Extreme Music Blog

Time is something which is rare for me these days. I still have a handful of live reports to post. But there is also lots of things to prepare for our upcoming releases and of course the shows. One of the shows was happening yesterday. A rude mix of sludge, doom and stoner was meant to hypnotize the attendees.

DOOM DIVISION were the first outfit to make time slow down. Combining elements from Crowbar and Pantera this music is meant to be played live. Heavy riff-oriented metal rolling over you and nailing you to the wall. It is always a pleasure to see these guys on and off stage.

DOOM DIVISION

I have been fighting to get VERSUS THE STILLBORN-MINDED on the billing. There were a lot of troubles but in the end they entered the stage of the Club Zentral as second band. Being not that far from the sound of B.SON they follow the same concept with their live appearance and try to do an intense show from the bottom of their hearts. I would say they succeeded. Very powerful and bass oriented the sometimes very calm songs leave you nothing but distressed wondering about the dense atmosphere.

VERSUS THE STILLBORN-MINDED

The more traditional doomsters MIRROR OF DECEPTION are widely known for organizing the Doom Shall Rise festival. But also musical-wise the band is highly acclaimed. The highlight of the evening was of course the song “Der Student von Ulm” with Swabian lyrics. This 12 minute piece contains the quintessence of the sound of MIRROR OF DECEPTION but also emphasizes the uniqueness of their sound. I advise you to listen to this song on their myspace page and then decide if you like the band or not. For me it was great to see them live after a long time and to finally have them on one of my shows.

MIRROR OF DECEPTION

After the appearance on the Doom Shall Rise festival and the gig with AHAB on the last night of doom I was curious if BLACK SHAPE OF NEXUS could top these shows on part 3 of the Night Of Doom. Accompanied by dark light the band started into an one hour set of pure atmosphere. How can you describe a concert with B.SON? Hard to say. The band starts quite nice with heavy riffs, sound walls and maybe some samples. With the next songs this six-piece is forcing you to pay full attention, getting somehow involved into the music. The intensity increases with every song played. The band seems to get totally lost in its own music. Musicians kneeing on the stage or before the base drums or simply screaming out desperation. Through the fog you can see these guys merging with the tones they play. And so does the audience. Total mind destruction. The band is forced back onto stage and ends the set with an improvised song. Conclusion: Mission accomplished – an eerie touching live experience finished a great and intense evening with four very different bands.  Be sure to be there the next time (November 2010)!

BLACK SHAPE OF NEXUS

There was a lot of talking about the secret warm-up show with OBELYSKKH. There were a lot of people wondering what was so secret about this show. Well, the show with the protagonists OBELYSKKH was not held at the Club Zentral but in the basement of an apartment building not far away from the Club Zentral. There was only one way to get information about the show: you had to visit the “Doomed Souls” forum and “apply” to attend this show. We went to the place after we have finished our work at the club for the first time. This was a nice and very familiar way to get fucked up after midnight…

Links:
BLACK SHAPE OF NEXUS: MySpace – Homepage – Merchandise
MIRROR OF DECEPTION: MySpace – Homepage – Merchandise
VERSUS THE STILLBORN-MINDED: MySpace – Homepage – Merchandise
DOOM DIVISON: MySpace – Homepage – Merchandise
OBELYSKKH: MySpace – Merchandise

Metal Nights Homepage: Event Details – Gallery

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

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…