Wave Gotik Treffen 2009

Day 4

Bands in order of appearance:

Tunes Of Dawn
Schock
Lahannya
Die So Fluid
The Eternal Afflict
Nosferatu
UK Decay
Parkbühne, Leipzig
Monday June 1 2009

Day four of the WGT, and I think it's time to get a bit of fresh air.

Let's head over to the Parkbühne, the open air stage where a perhaps more traditional festival vibe prevails. A heavy(ish) metal vibe also prevails, at least for the first part of today - and on stage now, Tunes Of Dawn are prevailing, just about. Alas, the early doors audience is more inclined to sit down and ease themselves gently into the proceedings rather than get their rock 'n' roll juices jumping this early in the day. Tunes Of Dawn - a name the band must surely have arrived at by a process of random word association - gamely rock up a middle-of-the-road metal storm even so, the members of the band all counter-intuitively wearing white. This at least means the band looks distinctive even if their music isn't all that much.

Talking of bands with possibly inappropriate names (as we weren't, quite, but you know what I mean), here come a collection of metallers in black called Schock - and they don't, really. The vocalist is a hyperactively cheery chap, who carries the show more or less single handed with his rock god shape-throwing at the very lip of the stage, but beyond that it's conventional metallisms all the way. Competent for sure. But nothing shocking.

You've got to give Lahannya credit for a relentless work rate that puts many other artists to shame - she's practically always gigging, and if she doesn't become a superstar eventually it won't be for want of putting the miles in. Today's appearance at the Parkbühne is only one gig of the many she's got lined up this year. But I'm a little unsure exactly which bit of the rock market Lahnnya's pointing at.

Her band is a robust riff machine, chugging and churning like a mighty engine of throbbing metallic doom - just what you want out of a metal band, right? Yes, the metal kidz at the front are certainly up for some throbbing metallic doom today. But Lahannya herself, a vision in blue dreads and wipe-clean black, comes across as so friendly and approachable, and her voice is so pleasantly smooth as she croons incongrously over the implacable rifferama laid down by her band, that I can't help feeling she'd be more at home in some AOR power-ballad outfit. The evil queen of the metal wastelands she ain't, that's for sure. She is, in short, nice. But in order to match her band's muscular metallic assault, I think she needs to put some grit in her vocal delivery and nix the niceness.

Like Lahannya, Die So Fluid carefully remain within the boundaries of conventional rock music. They're a heavy metal power trio of the old school, and there will be no envelope-pushing during their set, no excursions into the left field. This is a band that quite deliberately plays it straight down the line. Their monster riffs are unerringly bowled directly at middle stump. But you know what? While conventionality of this magnitude is usually enough for me to utter a resigned 'Ho hum,' and head for the exit (in fact, I did just that at a Die So Fluid gig in London a while back), on this occasion I find myself slightly better disposed towards the band.

After the pleasantries of Lahannya, Die So Fluid's bassist/vocalist Grog has just the right amount of piss and vinegar in her stage persona to give her band a glint of rock 'n' roll steel, the like of which we haven't seen at all so far today. She lets rip with an authentic heavy metal warrior woman holler, keeping the basslines nailed all the while. She's the reason Die So Fluid are interesting, the reason the band possess anything resembling an edge and an identity. All due respect to guitarist Drew, who slashes out an expansive metallic KO on the six strings throughout - but he's so self-effacing that if Grog didn't cross to his side of the stage at intervals and rock up to him in the approved matey muso manner, nobody would even notice he's there.

I don't think I'm ever going to be a Die So Fluid fan - it's that pesky conventionality, don't you know - but thanks to Grog's efforts, today I'm happy to acknowledge they do the business.

Up to now the musical theme of the Parkbühne has been, more or less, metal. But now there's an abrupt change in the direction of the day, for our next act, The Eternal Afflict, are a synthpop band. I suspect representatives of the synthpop massive may take issue with that. Doubtless they'll tell me that the band is actually future-electro-wave-EBM, or some other nit-picky sub-section of the scene. Bthey sound synthpop to me. Stuttering programmed beats, jaunty little to-and-fro snth lines, a chanted vocal - well, you know the score. If it sounds like I've just described every synthpop band on the block, that's because so many of them are built from the same blueprint. The Eternal Afflict aren't bad - the frontman certainly puts some energy into his performance, while the rest of the band blink uncomfortably in the sunlight behind him. But I won't be sending postcards home about them, let's put it like that.

Rather over-optimistically, at this point I attempt to travel to another venue to catch another band. Half way there, it becomes clear that I'll never make it in time, so I abandon the plan - and head back to the Parkbühne, arriving just as Nosferatu haul themselves on stage. Good timing or bad timing? Let's suck 'em and see.

This is the new, de-gothed Nosferatu. Once the epitome of ubergoth, once a veritable riot of frilly shirts, these days Nosteratu look like a slightly scruffy but otherwise fairly image-free rock band. Even guitarist Damian Deville is a dressed-down everybloke these days, in suit and sensible hairstyle - and this is the man who not so long ago would routinely appear on stage looking, if not exactly like the bride of Dracula, then at least somewhat like his civil partner.

In the hands of this new, downbeat, de-imaged band, Nosferatu's songs have become a collection of suitably hefty mid-tempo rock workouts - effective in themselves, but without much that's noticably gothic about them. If this is some sort of strategy, some sort of master plan, then I confess I don't get it. Stripped of their gothic identity, what is there about Nosferatu that makes Nosferatu Nosferatu?

Still, the crowd seems to like 'em, although it's distinctly odd to see an audience of dressed-up goths, metallers, and deathrockers digging a band that exudes ordinariness from every pore. There's a mismatch here, and it depresses me. Why settle for ordinary? Doesn't anyone want anything extraordinary any more?

Did I mention we had some deathrockers among us? Yes, I did, and yes, we do. Here's why they're here: UK Decay. Some credit this band for inventing goth, or at least for coining the G-word to describe the surge of darkly weird bands - of which UK Decay themselves were one - that emerged in the late 1970s and early 80s. At that time, as punk turned to post-punk and all things became possible, UK Decay helped to define the emerging genre, with their caterwauling dramatics and towering, tension-filled songs, even if they didn't quite name it. I'm not sure why the band has regrouped now - as opposed to any other year since they split up in 1982 - but hey, if even Specimen can make a comeback, all bets are off, right?

So, as the darkness falls along with the rain, UK Decay light up the Parkbühne. This is, inevitably, not quite the lean and hungry band of their early days - like Peter Murphy, UK Decay come before us as respected elder statesmen rather than snotty young tyros with everything to prove. The audience in front of them is primed and ready to applaud the band's every move, a major change, I'm sure, from the seething punk moshpits of the early years.

It says much for the quality of UK Decay's songs, then, that the band can still whip up that feeling of tension, that sensation of teetering on the edge of a strange chasm. Vocalist Abbo whirls and pirouettes, dipping and weaving - I'm glad to see his repertoire of stage moves is still intact. On bass, Eddie Branch is an implacable force. The songs cut through the Parkbühne rain with all their wayward drama intact. 'Unexpected Guest' is all that we expect. 'For My Country' is a huge cry of both defiance and celebration.

There's something almost poetic in the fact that the first band of goth is the last band of this year's Wave Gotik Treffen, but that's a thought for another time. Poetry's not a priority when we're caught in an open air venue on a rainy night. Time to go, then - and time for the WGT to wrap up.

Not, perhaps, a classic year, this one. Connoisseurs of the WGT experience would probably point to the over-reliance on reformed bands from yesteryear. Notwithstanding the fine performance we've just seen by UK Decay and a few other oldies who revealed themselves to still be goldies, this year I think there were too many blasts from the past. Some, at least, simply didn't blast hard enough. Add to that an over-abundance of workaday bill-fillers bulking up the schedules, not enough attention paid to the cool and contemporary bands of now, and the overall result has got to be a bit five-out-of-ten.

What the hell, next year should bounce back. After all, the WGT can't book the Scary Bitches two years running - can they?

Essential links:

Tunes Of Dawn: Website | MySpace
Schock: Website | MySpace
Lahannya: Website | MySpace
Die So Fluid: Website | MySpace
The Eternal Afflict: Website | MySpace
Nosferatu: Website | MySpace
UK Decay: Website | MySpace

Wave Gotik Treffen: : Website | MySpace

Back to the Wave Gotik Treffen Day 1 here.

For more photos from the Wave Gotik Treffen, find the bands by name here.