Wave Gotik Treffen 2008 - Introduction
It was the Wave Gotik Treffen with the badest weather in it's history: 30 dregrees transformed welldone make up into water, patchoullie aroma into sweat smellings and latex corsets into mobile saunas. The other people (the native) could only laugh about these dark guys; they wore shorts and t-shirts while we attracted perfectly, dressed in black. However, that's what I call fetish! May they laugh, they'll never understand! (Sometimes I think I won't never understand too - however). I was curious about the fact that the girls at the Wave Gotik Treffen weren't suffering a circulatory collapse one by one. Well, the male gothics had there fun tough, who doesn't like to look onto that sweating, latex-dressed girls, always with an erotic red shimmer at the cheeks, short of breath?
Like every year there was a big traffic jam at the roads to Leipzig. I started about three hours earlier than I did last year, but still arrived at the same time. Unbelievable! Time seems to be unimportant, when one decides to to join that gloomy dream which people call Wave Gotik Treffen. In fact, it's a dream: four days vacation of your job, of your life, of your sorrows. Four days without the rules of reality.
As usual there were billion of people before the sale of tickets. It was a long and slowly moving snake made out of gothics, horror rockers and dark punks. Lucky as I was, I got my ticket very quickly at the press counter. Under the glances of thousands I crept quickly into Agra, hopefully to get my photo pass without problems.
Wave Gotik Treffen 2008 - FRIDAY, 09.05.2008
After a while I entered the concert hall at the Agra, where the first band I wanted to watch allready has played: DAS ICH. Rumours said they were a very genius Live band. This evening they rocked too and I really was disappointed that I missed them. No problem, I thought and watched the last songs of SIGUE SIGUE SPUTNIK.
That band was big in the 80thies. Some evil tongues are telling that they did care more about there makeup than about their music. Tons of hair styled like a tower reaching into the sky, piercings, tattoos and futuristic sounds were new to the days now gone. Well, this evening I didn't see the glammer they had before ages - they were mixed badly and played without pressure. After their latest album they should have splitted up, so I cannot say who of the originals played there. It's a fact that the vocalist didn't hit the right tunes. Bruce Dickinson doesn't do so, but that guy had an incredible show where he runs hundreds of metres, while the vocalist of SIGUE SIGUE SPUTNIK just sang very badly. There was no live show and was getting bored. The bad mix crowned that performance. No compression, no equalizing, nothing what could helped that very problematic sound at the Agra hall. Instead of that, the mixer tried to help the vocalist and put tons of reverbs at the vocals. Scary. This effect returned after 300ms from the Agras ceiling and fucked my ears up. No Sirs, nothing for me. Meanwhile I have the opinion that no 80thies band should play at this hall. The music is not composed for that hall, that's all. Synths are sounding thin, which is a problem with the high ceiling and the echo: you hear everything. A guitar driven band should not have these problems. OK, not photos, I was too late, but I saw another cult band.
UNHEILIG was the next band. The sound has been improved LOTS. Slightly compression on the guitars made everything as tight as hell (like a smoothy, eh?). Der Graf, vocalist of UNHEILIG is an extremely charismatic person and a very good vocalist. I was not curious about the thousands of girls in the first rows. A perfectly live show did the rest. Most people I saw were really glad with that performance and UNHEILIG has won their game. I am not a huge fan of this kind of music, but I have to admit that these musicians are highly professional. All songs are well composed and use excitement and speed at best places. Some songs have parts at which people can sing along, that's perfect for many. Check that band out, if like that music. If you don't like but have nothing else to do you should check UNHEILIG out too.
The DRAGONS sound like JOY DIVISION, someone said. That was reason enough to move Dragonson to the Werk II, my favourite location in Leipzig. I had to check out this statement. Cause the name is widely used, here is the direct link to that band: http://www.dragons.cc/ .
As the band started, I thought the gates of heaven have opened. Crystalclear sound, cool and rocking songs with quite a simple structure (this is good, guys!), melancholy and very, very good vocalist who threw lots of roses into the audience. The current CD is HERE ARE THE ROSES, and I guess that is why. All females were glad, and the feminine males were too. JOY DIVISION isn't too far, but I listened to the CD later and DRAGONS have their own style.
It would be unfair to compare them with the DIVISION. DRAGONS are well-done alternative rock. I am glad they have their own identity. Who needs something else? The show was one of a rock band. Anthony Tombling (great name, by the way) sang with impressing gestures, full of emotions. He dramatized his songs, threw himself at the bottom in extacy and yeah, this man had his fun. I bought instantly the CD, my first at this festival. As mentioned, the mix was perfectly and all the synths were integrated very well. One of the best mixes this weekend tough. I had the feeling that DRAGONS had their own mixing engineer, so perfectly was everything. Guitars were very brilliant and the drums came with high pressure and crispy (good god, do native speaker say that like this??). If the DRAGONS from the UK return to germany, I will be there, and it is highly recommended that you visit them too, if they are near you. Buy the CD and learn to sing all the songs, that's what I did ;-)
Wave Gotik Treffen 2008 - SATURDAY, 10.05.2008
"The people who live in the east, especially Leizip, are other beeing than we are", my father told me when I was young. I have been in Leipzig for many times now. From time to time my fathers heritage come true. This year was one that years. I am talking of my dinner which I should take before all the concerts started. There are many names in germany for "grilled chicken". I don't bore you to death, especially if you don't speak german, but the name you have to use in Leipzig is "Broiler", and tell you what, this is strange, even for a german native speaker. However, Leipzig natives seem to have some kind of ritual before eating that chicken. They punt around and and use their arms as wings, making strange noises. It seems they honour the chicken before they eat it. However, we germans love the leipziger natives for doing this dance. If you want to check that out, go to the Pfeffinger Str., directly on the way from the city to the agra and get to the next chicken grill station you can get. If you are a lucky one, you'll see that scary ritual.
Well, this time i visited the Werk II again. I didn't know where to go, but some friends recommended me to visit CAUDA PAVONIS, when I am hungry for some Batcave. I am. Always. I love the hair of these batcave guys, i love that scary music and hey, I didn't know that band. So nothing to loose, I went straight to Werk II - CAUDA PAVONIS.
CAUDA PAVONIS started and immediatly you knew that these band is long in business. They know what they are doing. Everybody has incredible fun on stage, an vocalist Su tells storys and jokes like doing that every evening. That was necessary, cause this band had technical problems starting from the beginning. I think they lost 3 or 4 minutes of play time, which is really bad at a festival. Just the last two bands can have some extra time. But there was Su, and she managed that problems at a professional level. She talked, had fun, and suddenly everything was ready again. She declared the first song for ended and the next song started. You had the feeling that the musicians live for their music, but the presentation was a bit strange. One could have thought that these band should have a bit more rehearsals. But i was quite sure that the problems here weren't the rehearsals. I am the opinion that the monitors at the stage didn't do a good job. 
I guess that cause the PA speakers had problems too and you could hear some very evil noises and scratches at the left middle box of the high tuners. This was horrible! From that point of time I knew that the band may have problems to hear themself on stage. Well, that speaker problem normally occurs when the stereo output is oversteered or the box is simply damaged. The following bands didn't have that problem and I guessed that this box was oversteered. I was near to the mixer when I recognized this. I would have had panic, but this guy was as cool as ice. He didn't do anything. Was this sabotage? I don't know. There were quite relaxed parts in the set, everybody must have heared that. Well. Back to the review. I liked everything these band has done. The songs are great and tight and groovy. They had a fine show and after the gig I went to buy the CD "WARS AND MASQUERADES" which I like very much by now. Hopefully they return with less technical problems! Check them out!
The follow up, NEW DAYS DELAY, always remind me to Nina Hagen, Nena and a strange kind of punk. Insa Knapp was the vocalist of this band and could have be the proud winner of the title "Very new Wave of funky and fucking cool modern oldschool Punkmusic". She has a talent that you love her when you see here. She is very charismatic and dominated the scene. Sometimes you had the feeling that she was overwhelmed by the lots of people, giving her glory. Sometimes you felt she was shy and small child was looking out of her eyes. However, she is both - shy and overwhelmed, just nice. 
She always did small jokes when she announced the next song. These jokes were very good if you know what band NEW DAYS DELAY is and if you know that latest CD. NEW DAYS DELAY always have a good portion of irony and humour. If you have seen that band for the first time, you may have been confused about that :-) However, you could hear classics like STEREOKATASTROPHE and VERMUTLICH HYSTERISCH and other. These songs rocked me down to hell, great stuff. 
I was near to dance (the last band which made me dance was IMPALED NAZARENE). All songs were played tight and precise. There were no errors, no mistakes. However, what Chuck Norris calls the 100%-roundhouse-Kick wasn't here. That felt strange to me, this band is a live band a play very often. They have 10 years of history and are pros in my eyes. However, no problem. I had my fun and many others had too. You should really put your eye on them. If you get a chance to see them with a smaller audience, take it. They may be very cool then!
Next band was GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG. I remembered the concert at the Wave gotik treffen in 2006. Same stage, same time. Same music. The live performance has increased. But after a while, maybe the half of the set I was bored again. It was strange. A good band, a good show, much darkness and fog, but.... hm some kind of boring. It remembered me strongly to CLAN OF XYMOX, sorry, can't help. They have synths and guitars, well good, but at least I couldn't stand it: all songs have the same frequences. For the listener every song seems similar to the other. No surprises. No one of that songs did go very deep. One beauty element is just to less for forty minutes of live music. No excitement was there, and the speed of the song isn't something I call "wooohooo". They are all good musicians tough, and I would like to have them at the music university, studying music theory. Maybe Mozart helps:"the hardest in music is the speed".
What a difference the past show was to the "progressive batcave" guys from TRAGIC BLACK. Imagine the following: announcement, band enters stage, audience wents cracy and band is rocking like hell. TRAGIC BLACK mix up that modern synthesizer sound with totally oldschool music. Scary. Their clothes have that mixture too: like this a punk must look nowadays. They combine worlds, and that is good. The songs go very deep and have lots of layers. People seem to love the contrast to the past synthetic band and wake up again. 
MAD HATTER is one of these songs you can call a hit and hits you like a boot in your face. Great stuff, really. Most of you are not interested in the following, but I have to tell you: this band act professional, can't tell. They are posing into the camera for the photographers to get perfect photos. If you buy a CD, you get patches and stickers for free. However, I feel this is not the end of TRAGIC BLACKs musical carreer. They just have started and it seems they want the world domination... ok, let's give it to them!
The evening wasn't over. I relaxed with some bottles of wine and then i went to the Kohlrabizirkus and watched TIAMAT. Kohlrabizirkus - this is the most difficult location for the mixing engineers at the Wave Gotik Treffen. If you hit the snare drum, it's sound returns after 700ms from the ceiling. Dubious fun. Well, the Wave Gotik Treffen has learned and seem to know now about the problems of this hall. This evening you could listen to the work of very lucky or very good mixining egineers (or both). I guess they just were very good. They just gave enough pressure to the sound and so they could push the returning noise back to the ceiling. You had a very good sound then when you standed in the middle of the hall. At the edges this didn't work, but hey, who wanted to see TIAMAT from an edge? Well then - TIAMAT had a very good mix, and I am glad to say that this wasn't all which were good. TIAMAT is a band with lots of history. They started with the name TREBLINKA, performing heavy black metal. Then they switched their name to TIAMAT, and with time music become more dreamy. CLOUDS for example, is a heavy piece with lots of dreamy stuff. Great CD tough. You can listen to some gothic influences there. Then came that dubious wave of gothic metal. Some love it. Some just ignore that word - gothic metal. At this point of time they released WILDHONEY, the best album they every wrote. The went famous with this CD. The follow-up releases couldn't bring them that fame again. 
The second song this evening was from that WILDHONEY album - all the audience was singing HOOOONEYMOOOOOOON!! This song got everybody at his balls and they dominated the scene. TIAMAT are full-time pros and you really hear that. They don't move very much at the stage but they control their fans. Just a few can do this. All songs were played tight and very precise. Wonderful. I can't tell you why TIAMAT suddenly brought up a very old and very heavy song with double-bass attacks and high speed riffing. For me the atmosphere was shattered a bit. I expected some songs of CLOUDS maybe. But that one surprised me. I am not sure, but maybe it was from SUMERIAN CRY? Sounded like Black Metal. Follow up was a very lightweighted classic guitar song. I was glad that I heared that WILDHONEY song before, so I wasn't too much dissapointed. I was confused. I sat on the fence about that gig. Good like hell or dissapointing? I can't tell. I left the hall later. I guess they had to much various genres in their set. As I arrived home, drinking some wine again, I suddenly knew that I have missed one tour in my life: it was the WILDHONEY tour.
Wave Gotik Treffen 2008 - SUNDAY, 11.05.2008
Sunday I decided to visit again the Agra hall. Difficult sound enviroment, again, but I had expierenced some surprises here in the past. I entered while FLIEHENDE STÜRME played their last two songs. Melancholic punk. It was interesting, but well, I was to late. I was afraid that FLIEHENDE STÜRME may not go very deep with their whole set, but I cannot say that after just two songs. I will check em out next time I get the chance.
Some people were confused by the name C.D.1334. It's a long story: in fact this is CHRISTIAN DEATH, the second. After Rozz Williams left CHRISTIAN DEATH Valor, his friend, continued. He soon made Williams angry cause he reserved all rights to the name CHRISTIAN DEATH. Some fans saw Williams betrayed and refused to listen to Valor-CHRISTIAN DEATH. Long time passed and some old comrades of Rozz Williams and eremited CHRISTIAN DEATH Members founded a second CHRISTIAN DEATH band. They called it C.D.1334 cause they didn't want to confront with the rights reserved by Valor. This is the Band around Eva O.. In my opinion this is the CHRISTIAN DEATH band which is next to Rozz Williams. However, good reasons to check em out. It was scary to expierence the vibes coming from C.D.1334. It was weird. The music is full of errors, dirty and creepy. Altough this is a fact, it was perfect. If you are directly in front of Eva O., you just can ask: who old is this girl?? And after that: maybe she is dead? Songs were perfect but presented in a way, some of these music-must-be-presented-error-free-musicians must have had a heart attack when they were listening. 
There was a deep emotional binding between the audience and the band. I can't tell you more, and there are no reasons to do. Why? You may know the songs, everybody knows. And the power these band has to dominate the audience cannot be telled. It must be expierenced. The announcment told us that these may be one of the last gigs C.D.1334 perform. Eva O. wrote at their website taht this project is some kind of an farewell for Rozz. If that was a funeral gig, than this was the most perfect funeral gig Rozz could have. I believe that you can appreciate this concert only if you grew up with CHRISTIAN DEATH, or got deep into it later. This concert wasn't only the funeral for that C.D.1334 project, it was also a death-watch for Rozz Williams. Damn cool that I could see this.
A totally different world entered stage when SAMSAS TRAUM was beginning. The drummers back was inured not long ago, but you wouldn't think it if you didn't knew. SAMSAS TRAUM was good for a surprise. Extremly compressed guitar sounds made a very fat and thick sound. This made the SAMSAS TRAUM concert to a plain Heavy-Metal-Concert. When Alexander cried "Let you hair flow" he supported my impression. Flying hair - headbaning - that wasn't what I expected. Even songs like "Stromausfall im Herzspital" which wasn't metal-related in any ways sounded like a heavy-metal song. That all wasn't bad but it was surprising. Bad was that the mixers compressed not only the guitars but the whole stereo sum (guessing!!). 
This leaded us to the fact, that the higher frequences - like synthesizers - were cut off. You could hear lots of guitars, a very dry drum with nailhead kick and the powerful voice of vocalist Alexander. Perfect for metal. But did these guys really wanted to have a heavy metal show at the Wave Gotik Treffen? It has been gone better slowly to the end of the set. However, most fans could have their fun I guess. Hope the band had their fun too.
Compression went loose and LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT climbed the stage. This is a band which means very much to me. They had the usual performance and a videoshow, which was very impressing and emotional. I liked it. Impressing songs have been played very perfect. A dreamy set with imposing effect. Altough Sean didn't hit all tunes correctly, this wasn't bad. In fact i felt this helped this scary atomsphere more than it was bad. This band is one of the best acts I know, even when they haven't too much releases. The mix was very dynamic and would brougth all audiophiles tears into their eyes: this was quite an oldschool mix! One had the feeling that this band doesn't need help from the mixing engineer. Nobody could have destroyed these songs. For me, one of the highlights of 2008 Wave Gotik Treffen. Even a few hours later I could hear the wonderful harmonies LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT created. I knew I wasn't the only one, it was clear when I saw into the faces of the people around me.
Wave Gotik Treffen 2008 - MONDAY, 12.05.2008
I guess everybody stood up with some kind of melancholic vein this morning. Some of us left Leipzig in the early hours and tried heavily to surpress their exhaustion. This year for me everything was different, cause I stayed to watch some bands. That was bands I could have looked at at the last Wave Gotik Treffen, but didn't. Now was the time.
The BLOODSUCKING ZOMBIES FROM OUTER SPACE opened and the Werk II suddenly was full. One glance at the stage showed why: into one row all musicians of this band were positioned. Including drums, of course, cause drummer Dead "Richy" Gein is not only founder, drummer and biggest fan of the BLOODSUCKING ZOMBIES FROM OUTER SPACE but also responsible for the vocals. With scary accessoires like severed arms at his instrument or open wounds in his face he and his band gave a rocking hell to the audience. Horrorpunk at it's finest! It was fascinating to see how Dead Gein used his instrument - singing, drumming, posing. Only if you would have seen that, you can believe that this unusual line up works perfectly. 
Precise and grooving fills proved in any case that this guy is not overcharged. Ok, he didn't play very complex rolls from a drummers theory book, but hey, this is horror punk! Rock'n Roll guys, and this band rocked! His colleagues Rev. Bloodbath, Mr. Evilize and Dr. Schreck did the rest to make everybody clear that this band is a cool one. Even when the big drum used a lot of the space on stage, the guys had something like show. Not so much movements like you are used to get from rock band, but there was a show and that rocked. However, BLOODSUCKING ZOMBIES FROM OUTER SPACE are a very funny band and prove that good horror punk can even come from such a beautyful city like Wien. Who likes fun, horror-trash and an entertaining evening should check out this facetious zombie-guys immediatly.
THE SPOOK was a bit dissapointing to me. In the twinkling of an eye the hall was a bit more empty. The aura of the band was a bit strange. It seems to say, that this day wasn't a good day to play live. Maybe THE SPOOK doesn't want to play such early. It was contrary to what happened before. However, the outfit of the selftitled grave-rocker was vrey nice. One of these guys looked like undead elvis presley with one metre high black hair. All the musicians where very sly. Some of the songs you would have remembered, they can been heared at several samplers. They are pushing forward, and the mix is straight and good too, but they couldn't catch me. After a while I was bored. It was a strange feeling to me, cause I can't find anything which could be called bad, but they simply didn't rock to my ears. THE SPOOK was one of these bands i really wanted to see, but after expieriencing this left the hall and ate some sausages. Well, I am undead of course, but I was human before years and so I am driven by my likings. Mr. Freud knew that before years.
Nobody knows STELLAR CORPSES in germany. But in the US they are always on tour and I guess they are wellknown by everybody. This may be enough for an tour through germany thsi april. Of course they played at the Wave Gotik Treffen. STELLAR CORPSES are the long awaited new discovery of the Wave Gotik Treffen 2008. They have a contrabass, whos player looks like James Dean, a hurrican on the guitars (who seem to think that it isn't necessary to keep the guitar constantly nearer to his body than 30cm), a damn good voice and a heavy and tight drummer. The rock'n roll of that people rocks like hell. 
Call it Psychobilly, Horrorbilly or whatever, STELLAR CORPSES are an unbelievable cool rock band. At the moment they unfortuneatly have released only one 6 track ep. I bought that, and what you hear there, you can see on stage. They dominate the scene like no others. This band is really excellent, have a very great and imposing show and at the Wave Gotik Treffen an incredible and excellent sound. Nobody who likes this genre should miss that band.
DER FLUCH ended this evening. Another scary rock band which had a gangster outfit from the 20ies and funny songs. They call them B-Movie songs, and they are right. Lyrics are as simple and straight forward as Night of the Living dead or other movies in that genre, and you simply have to smile about it. Even when the lyrics are so funny, the musicians presented everything in a serious manner and I really think they have done a very good job. 
If I would play in that band, I can imagine that I laugh to death when performing this songs. It's a very special kind of humour, and I am think that more people should have it. Classic songs like "Halb Mensch Halb Tier" (translated: half human half animal) tell you something like:"I am a young werewolf, half human half animal, nobody understands it, killing is fun". This is gothic humour, really. If you don't like DER FLUCH and that sense of humour, you probably a super-gothic who NEVER laughs. It was a funny, weird and well performed set. With the less instruments it was mixed very good and cause of the lack of complexity in the songs perfectly played. Atmosphere was great, music is fine and lyrics funny - my dark heart, what else would you want? I bought the CD even if I am not a fan of... humour! ;-) 
It was the last tram drive this evening, and the tram was allready empty. It was great, as usual. When the more than 20.000 gothics are gone, you recognize the native psychos. "Are you thinking i am an autonomic!!!" the guy without shird cried loudly, drunken like hell, "If a woman want to fuck me, it will be different!!" he told us then. Well, sure. He doesn't care about his jeans, which didn't completly cover his ass anymore. No problem, nobody didn't care about him. Nobody really like autonomics, do we? Confused about the sudden arrival of reality I left the tram and tried to find some friends of mine, who awaited me with some dark beer people named Köstritzer. At the Wave Gotik Treffen 2008 were no looser; but some winners. The very best act was STELLAR CORPSES. They surprised me and I will follow the path of that band. LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT won the price as "Best Big Act". BLOODSUCKING ZOMBIES FROM OUTER SPACE got the price as "most strangest act ever" for the insane line up and the funny show. NEW DAYS DELAY make me proud, cause they are simply great and they live in germany. It's a bit more easy to attend concerts of NEW DAYS DELAY, so you will see me there, if they play in the south.
The Wave Gotik Treffen remains big, will be bigger and damn, even when other people think it was bullshit, for me it was great and will stay great! 2009 are only 260 days left... 359... 358...