stage just like the heavy doom riffs out of the PA. The new stuff from the new “The Divinity of Oceans” album and the old songs were harmonizing very well. The higher amount of clean vocals on the new songs were performed almost perfectly. It is always a pleasure to attend an AHAB show.

DORNENREICH

The headliner of the evening – DORNENREICH – seemed to have an advantage over the other bands judging from the shirts of the visitors. I guess a third of the crowd was wearing a DORNENREICH shirt. And the band knew how to use this advantage. They played a kind of best of set but with some surprises and with a really good sound (better than the last show I attended in Würzburg / Posthallen in March). Their truely loyal fans of course went crazy despite of the temperatures in the club which must have climbed over 40 degrees celsius at this time. Not to mention that the band had to play one extra song.

What an evening. Everything worked out in the end. Fears of the venue being too packed or some other problems turned out to be gratuitous. I am very happy about this success and the bands were too. And like expected they were really crazy about the catering, the club and the atmosphere. I want to say THANK YOU to all the guys in my live crew, to the tour package including sound engineer, light technician, bus driver and everyone who was attending the show!

The Crew

You can find other pictures here: METAL NIGHTS GALLERY

DORNENREICH: Homepage – MySpace – Merchandise
AHAB: Homepage – MySpace – Merchandise
FJOERGYN: Homepage – MySpace – Merchandise