Extreme Music Blog

My decision to go to the so called SATANS CONVENTION (what a stupid name by the way) was based on the fact that I would reside in Lengerich this weekend anyway.

First shock was the fact that SIX FEET UNDER had cancelled the show. This alone would have been no issue for me because it was in no means one of the bands I wanted to see. But to to me this is a reason to lower the ticket prices. To still ask for 35 Euros for a show where the headliner is missing is a rip-off in my opinion. Including the fact that the

Unfortunately we missed the first three bands TRIOSPHERE, ABIGAIL WILLIAMS and UNLIGHT. But we met our friends from UNLIGHT later who were of course absolutely surprised about my appearance on this festival. Concerning other reports TRIOSPHERE managed to do quite well but did not fit in the billing with their sophisticated power metal music. ABIGAIL WILLIAMS seemed to be a matter of taste. UNLIGHT were claimed to be the best black metal band this evening.

We were quite in time to see the start of DESTRÖYER 666, a band which I wanted to see for ages but always missed. The black thrash mix of the Australian band surely met my taste. To be honest I had expected a bit more stage action from this four piece. Quite nice show and maybe the first highlight for me this evening although I had expected a bit more power.

DESTROYER 666

I have seen GOD DETHRONED already several times and last time was in October with Endstille, Hollenthon and others. As far as I can recall they never had a weak show so far and this should not change on Satans Convention as well. Again, female guitarist Susan was eye candy. But of course a metal show is about the music. GOD DETHRONED covered almost all of their albums and played a powerful set.

GOD DETHRONED

TAAKE singer Hoechst was still in my mind with his misbehaviour the last time TAAKE played in Essen. Showing up with a Swastika on your breast in Germany is not even rudimentary funny. This time he seemed to concentrate on the music instead. But rumors spread that he had made some strange statements in the backstage area which resulted in a close fight which Hoest lost against Schmier from DESTRUCTION. Maybe TAAKE should think about the quality of their performance instead of wasting time with bullshit… this was for sure the worst performance this evening.

Thrash metal veterans DESTRUCTION was a pleasure for my ears after the black metal vacuum cleaner (and do not take me wrong – I like black metal and even like the TAAKE recordings). Hell yeah what a power. I have not seen a strong performance of them for a long time. Maybe it was more powerful this evening than ever before. The audience seemed to agree as there was a circle pit and a lot of headbanging, in one word – enthusiastic responses. And DESTRUCTION enjoyed this show as well. Well done – winner of the evening!

A huge task for ARCH ENEMY to cheer the people up again after this intoxicating thrash metal set. Of course I expected a lot from the guitar front as ARCH ENEMY have two great talented guitar players in their line up. Maybe Michael Amott might be little bit more known due to his work with CARCASS but his younger brother Christopher is a bit more varied and plays insane lead stuff. It is always a blast to see this guy play. Turning up the volume for the (renewed) headliner is a common thing to do but if this leads to a bad sound it might be something you should NOT do. Unfortunately the second case happened to come true this evening. Being really tired and being not able to hear the sole guitar sounds from the mush of sounds made us leave the venue after 3 songs from ARCH ENEMY.

So we went home in an icy winter night with approx. minus 15 degrees Celsius with both, good and bad memories in our mind.

I know that it has been silent for some days again. First I was replacing the server with the NAS which finally arrived Tuesday customizing the whole piece which took about two days. Then surprisingly the power supply fucked up as I wanted to switch over to the UPS. I was so happy before this happened, upgraded the whole net to gigabit LAN.

But let us get back to the music. I want to report about the last shows I attended and will start with the latest which was today. I really had a full schedule these days and it will not stop until Tuesday.

Today it was time to get some old school feeling back into my mind. Why old school? There has not been a big death metal show in the good old Rockfabrik for ages! And it was Cannibal Corpse which I saw there about 10 years ago. Of course some of the old metal heads showed up…

Arriving a bit too late because OBSCURA started quite early at 7 pm I got at least the chance to see some of their songs. I had the Summer Breeze show in mind where the sound was a bit fucked up in my opinion. Maybe it was also because of the fact that a band like OBSCURA is made to play in clubs. Today the sound was better although the guitars were very quiet and hardly to hear sometimes. Anyway it was a pleasure to see them playing mostly songs from their latest output “Cosmogenesis” with a lot of joy and with a technical level of their own (although singer/guitarist Steffen later told me that everyone in the band was about to get really sick). This was a great start for an evening with four very different death metal outfits.

2009 was a great year for Swedish deathers EVOCATION so they had the chance to join this tour as well. To be honest I only saw one song because I have seen the bands so many times the last months that I was not really curious about the show. Additionally the sound today was really weak – no power at all – so I preferred to talk to some friends and have a beer instead. I also met EVOCATION singer Thomas and he was somehow confirming that this was a bad day sound-wise. We met in a quite funny situation. I was talking with some guys from their label Cyclone Empire with whom I work together very closely,  and Thomas seemed to remember me from some extreme festival boozing sessions which I obviously can hardly recall… a really a nice guy – if you are around and see these guys – have a beer with them!

How long was I waiting for this to happen? Back in the times when I used to work as DJ in the Rockfabrik (which must be more than 10 years ago) I have listened a lot to DYING FETUS and now I finally got the possibility to see them live. A friend of mine was later asking how anyone could like this music. I have not found any decent answer. They just kicked my ass like hell! Having in mind their “Destroy the Opposition”, “Killing on Adrenaline” records and the “Grotesque Impalement” EP they just left me without any wishes. I had to go really crazy on them. Bass player Sean Beasely looked like a beast holding a full scale bass guitar which looked like a toy in his hands. He shared the vocals with guitar player John and Tray showed up from time to time behind his drums to cheer up the crowd. Their precisely played high speed death grind resulted in the first circle pit of the evening, some crowd surfers were flying off the stage and the people went mad. Great live band – finally I got the proof that I missed something – nothing to add!

Rockfabrik and CANNIBAL CORPSE have something like a long-term relationship. Seems like they like to play in this venue. As I guessed from the CORPSE shirts every second attendee was wearing everyone was waiting for the real headliners. Maybe I have seen them live too often, maybe I should have listened a lot more to the last albums, but I  simply cannot say more than that it was a good show with a moderate sound. But it was also nothing less. The venue was really crowded and the people really enjoyed the headliners of this evening. After all those years some songs being censored CANNIBAL CORPSE could perform titles like “Hammer smashed face” or “Fucked with a knife” which was of corpse dedicated to all the women out there.

As conclusion I can state that this was a very nice death metal evening with 4 killer bands, maybe the perfect mix of different styles. I have to add that the audience was really great and caring this day which I miss on some concerts with extreme music these days…

I will keep you posted with new goodies and reports every day of this week and try to get some pictures for the reports – promise!

The links:
CANNIBAL CORPSE: Homepage – MySpace – Merchandise
DYING FETUS: Homepage – MySpace – Merchandise
EVOCATION: Homepage – MySpace – Merchandise
OBSCURA: Homepage – MySpace – Merchandise

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!