Nemesis To Go - Live: WGT 2007

Wave Gotik Treffen 2007

Day 2

Bands in order of appearance:
The Defectors
Zadera
The Last Days Of Jesus
Frankenstein
45 Grave
Frank The Baptist
Werk II, Leipzig
Saturday May 26 2007

The Defectors The Wave Gotik Treffen might spread its tentacles into just about every venue in Leipzig, but we're going right back to where we started. Today, Werk II hosts what I suppose you'd call the 'deathrock day'. Deathrock has become big business in Germany over the last few years - indeed, it's noticeable how many people at this year's WGT are rocking the Jonny Slut look: big mohawk, ripped fishnet, stripes and badges a-go-go. It's a style that started in London, was picked up enthusiastically in California, and now seems to be the current cool image in Germany.

How long this state of affairs will last is anyone's guess. Is the deathrock phenomenon just the latest fashion? Or is it a subculture with enough substance to survive? Much depends, I suppose, on the bands which provide the glue that holds the scene together. Today we're able to check out a bunch of 'em, conveniently served up in one place.

The Defectors are a bunch of garage-punk reprobates from Denmark, quite possibly with a bit of history behind them. They ain't no teenagers, that's for sure - more like a collection of ripped-up old rockers, playing it brash and fast as if they grew up on everything from The Ramones to The Count Five. It's hit-the-spot stuff, exactly the right kind of music foir an opening slot, where the band has to get the audience on its feet and paying attention from a cold start, as it were. The Defectors win more applause than most opening acts can muster, and deservedly so., We'll chalk 'em up as a winner.

Zadera are playing on home territory - they're a self-proclaimed 'Batcave' band, supposedly influenced by the glammed-up post-punk scene of the early 80s. By all accounts the band are well-known and well-liked here in Germany, even if their fame hasn't quite spread elsewhere. At any rate, they command an enthusiastic crowd of fans, who clearly dig Zadera's robust rockin'. But there's the rub. While Zadera do indeed rock most robustly, I Zadera cannot discern much of the Batcave aesthetic in what they do. Sure, the singer's mohawk is a thing of towering magnificence, but her voice is that of a heavy metal siren, and the songs themselves sound like fairly conventional hard rock workouts. I can't escape the feeling that Zadera are basically a straight-up rock band who were canny enough (or shameless enough) to hurl themselves aboard the deathrock bandwagon as it went trundling past.

The guitarist, a scruffy geezer without a shred of batcaver style about him (perhaps revealingly, out of all the people in the band, only the singer dresses up in the shredded-punk style of the Batcave days) grins to himself as he confidently throws shapes and unleashes the riffs. I get the impression that he's the main man, the one who put the band together and possibly even identified the deathrock scene as Zadera's prime target area.

A rock 'n' roll strategist whose strategy seems to be paying off? Well, maybe. While Zadera do indeed have a healthy bunch of fans down the front, cheering every big rock riff and holler, it's noticeable that further back in the crowd the applause is distinctly muted. The band aren't getting across to the entire crowd, that's for sure. Maybe the deathrockers aren't so daft after all. They can suss a bunch of Batcave blaggers when they see 'em, and I reckon they're seeing 'em right now.

'You've changed, and so have we', remarks Mary O, bowler hatted singer with The Last Days Of Jesus. And, indeed, the band have changed...a bit. They're still the weird-rock monster that they always were, and Mary O's expressions still run the gamut from goofy to ghastly, but in other ways the band have subtly shifted their art away from the wackzoid zone. The crazy costumes have been replaced with neat-o waistcoat-and-shirt combos; Mary O's facepaint is more left bank than left field.

In short, it looks like The Last Days Of Jesus have embarked upon a transformation that involves the band graciously relinquishing their previous status of the deathrock scene's court jesters in favour of a more wittily cerebral artrocker approach. That's not a bad move, in my book. After all, there's nothing so naff as a novelty band whose novelty has worn off, and I suspect The Last Days Of Jesus looked into the future and saw just that fate awaiting them...if they didn't make a move.

The music powers ahead with suitable quantities of grit determination, and much angular guitar; Mary O gurns hideously up front. It's like watching Sonic Youth on psychedelics, although I'm not sure if the substances are in me or the band. Possibly all of us. But anyway, if this is the future direction of the band, I'm on the bus.

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If it's shameless good-time rock 'n' roll you're after, here comes a band that deliver it straight to your head. Frankenstein have no parley with high falutin' notions of art-rock. The band's speciality is barrelhouse rockin' boogie; in another life they were probably the house band at a truck stop in Kentucky. Frontman Dave Grave is a looming silhouette, his quiff groomed into a rock-hard bluff so solid you could probably carve the faces of American presidents into it. He rumbles out the vocals in a Frankenstein voice as deep as the exhaust note of a Mack Semi hurtling up the freeway, pausing only to flick a hip or drop a shoulder in an endless array of classic ock 'n' roll moves.

Meanwhile, the band churn and grind like good ol' rockin' boys. A couple of those rockin' boys are familiar to us: drummer Stevyn Grey and guitarist Jeremy Meza have, between then, been in every goth-ish and deathrock-esque band that's come out of the USA in the last ten years. In that time, they've played in some utterly contrasting outfits - Frankenstein's merry bump 'n' grind is a world away from, say, the sparky precision and folkie style of Faith And The Muse, one of their previous berths. But they look happy enough to be bashing it out, and the crowd is happy to mosh up a storm to the band's amiable rock racket. And in that, I suppose, we have what Frankenstein is all about.

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45 Grave are genuine heroes of the old skool. They're one of the bands from the original Californian deathrock days, that period in the early 80s when a motley crew of horror-rockers emerged from the punk swamps, all bloodied up up and ready to get gory. Dinah Cancer, 45 Grave's vocalist, quickly became something of a scene-heroine, and to this day 45 Grave are frequently hailed as one of the essential bands of deathrock.

However, the present version of the band, it should be noted, lacks a little of that essential old-skool kudos. Apart from Ms Cancer herself - blue of hair and feisty of demeanour at the microphone - none of the other members of the band are original. In fact, two of them are Frankenstein. Stevyn Gray is back on drums; Jeremy Meza is on guitar again. The fact that we've just seen a good chunk of the band in another band does tend to cut down the 'for real' factor somewhat. To me, it looks uncomfortably like Dinah Cancer has rung round a few mates and put together a pick-up combo for shits and giggles. But what the hell. Let's give 'em the benefit of the doubt, and see if 45 Grave, twenty-first century style, can rock.

The short answer to that one is - yes, they can. Dinah Cancer adopts a series of rock chick poses and lets rip into the mic like a veritable foghorn. The band brew up some heavy metal thunder, riffs as big as tidal waves. Old songs are bludgeoned into submission by a blunt metal instrument. And yes, you did read that right: I did say heavy metal.

Notwithstanding her post-punk credentials, Dinah Cancer certainly seems to have given herself a makeover as a rootin', tootin' metal queen, and the band are clearly under instructions to give it maximum riffola, regardless of what horrors this visits upon the songs. And I'm afraid horrors are duly visited: the scratchy, lo-fi post-punk classic, 'Riboflavin-flavored, Non-carbonated, Polyunsaturated Blood' now sounds like Black Sabbath on a bad day - the knockabout humour of the original utterly submerged in metallic sludge.

As with Zadera, there's a bunch of cheering fans at the front, clearly primed to applaud anything that's served up in front of them bearing the deathrock label, regardless of what it actually sounds like. Further back, heads are shaking, eyes are rolling. Dinah Cancer has gone metal. Roll over Ozzy Osbourne and tell Wednesday 13 the news.

Frank The Baptist seems almost incongruous in this company. As a purveyor of quirkily intelligent, visceral and anthemic alternative rock, his style places him far closer to the likes of the Pixies and Julian Cope than the galumphing horror-rockers of the modern deathrock scene. And yet, it is among those galumphing horror-rockers that he finds himself, standing out like a doctor of literature at a drag race.

His band - an entirely new collection of musicians since we last caught Frank on stage - swings into action with a swagger. Guitar chords are slashed out like swordstrokes, the rhythm hammers like pistons. There's a sense of movement in Frank The Baptist's songs, a feeling that the music is going somewhere. I've never tried this myself, but I imagine it makes a fine soundtrack for a late-night cruise on the freeway, or indeed the autobahn. Lights slipping by, the thrum of tyres on tarmac - yes, I think that would be the natural environment for this music.

Paradoxically, Frank himself stands stock-still at the vocal mic, directing the course of the songs with a ringing, declamatory vocal and a rush and a push of guitar. He's like a traffic cop on the intersection, musical traffic swirling around him, but he's always in control. It's an indication of just how many great songs Frank has in his repertoire that one of the best - the heady rush that is 'Harlot Of Nations' - is thrown in right at the start. Then it's an exhilarating ride through old favourites and new favourites, from 'Falling Stars' to 'Signing Off', from 'Letters To Earth' to the spacious, wide-eyed 'Cosmonauts', surely a song Echo And the Bunnymen should be kicking themselves for not writing.

Suddenly, there's a stage invasion, as representatives of every band on tonight's bill (and a few who are not) converge on stage to shout along to the sea shanty-style chorus of 'If I Speak'. It's all planned - Frank has even prepared large-print lyric sheets for those who are unfamiliar with his words, although this thoughtful gesture is rendered rather academic when Dave Grave of Frankenstein takes it upon himself to wave the cards extravagantly at the crowd, like a hunter showing off his trophies. Frank, as ever at the eye of the storm, does a fine job of controlling the chaos, and somewhat surprisingly the song staggers to a conclusion without collapsing under the weight of partying deathrock stars.

By way of a parting shot, the bassist from 45 Grave shouts 'Californian deathrock in the house!' as she leaves the stage, and there's a dutiful cheer from the audience. Trouble is, it seems to me like they're cheering the brand name of the corporate sponsor rather than hailing their favourite music.

Because...well, just what is deathrock these days? The bludgeon-riffola metal of 45 Grave? The good-time rockaboogie of Frankenstein? The straight-up hard rock of Zadera? Does deathrock have any real identity in the twenty-first century, or has it just come down to normal rock music played by people with funny hairstyles?

In truth, Frank The Baptist, a man of genuine creativity and individual style, carries the torch for the post-punk aesthetic far more effectively than a hundred workaday rock bands trying to get away with it on the hairstyles 'n' good times ticket. If deathrock has a future, then I hope Frank The Baptist shows the way forward. Deathrock can be many things, but if the underlying aesthetic is relinquished in a rush to slap the brand on any old rock band in a bid to sell 'em to the kidz, then deathrock will end up as just another trend that'll hang around for a bit...and eventually fizzle out.

Essential links:

Wave Gotik Treffen: Website | MySpace | LiveJournal

For more photos from the WGT, find the bands by name here.

Wave Gotik Treffen 2007 - Day 3 continues here.