Nemesis To Go - Live: Drop Dead Festival 2007

Drop Dead Festival 2007
Rock Café, Prague
Day 2: Friday November 2 2007

Bands in order of appearance:
Moldig
Los Carniceros Del Norte
Twisted Nerve
Ausgang
Rubella Ballet
Sex Gang Children

Drop Dead cranks itself back into action for its second day, and the first band we clap eyes on is Moldig - a name that frankly doesn't inspire confidence. Moldig? Isn't that what happens to cheese when you leave it at the back of the fridge for six months?

Fortunately, Moldig are better than their name. Yet another power trio (this really is the festival that invokes the power of three), Moldig comprise a drummer, a guitarist with incongruous heavy metal freak-out tendencies, and a bassist/vocalist who scrunches up her face like Woody Allen doing one of his anxious and flustered expressions as she sings.

I don't know if this is because the subject matter of the songs is particularly woeful, or if it's just the way she habitually looks at life, but at least it's better than leaping out at the audience with a cry of 'Hello Prague! Howyadoin'!. No such showbiz bonhomie for Moldig. We're in a somewhat more downbeat and introspective zone here.

Moldig have a rather neat Skeletal Family-style take on 80s-ish post-punkisms, and even that squalling metal guitar, incongruous though it is, fits in somehow. I'm left with the impression of a band that's not afraid to mash up their influences and create something cool out of the resulting debris. My initial misgivings are duly kicked into touch. Yep, I like this stuff. Verdict: a band that's quite a lot better than its name.

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Drop Dead has always been more than just a deathrock festival, but now, as the first flush of the second wave of deathrock dies away (I do hope you're following me here) I think it's fair to say that the event is shifting ground rather more towards the general post-punk area.

It's actually quite rare to find a full-on fishnet 'n' mohawk band at Drop Dead these days, but as if to prove that there's life in the Specimen side of things yet, here come Los Carniceros Del Norte with their battered Batcavery in full effect.

Before the motley assortment of goth-punks on stage have even struck their first note, you just know they'll be in the business of whacking out a 100mph punkzoid racket. Sure enough, they do just that. The band hammers through a set of fast 'n' furious screamers and reamers, with the frontman - attired, naturally, in full-on Batcave regalia - leaping and gurning like a crazed thing.

It's a mad ride, sure enough, but the trouble is, it's also a very familiar ride these days. I've seen umpteen Batcave-frenzy bands in my time, and while Los Carniceros Del Norte do their thing with impressive levels of enthusiasm, they don't really take things forward creatively.

In a way, the performance serves to emphasise just why the deathrock revival that kicked off with such promise a few years back ended up hitting its head on the ceiling and couldn't get any further. The more deathrock you are, the more tightly you're bound by the limitations of the genre. Los Carniceros Del Norte are very, very deathrock indeed. And, ultimately, very limited.

The Drop Dead Festival might have shifted itself to Europe, but in one sense it remains a distinctly American event. I've remarked before on the almost fetishistic devotion with which 80s-vintage British post-punk bands are regarded in the USA, and this strange quasi-religious phenomenon has been duly exported to Prague along with the rest of the Drop Dead paraphernalia.

Although the festival bill includes several British bands, they are all old-skoolers. Contemporary British artists, the bands of now, are nowhere to be seen. That's an odd omission, for the UK is positively seething with post-punk Twisted Nerve inspired creativity at present. For the Drop Dead Festival to ignore all this new UK talent, while readily giving stage time to new bands from Germany, the USA, and elsewhere, is downright daft. It's left to the heroes of yesteryear to fly the flag for dear old Blighty, and here comes one such bunch now - Twisted Nerve.

I think I remember seeing Twisted Nerve back in the 80s, possibly at the Fulham Greyhound in London. My memory is a little hazy on these details, you understand - to invoke my standard get-out clause, if I'd known that the 80s British alternative music scene was going to be the subject of such obsessive interest two decades or more into the future, I would've paid a bit more attention and got a lot less pissed.

What I can tell you is that the present day incarnation of Twisted Nerve has all the belligerent confidence of a band that's been round the block, taken its fair share of knocks, and is still in the ring, ready to take on all-comers. The blokes in the band are hardcore, and know the score. In fact, they probably wrote the score in the first place. The music packs a mighty wallop.

Thumping boot-to-the-gut alternorock workouts are the name of the game, everything nailed to basslines that rumble like tube trains. In a way, you can tell that Twisted Nerve fought their way around the British gig circuit back in the rough, tough, and often violent 80s. They're graduates of the school of hard knocks in a way that more recent bands, who've come up in more civilized times, are not. A crash and bash through the Velvet Underground's 'White Light, White Heat' tops out the set, and the bulldozer nihilism of the song fits the Twisted Nerve aesthetic perfectly.

It wouldn't be the Drop Dead Festival without Ausgang prominently positioned somewhere on the bill. This band is one of the event's regulars, and while it's always good to absorb a bit of the old Ausgang energy juice, it must be said that their appearances are getting a bit too regular. Tonight, the band Ausgang give us their regular slam through the regular repertoire of old songs ('Fat Vigilante' is still belligerently corpulent) and not-quite-so-old songs ('Big Big Love' is as big as ever).

We also get the regular visuals (frontman Max strips from a three-piece suit to a vest as the set progresses) in full effect. All of which is effective enough, and for people who have not previously seen the band, Ausgang certainly make an impact.

But I have seen the band before, several times since their comeback a few years ago - most of those times, as it happens, at Drop Dead events. And it's becoming uncomfortably obvious that Ausgang basically knock out the same-old, same-old every time. I suppose you could say that the band doesn't really need to do anything fresh - the old songs still pack a punch, the deathrockers are still enthusiastic, and I dare say most of 'em probably don't even want anything new. The more Ausgang lean on their 80s-vintage songbook, the better the 80s-obsessives like it.

Ausgang can simply churn out the golden oldies, confident that the band's position as revered heroes of the sacred Old Days is unassailable. Those regular Drop Dead bookings will probably keep on coming. I'm probably the only awkward bugger in the entire Rock Café who would like the band to show a bit of interest in the future. Well, so be it. I'm an awkward bugger and proud of it. The past can be re-visited, but the future is up for grabs. I say this: grab it, gentlemen, grab it.

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Well, they're certainly emptying the vaults tonight. We continue the theme of British Bands Of Yesteryear with a sudden explosion of dayglo, which resolves itself into Rubella Ballet.

Always the colourful misfits in the early 80s anarcho-punk pack, Rubella Ballet bucked the trend of monochrome clothes and dourly nihilistic rants that were the usual fare in this area with a bright, flourescence-to-the-fore image and songs which combined tribal punk energy with a definite pop sensibility. Why, they even had tunes.

And tonight we discover that they still do. Like Twisted Nerve, you can tell that Rubella Ballet honed their art in the 80s, when times were tough, audiences were picky, and any band that wanted to get ahead could not rely on the safety net of a sympathetic scene-crowd, primed and ready to dig anything that hit the right buttons. Back then, you had to be good. If you weren't, you could expect to dodge flying bottles.

Sharp and edgy, shot through with guitar like smashed glass, the essential accessibility of the songs is built upon the rolling thunder of tribal drums, rumbling like a stampede of wild horses is just about to burst over the hill. Yep, Rubella Ballet show they've still got the chops and they're still fast off the blocks. Zillah fronts the band like the warrior queen of dayglo, all movement and colour. The band's defiantly different stance, which set them apart in the early days, makes them a surprisingly contemporary act now.

As if to emphasise that it's not all just punk rock, the big finish is 'Emotional Blackmail', a swirling epic that builds to a peak and then winds itself down to a flurry of reverb-soaked drums as the band leave the stage, one by one. Tribal dub frenzy in the area. That does the right stuff for me.

It's a mighty long way from Brixton in the 1980s to Prague in the twenty-first century, and the route the Sex Gang Children have taken to get from there to here is a long and winding road, with more than a few potholes and detours along the way.

The band of today features Andi Sex Gang - of course - and an assortment of musicians that includes, on a guitar apiece, his long-term collaborator Kevin Matthews and Selfish Cunt's Matthew Saw. Andi himself is swathed in a coat of military cut and a forage cap that rises to a point: when he strikes an attitude against the lights he looks like a triangle. Sex Gang Children But then, doubtless Andi would remark that it's all part of the visual geometry. The show is the thing, and when Andi Sex Gang is on stage that's exactly what we get.

Playing with a raw energy and a certain glam swagger, the band rip it up and throw it down like they have something to prove - nobody's in the business of coasting through the hits here. The set ranges widely and wildly through the Sex Gang songbook - from 'Song And Legend' to 'Alien Baby' and beyond - and I'm encouraged to note the newer songs go down equally as well as the old classics.

In a way, it's the covers that define the band: Edith Piaf's 'Les Amants D'un Jour' and the old Poison Girls song 'I've Done It All Before' sound like natural Sex Gang songs - and who but Andi Sex Gang, I ask you, could cover songs by such diverse artists as Edith Piaf and Poison Girls and make it all flow so naturally?

Sex Gang Children might qualify as yet another in Drop Dead's inexhaustible supply of Old British Bands, but there's no suggestion here that the band is propping itself up with its own history. Sex Gang Children retain that vital spark.

Essential links:

Moldig: MySpace
Los Carniceros Del Norte: Website | MySpace
Twisted Nerve: MySpace
Ausgang: Website | MySpace
Rubella Ballet: Website | MySpace
Sex Gang Children: Website | MySpace

Drop Dead Festival: Website | MySpace

For day 3 of the Drop Dead Festival, go here.

For more photos from the Drop Dead Festival, find the bands by name here.


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Drop Dead Festival 2007 Rock Café, Prague Day 2: Friday November 2 2007 Bands in order of appearance: Moldig Los Carniceros Del Norte Twisted Nerve Ausgang Rubella Ballet Sex Gang Children Drop Dead cranks itself back into action for its second day, and the first band we clap eyes on is Moldig - a name that frankly doesn't inspire confidence. Moldig? Isn't that what happens to cheese when you leave it at the back of the fridge for six months? Fortunately, Moldig are better than their name. Yet another power trio (this really is the festival that invokes the power of three), Moldig comprise a drummer, a guitarist with incongruous heavy metal freak-out tendencies, and a bassist/vocalist who scrunches up her face like Woody Allen doing one of his anxious and flustered expressions as she sings. I don't know if this is because the subject matter of the songs is particularly woeful, or if it's just the way she habitually looks at life, but at least it's better than leaping out at the audience with a cry of 'Hello Prague! Howyadoin'!. No such showbiz bonhomie for Moldig. We're in a somewhat more downbeat and introspective zone here. Moldig have a rather neat Skeletal Family-style take on 80s-ish post-punkisms, and even that squalling metal guitar, incongruous though it is, fits in somehow. I'm left with the impression of a band that's not afraid to mash up their influences and create something cool out of the resulting debris. My initial misgivings are duly kicked into touch. Yep, I like this stuff. Verdict: a band that's quite a lot better than its name. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Drop Dead has always been more than just a deathrock festival, but now, as the first flush of the second wave of deathrock dies away (I do hope you're following me here) I think it's fair to say that the event is shifting ground rather more towards the general post-punk area. It's actually quite rare to find a full-on fishnet 'n' mohawk band at Drop Dead these days, but as if to prove that there's life in the Specimen side of things yet, here come Los Carniceros Del Norte with their battered Batcavery in full effect. Before the motley assortment of goth-punks on stage have even struck their first note, you just know they'll be in the business of whacking out a 100mph punkzoid racket. Sure enough, they do just that. The band hammers through a set of fast 'n' furious screamers and reamers, with the frontman - attired, naturally, in full-on Batcave regalia - leaping and gurning like a crazed thing. It's a mad ride, sure enough, but the trouble is, it's also a very familiar ride these days. I've seen umpteen Batcave-frenzy bands in my time, and while Los Carniceros Del Norte do their thing with impressive levels of enthusiasm, they don't really take things forward creatively. In a way, the performance serves to emphasise just why the deathrock revival that kicked off with such promise a few years back ended up hitting its head on the ceiling and couldn't get any further. The more deathrock you are, the more tightly you're bound by the limitations of the genre. Los Carniceros Del Norte are very, very deathrock indeed. And, ultimately, very limited. The Drop Dead Festival might have shifted itself to Europe, but in one sense it remains a distinctly American event. I've remarked before on the almost fetishistic devotion with which 80s-vintage British post-punk bands are regarded in the USA, and this strange quasi-religious phenomenon has been duly exported to Prague along with the rest of the Drop Dead paraphernalia. Although the festival bill includes several British bands, they are all old-skoolers. Contemporary British artists, the bands of now, are nowhere to be seen. That's an odd omission, for the UK is positively seething with post-punk inspired creativity at present. For the Drop Dead Festival to ignore all this new UK talent, while readily giving stage time to new bands from Germany, the USA, and elsewhere, is downright daft. It's left to the heroes of yesteryear to fly the flag for dear old Blighty, and here comes one such bunch now - Twisted Nerve. I think I remember seeing Twisted Nerve back in the 80s, possibly at the Fulham Greyhound in London. My memory is a little hazy on these details, you understand - to invoke my standard get-out clause, if I'd known that the 80s British alternative music scene was going to be the subject of such obsessive interest two decades or more into the future, I would've paid a bit more attention and got a lot less pissed. What I can tell you is that the present day incarnation of Twisted Nerve has all the belligerent confidence of a band that's been round the block, taken its fair share of knocks, and is still in the ring, ready to take on all-comers. The blokes in the band are hardcore, and know the score. In fact, they probably wrote the score in the first place. The music packs a mighty wallop. Thumping boot-to-the-gut alternorock workouts are the name of the game, everything nailed to basslines that rumble like tube trains. In a way, you can tell that Twisted Nerve fought their way around the British gig circuit back in the rough, tough, and often violent 80s. They're graduates of the school of hard knocks in a way that more recent bands, who've come up in more civilized times, are not. A crash and bash through the Velvet Underground's 'White Light, White Heat' tops out the set, and the bulldozer nihilism of the song fits the Twisted Nerve aesthetic perfectly. It wouldn't be the Drop Dead Festival without Ausgang prominently positioned somewhere on the bill. This band is one of the event's regulars, and while it's always good to absorb a bit of the old Ausgang energy juice, it must be said that their appearances are getting a bit too regular. Tonight, the band give us their regular slam through the regular repertoire of old songs ('Fat Vigilante' is still belligerently corpulent) and not-quite-so-old songs ('Big Big Love' is as big as ever). We also get the regular visuals (frontman Max strips from a three-piece suit to a vest as the set progresses) in full effect. All of which is effective enough, and for people who have not previously seen the band, Ausgang certainly make an impact. But I have seen the band before, several times since their comeback a few years ago - most of those times, as it happens, at Drop Dead events. And it's becoming uncomfortably obvious that Ausgang basically knock out the same-old, same-old every time. I suppose you could say that the band doesn't really need to do anything fresh - the old songs still pack a punch, the deathrockers are still enthusiastic, and I dare say most of 'em probably don't even want anything new. The more Ausgang lean on their 80s-vintage songbook, the better the 80s-obsessives like it. Ausgang can simply churn out the golden oldies, confident that the band's position as revered heroes of the sacred Old Days is unassailable. Those regular Drop Dead bookings will probably keep on coming. I'm probably the only awkward bugger in the entire Rock Café who would like the band to show a bit of interest in the future. Well, so be it. I'm an awkward bugger and proud of it. The past can be re-visited, but the future is up for grabs. I say this: grab it, gentlemen, grab it. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Well, they're certainly emptying the vaults tonight. We continue the theme of British Bands Of Yesteryear with a sudden explosion of dayglo, which resolves itself into Rubella Ballet. Always the colourful misfits in the early 80s anarcho-punk pack, Rubella Ballet bucked the trend of monochrome clothes and dourly nihilistic rants that were the usual fare in this area with a bright, flourescence-to-the-fore image and songs which combined tribal punk energy with a definite pop sensibility. Why, they even had tunes. And tonight we discover that they still do. Like Twisted Nerve, you can tell that Rubella Ballet honed their art in the 80s, when times were tough, audiences were picky, and any band that wanted to get ahead could not rely on the safety net of a sympathetic scene-crowd, primed and ready to dig anything that hit the right buttons. Back then, you had to be good. If you weren't, you could expect to dodge flying bottles. Sharp and edgy, shot through with guitar like smashed glass, the essential accessibility of the songs is built upon the rolling thunder of tribal drums, rumbling like a stampede of wild horses is just about to burst over the hill. Yep, Rubella Ballet show they've still got the chops and they're still fast off the blocks. Zillah fronts the band like the warrior queen of dayglo, all movement and colour. The band's defiantly different stance, which set them apart in the early days, makes them a surprisingly contemporary act now. As if to emphasise that it's not all just punk rock, the big finish is 'Emotional Blackmail', a swirling epic that builds to a peak and then winds itself down to a flurry of reverb-soaked drums as the band leave the stage, one by one. Tribal dub frenzy in the area. That does the right stuff for me. It's a mighty long way from Brixton in the 1980s to Prague in the twenty-first century, and the route the Sex Gang Children have taken to get from there to here is a long and winding road, with more than a few potholes and detours along the way. The band of today features Andi Sex Gang - of course - and an assortment of musicians that includes, on a guitar apiece, his long-term collaborator Kevin Matthews and Selfish Cunt's Matthew Saw. Andi himself is swathed in a coat of military cut and a forage cap that rises to a point: when he strikes an attitude against the lights he looks like a triangle. But then, doubtless Andi would remark that it's all part of the visual geometry. The show is the thing, and when Andi Sex Gang is on stage that's exactly what we get. Playing with a raw energy and a certain glam swagger, the band rip it up and throw it down like they have something to prove - nobody's in the business of coasting through the hits here. The set ranges widely and wildly through the Sex Gang songbook - from 'Song And Legend' to 'Alien Baby' and beyond - and I'm encouraged to note the newer songs go down equally as well as the old classics. In a way, it's the covers that define the band: Edith Piaf's 'Les Amants D'un Jour' and the old Poison Girls song 'I've Done It All Before' sound like natural Sex Gang songs - and who but Andi Sex Gang, I ask you, could cover songs by such diverse artists as Edith Piaf and Poison Girls and make it all flow so naturally? Sex Gang Children might qualify as yet another in Drop Dead's inexhaustible supply of Old British Bands, but there's no suggestion here that the band is propping itself up with its own history. Sex Gang Children retain that vital spark. Essential links: Moldig: MySpace Los Carniceros Del Norte: Website \| MySpace Twisted Nerve: MySpace Ausgang: Website \| MySpace Rubella Ballet: Website \| MySpace Sex Gang Children: Website \| MySpace Drop Dead Festival: Website \| MySpace For day 3 of the Drop Dead Festival, go here. For more photos from the Drop Dead Festival, find the bands by name here.
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Back to top	Page credits: Review, photos and construction by Uncle Nemesis. Nemesis logo by Antony Johnston, Red N version by Mark Rimmell.