Wave Gotik Treffen 2008

Day 2

Bands in order of appearance:
Love's Labour's Lost
Cauda Pavonis
New Days Delay
Spectra Paris
Signal Aout 42
Noblesse Oblige
The Dirty Weather Project
Super Heroines
Werk II, Agra, and Moritzbastei,Leipzig
Friday May 9 2008

Day two of the WGT sees us kick things off in Werk II again. We'll spend a couple of hours checking out the early acts on what is unofficially known as 'deathrock day'. This is quite a tradition at the WGT: an entire day of bands which in one way or another fit in with the deathrock aesthetic.

Now, I know what you're going to say: define the deathrock aesthetic! Well, in a nutshell, try this. Deathrock was originally a US phenomenon which appeared in the early 80s, in which an after-dark, horror movie approach - sometimes delivered with macabre, artistic seriousness, sometimes with a cartoonishly knockabout style - was combined with post-punk (or sometimes just plain punk) music. Deathrock ran in parallel with the UK's own post-punk/proto-goth scene, and sometimes overlapped with it. After a period of obscurity, the style staged a resurgence in the late 1990s, and was seized upon by a goth scene desperate for any kind of alternative to then-dominant EBM and synthpop.

Deathrock became big news in Germany, and still is - although a dearth of genuine, new, quality deathrock bands means that these days the scene tends to embrace just about any band that has a bit of an image and can whip up a tub-thumping storm on stage.

So, it's probably a good time to check out at least some of the current inhabitants of the deathrock zone, and see whether things are looking up, or down, or sideways. Here comes the first band of the day...

I recall catching Love's Labour's Lost at this very venue two years ago, when I recall I was a little underwhelmed by the band's one-foot-in-metal, one-foot-in-deathrock stance. Close but no cigar, I thought. This year, the band are back for another WGT go-around, and they seem to have reconciled their opposing influences. Or maybe they've just got a new guitarist – I'm sure the band's current plank-spanker wasn't with them last time. At any rate, the metallic deviations which tended to weaken the mix previously have now been replaced with some no-shit new waveisms, and the band are all the better for it. Add some keening violin and suitably angsty vocals, and it looks like the post-punk zone has a neat new contender. In a way, the hard work is still ahead for Love's Labour's Lost, and I can't help thinking it's about time they got busy. They've got the sound nailed, now they have to do some business. A bi-annual appearance towards the bottom of the bill at the WGT is not entirely to be sneezed at, but it's not enough to sustain a whole career, either.

Many British bands, of course, still haven't bagged their first WGT booking, and although this year's festival line-up contains more UK contenders than in previous years, it's still common to hear British bands wailing piteously that they can't get on the WGT bill. I tend to suspect that 'can't' in these instances roughly translates to 'We haven't really tried'. As if to reinforce that point, here comes Cauda Pavonis – a band from the UK goth scene, who release their music on their own label, and certainly don't have any of the hot-shot music biz connections some would insist are necessary to get a foot in the festival door. Cauda Pavonis have done it by themselves, and if they can do it, anyone can do it.

Cauda Pavonis have a large and boisterous crowd in front of them, for whom the band's roistering post-Antmusic assault and battery is just the thing to get the party started. Even a sudden microphone conk-out soon after the start of the set doesn't stop the thunder. With commendable foresight, vocalist Su Wainwright has prudently learned the German for 'technical hitch' – a remark that brings sympathetic cheers from the audience. After that, Cauda Pavonis can do no wrong. The crowd is with them all the way, and the band powers through their set with a good-humoured gusto that strikes just the right note with the assembled deathrock hordes, who have been waiting for an opportunity to get their mosh on. In a way, Cauda Pavonis neatly illustrate the point I made above. They're not a deathrock scene band - they've never used the D-word to describe their music - but they've got this audience of be-mohawked mayhem merchants leaping around like mad things. Perhaps that's a rather unexpected result for the band, but nevertheless it is a result.

Frustratingly, New Days Delay seem to live up to the third part of their name. They've been operating for a good few years now with a confusion of line-up changes, sporadic live work, a website that didn't get an update for years, and an album which, although now finally available, took three years to come out. You could say that New Days Delay represent the flip side of the point I made above: a deathrock scene band that has become stuck in the never-quite-achieving-full-potential zone, allowing bands from outside the scene, like Cauda Pavonis, to jump in and grab the audience.

But today we discover that notwithstanding their stop-start career progress, New Days Delay are still contenders. Vocalist Insa, a charming punkette with an asymmetrical hairstyle and mismached stockings, heads up the performance with sparky confidence, while the boys in the band - whoever they are these days - concentrate on nailing some nice new-wavey licks. New Days Delay have a spiky pop sensibility and an engaging, accessible presence on stage which makes it all the more frustrating that they're not stars. The songs tumble over each other as if being tipped out of a wheelbarrow; the guitar sound rattles off the roof girders. I hope I'm hearing the sound of potential coming up to boiling point. New Days Delay are too good for obscurity, which makes it all the more galling that they've always flirted with it.

It's time to duck out of Werk II now, and leave our ruminations on 'Whither deathrock?' until later. Other bands in other venues are demanding attention. A tram takes us up to the Agra, the complex of exhibition buildings on the outskirts of Leipzig which, for the duration of the WGT, are transformed into a vast, echoing market hall, and an equally vast (and equally echoing) live music venue. After perennial gripes about the sound quality in what is, let's face it, a big tin shed, there's now a huge black curtain hung along the back wall. This serves to damp down stray soundwaves, and the sound is now about as good as you'll ever get in a big tin shed.

Today, the Agra plays host to a day of shouty, noisy industrial bands and bangin' synth manglers, which makes the presence of the elegantly slinky all-girl electropop combo Spectra Paris slightly odd. It's a bit like finding a diamond in a bucket of gravel. But there's some sort of logic at work here – Spectra Paris is the new band formed by Elena Alice Fossi of minimalist electronic merchants Kirlian Camera, and that means the industrial zone is where the band will, at least initially, find its audience.

Parading like supermodels on the catwalk, the Spectrettes lay down an insistent groove that owes an equal debt to T-Rex and the Pet Shop Boys, and if you think that's a bit of random word association, get a load of 'Spectra Murder Show', with its electro-glam swagger in full effect. Elena Alice Fossi is a gyrating glam queen in pvc, lending an effortlessly controlled vocal to the band's mash-up of laptop beatz and guitars, while behind her a backdrop video throws up images of hardcore warfare and equally hardcore partying. Elton John even makes an appearance – now, you don't get that with Hocico, do you? Images and grooves in seamless combination, Specta Paris are the very model of a post-modern pop group.

Perhaps surprisingly, the diehard industrio-heads in the crowd take to it all with great enthusiasm. Mind you, I can't help wondering if they'd greet girlie glam-electro with quite such enthusiasm if a bona-fide star of the industrial scene wasn't involved. The true audience for Spectra Paris is probably going to be found lurking somewhere between the fanbases of Client and Goldfrapp, and sooner or later I think the Spectrettes will have to pack up their guitars and laptops, PVC dresses and high heels, and go in search of it. But for now, they're a slightly incongruous hit with the rivetheads.

The proceedings are abruptly wrenched back onto the industrial track with the appearance of Signal Aout 42 – what you might call a trad-industrial band. They've got the slammin' beats and the impassive blokes in the background on laptops and electronics, and they've also got the shouty bloke up front – an essential requirement in this musical field, of course.

Shouty bloke hollers over the slammin' beats with suitable quantities of industrial-strength belligerence and generally gives the impression that he's really, really cross about something, and he's greeted with massed cheers from the assembled industrio-fans, for whom this stuff ticks all the boxes. I'm less than convinced, however – and I'm definitely unimpressed by the cheesey shout-outs to the ladies with which Shouty Bloke punctuates his rantings. 'Women of the Treffen!' he roars, as if hailing an oil rig from an open boat, 'You are beautiful!' I don't know if this is a ploy to get groupies, but such smooth talk cuts no ice with me. Don't all rush at once, girls.

We shall leave the Agra now – the aforementioned Hocico are due on stage any minute, and I think it might be wise to head for the exit before things get really shouty. Besides, down at the Moritzbastei Noblesse Oblige are just about to start up, and with a little help from the number 11 tram we can catch their set.

So, into the subterranean labyrinth of the Moritzbastei we go. This is one of Leipzig's smaller venues, but in some ways the best, carved as it is out of the ruins of a 14th century fortress. There's no shortage of atmosphere here, down in Prince Moritz's wine cellars, that's for sure. There's also no shortage of smoke on stage – Noblesse Oblige seem to have decided to play within a thick bank of fog, which is going to make photography interesting, if nothing else. But as soon as the first song kicks off, I know this is going to be a good set – because, when the very first song is entitled 'Seaside Suicide', how could it be anything else? Maybe that's the reason for the smoke – the band are trying to replicate a foggy day on the seafront. Arch and acerbic, Noblesse Oblige stalk like a couple of cats through their odd cabaret, wit and weirdness mingling with sampler and guitar, and yet for all that their music gives us off-kilter vignettes of the seamy side of life, they've a sure grip on the fundamentals of a pop song.

Alas, we can't stay for the full set, because we're off on yet another tram dash back to the deathrock day at Werk II, where – with some sort of strange synchronicity – another bout of odd cabaret awaits.

I don't know if the Dirty Weather Project counts as a side project or a supergroup, but I can tell you that it comprises Lucas Lanthier (of Cinema Strange) and Frank The Baptist (of Frank The Baptist). These gentlemen, armed with nothing more than acoustic guitars and a few pantomime props intended (I think) to represent a pirate ship, are here to play selections from their combined repertoire in suitably rollicking acoustic style, as if entertaining a boisterous crowd of jolly Jack Tars in a dockside tavern. In reality, the actual audience gathered before the stage is, basically, the regular deathrock crowd – fans of Cinema Strange and Frank the Baptist who are willing to indulge their heroes' musical tangents and cheer every strum and flourish in a way I suspect they would not do if it were anyone else brandishing acoustic guitars on stage. It's an entertaining set of nervy skitterings from Mr Lanthier, and robust singalongs from Mr Baptist – when the old sea shanty 'Spanish ladies' crops up, it fits right in – with added entertainment in the form of repeated stage invasions by other members of Frank the Baptist, which are beaten back with much theatrical grandstanding.

The performance is never less than well received by the assembled deathrock throng, although I notice that the crowd is a little more sparse than we would normally expect for the second-top act of the day, and the applause has a note of polite indulgence about it rather than boundless enthusiasm. I think, to an extent, Frank and Lucas are getting away with it rather than owning it.

The music they're playing, and indeed the surreal cabaret of the show, has very little to do with the established styles and sounds of deathrock, and would surely be more appropriate in some sort of theatrical setting. A night of out-there cabaret at a theatre venue such as the Schauspielhaus, where acts like Noblesse Oblige and the Dirty Weather Project could perform in sympathetic surroundings – now that would be a fine addition to the range of WGT events. As it is, Frank and Lucas find themselves sitting rather awkwardly at the top end of a deathrock bill, simply because of who they are and what they've done elsewhere. They've got a good show here...but it's not pointing at quite the right audience.

You can't get much more of a contrast between the Dirty Weather Project's amiable acousticisms and the roaring sonic bulldozer of the Super Heroines. This is the band in which Eva O made her name, on the LA punk scene back in the 1980s – before she hooked up with Rozz Williams and became part of the Christian Death saga. Last year at the WGT, Eva O brought back a revived and revised version of the Super Heroines (Eva O herself being the only original member) and played the Agra to a slightly bemused reaction from a crowd which probably wasn't expecting an 80s punk band to be quite so...well, metal.

This year, the Super Heroines are back again, with a re-revised line-up in which Eva O is still the only original member. And yes, the band is still a squalling, brawling, amps-on-eleven metal monster. Eva O's vocals are a controlled primal howl amid the wall of guitar and thunderous rhythms, while the crowd is almost bludgeoned into applauding by the sheer force of the sound.

I can't help noticing once again the bemused expressions on the faces of some of the deathrockers in the crowd. What to make of this? On the one hand, it's Eva O, first lady of deathrock, the living connection to Rozz Williams, hero of the scene - and on that basis alone she gets a cool ten thousand deathrock points. On the other hand, she's playing metal – and a pretty agressive, take-no-prisoners brand of metal at that.

Personally, I rather like Eva O's present incarnation as the hollering handmaiden of a heavy metal apocalypse, and I speak as a devout non-metalhead. She's rather like Lemmy from Motorhead, in a way. She's so far out there she transcends all attempts to confine her within any genre. But – not for the first time today - we're a mighty long way from deathrock, folks.

And there's the rub. At the risk of casting myself as the spectre at the feast, it occurs to me that deathrock – once touted as a welcome injection of creativity and attitude for an increasingly bland and backward-looking goth scene – is itself going somewhat off the boil these days. Consider this: here at the WGT the top two artists heading up the deathrock day at Werk II are two side-projects of deathrock scene superstars - an acoustic cabaret act and a revived 80s-vintage punk band, now sounding more metallic than punk.

Both are doing good stuff on their own terms, but neither have an awful lot to do with deathrock. This state of affairs does rather beg an awkward question. Where are the contemporary, crowd-pulling deathrock bands of now? Why has deathrock come to rely so heavily on revivals and side-projects – some of which aren't even in the same room as the deathrock aesthetic - and bands like Cauda Pavonis, hauled in from outside the scene to provide the kind of music that, it would appear, the deathrockers just can't generate for themselves?

That slightly sparse crowd I remarked on above sends its own message, too. Many deathrock scenesters aren't even here today. They're living it up across town at the Pogo Party, a non-WGT fringe event which seems to have siphoned off a fair chunk of the audience. What can we conclude from all this? Possibly this: the deathrock scene just isn't generating many popular, quality bands these days...and many of the punters would rather go clubbing anyway. Is it a case of 'Whither deathrock?' Or is it more like 'Deathrock is withering'?

Rozz Williams, where are your childen now?

Essential links:

Love's Labour's Lost: Website | MySpace
Cauda Pavonis: Website | MySpace
New Days Delay: Website | MySpace
Spectra Paris: Website | MySpace
Signal Aout 42: MySpace
Noblesse Oblige: Website | MySpace
The Dirty Weather Project: Website | MySpace
Super Heroines: Website | MySpace

Wave Gotik Treffen: Website | MySpace

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

The Wave Gotik Treffen continues with Day Three, here.