Drop Dead Festival

Day 3 - Bands in order of appearance:

Kombat Katz
Wieze Fabryk
Los Carniceros Del Norte
13th Moon
Charles De Goal
Neon

ADS, Berlin
Saturday September 3 2011

Down to our Berlin bunker for the third time. The Drop Dead website warns us that 'Doors open 8.00pm sharp!' To which I say, 'Oh yeah?' An hour or so later is more like it.

It's axiomatic that no event that has an open end will ever start on time. There's no curfew, no guillotine, no strict end-point where everything must be finished, so there's no particular reason to run the show to any kind of timetable. Sure enough, Drop Dead is getting later and later as the festival progresses. By day six it'll probably be opening at midnight.

Well, at last, we're in. And there's a noticeably higher incidence of mohawks and fishnets among the crowd than we've seen so far. Tonight, Drop Dead does deathrock, just like the old days.

I suspect a fair chunk of the crowd has come in for just this one day. I'm sure that many people are being rather selective about which bits of Drop Dead they attend this year. I think the deathrock contingent, who in previous years would have packed the entire festival from first day to last, are making a point of avoiding some of the more laptoppy-electro acts.

This, of course, throws up an interesting dilemma for Drop Dead. The deathrockers are still the event's core crowd, and up to now its most loyal supporters. But if Drop Dead reduces the deathrock element of the event to a mere token presence, that core crowd will simply stop coming. And if that happens, is there enough of everyone else - the weird-wave electroheads, the post-punkers, the DIY artrockers, the Gucci goths - to keep Drop Dead alive?

Then again, as we've already discussed, deathrock itself is not exactly the most vigourous subculture in town right now. Perhaps the question we should really be asking is not to what extent Drop Dead should focus on deathrock, but whether there's enough decent deathrock around these days to make it worth including at all. Now there's a Devil's advocate question if ever there was one. But what's the answer?

Enough of all these subcultural logistics. Let's rock. And here comes a band intent on doing just that: the Kombat Kats, psychobilly mayhem merchants kicking up a cheery racket with their semi-acoustic guitars and stand-up bass. The band has certainly made sure to follow the psychobilly rule book, in everything from hardware to hairstyles. They've got the psychobilly style and sound impeccably reproduced: vintage Americana filtered through British punk. The Kombat Katz, it almost goes without saying, are neither American or British. They're from Sweden.

The Kombat Katz are a lot of fun, but there are no surprises in what they do. It's rule-book rock, in the end - and, curiously, their brand of psychobilly is not even particularly psycho. I think what I'm seeing here is a bunch of nice guys having fun, and there's nothing wroong with that. It's nice to be nice, and it's nice to have fun. But if the Katz want to push things any further, that rule book is going to have to go.

I know nothing about Wieze Fabryk aside from the fact that they're a post-punk-ish band from Poland, and they seem very...grey to me. The band are all dressed down in scruffy faded black, and - not to put too fine a point on it - they look old enough to have taken part iin the first post-punk go-around, in the early 80s. Grey clothes, grey hair. And grey music, too. The band manage to assemble all the right noises into songs that don't seem to end up with any memorable features. It's boilerplate alternative rock to me - worthy, but without that essential spark of excitement.

It's at times like this that I wish Drop Dead woud take an interest in what's happening in the UK, because we've got umpteen bands which could fill this slot to better effect. But then, I suppose it's much cheaper to book a boilerplate alternative rock band from Poland. Wieze Fabryk's home town of Łódź is only a few hours up the autobahn. Bung 'em some petrol money and they'll probably be happy. They practically count as a local band. You couldn't get a UK band to Berlin without pushing the boat out a bit more. Lucky for Wieze Fabryk, then, and hard cheese for the rest of us.

It is, however, evidently possible to get a Spanish band to Drop Dead, and here comes one now to prove it. I remember catching Los Carniceros Del Norte at the WGT a while back, and concluding that their contrived OTT-ness - rather silly vampire-theatrics and what-not - didn't really do it for me. But tonight the band seems to have been necking the Ramones pills, because now everything has been stripped down to a no-shit punk rock noise, and the band are all the better for it. They go steaming in to a set of barrelling rockers, the singer commandeering two microphones at once, as if one just won't make him loud enough.

It's exactly the kind of flamboyant blast the deathrock crowd has been waiting for, and as Los Carniceros Del Norte crash and burn to a finish they're cheered to the rafters. There's a certain sense in the air that this is what Drop Dead should be about - the classic punker rush that you just can't conjure out of a laptop. Well, we shall see about that. We've still got a few laptop-based acts to come before this festval is over. But now we're on a deathrock roll, so let's bring on the next band...

...13th Moon. Two essential facts straight off the bat: 13th Moon come from Japan, and they're obviously, heavily, influenced by old-school Cinema Strange. That in itself is interesting, because earlier this year at the WGT I saw an Italian band called Castrati who were equally obviously, and equally heavily, influenced by the more recent theatrical-art incarnation of Cinema Strange. Since Cinema Strange themselves went all quiet over the last few years, it seems at least two bands have taken it upon themselves to fill the gap.

13th Moon clearly don't subscribe to the notion that less is more. They look like they've been pulled through Johnny Slut's wardrobe backwards. The singer looks like a one-man fright night in his flapping coat and make-up so extensive he might as well be wearing a mask. Actually, he is wearing a mask. Over the make-up. You see? In 13th Moon's world, more is always more.

The band shriek and clatter, the guitar scratches and skitters, the bass is taut and high-pitched (a very Cinema Strange element, that) and the vocals a histrionic wail. The singer is extravagantly theatrical at us from the edge of the stage, and it all turns into a freakshow rumble-tumble that would be highly impressive if I hadn't already seen Cinema Strange do all the same stuff. 13th Moon make a good old weird-glam ruckus, but their key influence looms rather too large above them.

I think I can safely say I won't be using the word 'glam' to describe our next band. Charles De Goal are hardly in it for the image. But these four unpretentious blokes somehow pull crackling electricity out of the air. Choppy, economical guitar, terse, no-frills rhythms and a complete absence of showbiz showboating get the job done. Charles De Goal are like the Gang Of Four's more level-headed brothers: measured, cerebral, but totally on top of their game.

Charles De Goal songs are incisive slices of post-punkery, and tonight's crowd is more than ready to cut a rug. The room becomes a sea of movement as the band drops each tightly-wound song-bomb. But, bizarrely, it's over too soon. The band wrap up and say goodbye. "We only have forty minutes," explains vocalist Patrick Blain to an incredulous audience. The place is ready to party, we've got an open end, and now they get all strict about timekeeping?

What makes the situation even more galling is that we now have to wait...and wait...and wait for Neon to get their rock star arses on stage. Everything has been set up, everything has been checked, everything is ready. But still the band don't come on. I can see them, hanging about at the side of the stage, doing nothing, just killing time. Eventually the stars deign to stroll out and meet their public, but Charles De Goal's abrupt cut-off and Neon's championship farting about have put me in a bad mood. Neon are going to have to be bloody good to make up for the fuck-about factor.

Alas, they ain't. Apparently, Neon are some sort of famous new wave band from the 80s Italian scene, but I'm not an 80s Italian new waver and I've never heard of them. All I know of Neon is what's in front of me right now: another bunch of boilerplate alternorockers making the standard noise. After a while the spectacle of the singer trying to be all commanding and dramatic in his leather trousers while his band make a forgettable blare behind him loses what little appeal it had. Let's call it quits. Time to get outta here.

I suppose what we've just seen illustrates the point I made above: with deathrock on the wane, what do you do for a headliner these days? If importing some lacklustre stars-o-yesteryear from Italy is the best option, things must be getting bad. Personally I would've just said to Charles De Goal: gentlemen, it's an open end. Play as long as you like!

On to Day 4 of the Drop Dead Festival here.

Back to Day 2 of the Drop Dead Festival here.

Neon: Website | MySpace | Facebook

Charles De Goal: Website | MySpace | Facebook

13th Moon: Website | MySpace | Facebook

Los Carniceros Del Norte: MySpace | Facebook

Wieze Fabryk: Website | MySpace | Facebook

Kombat Katz: Website | MySpace | Facebook

Drop Dead Festival: Website | MySpace | Facebook

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