September, 26th – Neckarbischofsheim, Stadthalle – Agoraphobia, Karkadan, Abstinenz, Skepsis, Licksalt

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!

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