Wave Gotik Treffen
Day 2 - Bands in order of appearance:
Lotus Feed
Uni_Form
Soror Dolorosa
Merciful Nuns
The March Violets
Felsenkeller, Leipzig
Friday June 10 2011
A tram to the west side of Leipzig today, with a view to catching one or two bands that represent the 'Wave' side of the Gotik Wave Treffen. My personal favourite aspect of the festival, as it happens, although I sometimes wonder if a majority of WGT attendees would be happy enough with an entire festival full of Sisters/Nephalike outfits, and/or EBM bangers. Just the handful of obvious influences, endlessly rehashed. I bet, for some of the more unreconstructed trad-goths and single-minded EBM-heads at the Treffen, that prospect sounds like very heaven.
Me, I like to push things in other directions - although perhaps not in the direction of our first band today, Lotus Feed, who make a competent but ultimately rather anonymous alternative rock racket.
The singer wanders the stage, holding the microphone up-tilted in front of his face, as if trying to hide behind the hardware, while the band play it a bit atmospheric, a bit dramatic, but ultimately never scale any particular heights.
It's not exactly bad, but it's not stop-you-in-your-tracks stuff, either, and - call me unreasonable if you will - that's what I'm always hoping for. In the end Lotus Feed remind me of 80s alternorock also-rans Then Jericho - and, believe me, it's not often my thoughts turn in the direction of that band. But Lotus Feed strike me as occupying the same territory. Diligent craftsmen for sure, making all the right noises. But without the essential maverick spark.
Don't ask me how you're supposed to pronounce the underscore in their name, but I can tell you that Uni_Form come from Portugal, they rather worryingly list U2 and Coldplay among their influences (fortunately, they also list Interpol and Nick Cave) and they seem delighted to be here.
The bassist, in particular, spends the entire set enthusiastically rockin' out like a good 'un, while wearing some sort of sci-fi tunic that makes him look like he's just stepped out of an episode of Blake's Seven. He's quite a contrast with the downbeat earnestness of the rest of the band, but he makes the show.
Uni_Form's music is a kind of high-drama, wide-screen indie, all chiming guitars and lyrics that arrive freshly wrenched from the depths of the lead singer's soul. The swoop and swoon of the music pulls me in almost in spite of myself.
But in a way, I find Uni_Form a little too artlessly sincere for comfort. I'm waiting for a Nick Cave-style raised eyebrow, some hint that a sardonic wit underpins even the most dramatic songs, but it never quite arrives. The singer never actually makes a hand-staple-forehead gesture, but the sentiment is there, lurking behind the music.
On this showing, I like Uni_Form - but I suspect that to sit down and listen to an entire album of their unleavened earnestness might prove rather hard work.
I've never heard an album by Soror Dolorosa, and I don't think I'll be seeking one out any time soon, frankly. Their live set proves to be hard enough work for me.
Soror Dolorosa have distilled the essence of gothic rock down to a kind of overdriven drama - the vocalist doesn't so much staple his hand to his forehead as go at it with a metaphorical rivet gun. His voice, a ululating lament, wraps itself around the audience like a chill wind amongst the gravestones.
In a way, his angst-soaked singing style is at odds with his none-more-rock-star appearance (aviator shades ahoy!), but it's the band's relentlessly conventional rockisms that ultimately push it all into the ho-hum zone for me. Soror Dolorosa are like Type O Negative with an extra helping of woe - the vocalist certainly seems to be going for the Peter Steele hunk o' darkness look. But in the end, it's the four-square conventionality of the music that turns me off.
I'm sure the band will do well - let's face it, being conventional has never been a barrier to success - but they'll have to get along without me in their fanbase.
I speculated above that many WGT attendees might be perfectly happy if the festival was nothing more than an endless array of Sisters-alike goth bands, all rehashing the same handful of influences. A cynical view, you may think. But not as cynical as The Merciful Nuns.
Goth bands whose artistic imagination extends only as far as 'doing it like the Sisters' are common enough, of course. But to deliberately set out to create a Sisters Of Mercy pastiche - even down to the band name, which is obviously a mere synonym? Now that's downright blatant.
The Merciful Nuns are the brainchild of Artaud Seth, formerly of Garden Of Delight - no strangers to the concept of Doing It Like The Sisters themselves, of course. In fact, The Merciful Nuns' website sternly informs us that the Nuns are 'The only legitimate successor to Garden Of Delight', a turn of phrase that creates the delightful mind's-eye image of lots of illigitimate bands scuttling around, each trying to claim the crown of the old master. If, indeed we can use the word 'master' to describe Artaud Seth. He's such an obvious disciple of Andrew Eldritch that 'pupil' might be a better word. Well, he's certainly done his homework.
A smoke machine on overtime cranks out the fog (natch), while a monochrome image of Artaud Seth's face sings at us from a TV screen. This, of course, is an old Bauhaus trick. They first used the lead-singer-on-TV stunt to open their shows back in the late 70s, and reprised it on their reunion tour. It's ironic that practically the only aspect of The Merciful Nuns' show that hasn't been swiped from the Sisters is the bit they borrowed from Bauhaus.
Then the band kick off the set proper, and...well, you know what it's like. I don't even need to describe the proceedings, do I? It's just like any number of Sisters-alike goth bands: just like 'First And Last And Always' rammed unceremoniously through a mincer and churned out like so much gothic sausage meat, amid the inevitable cloud of smoke. Which is precisely the point, of course.
Well, OK, I'll grant you it's not all Sisters-esque. At times there's a touch of the Nephilim in the vocals - moments when Artaud Seth attempts to jack up the drama by injecting a McCoy-style 'Huuurgh!' into his voice. But adding a sprinkling of Nephilim flavouring to the Sisters sausage does not enliven the recipe, and it certainly doesn't count as an original thought. In the end, The Merciful Nuns are dull, safe, predictable and crashingly, tediously, derivative. And I suspect that's exactly what their target market wants. They'll probably end up as the biggest band on the goth scene.
The notion that goth music has to sound like the Sisters Of Mercy - or Fields Of the Nephilim, or both - is a relatively recent concept, of course. Return to the source, and it wasn't like that. When goth first emerged out of the swirling soup of the post-punk era - when all the doors were open, all the barriers were down, and all bets were off - the key characteristics waere diversity, creativity, and a gleeful willingness to push everything out there. And here comes a band from that very era, a band which exemplifies the original spirit, yet probably wouldn't be regarded as anything remotely goth-like if they emerged today, so far have the gothic goalposts shifted. Ladies and gentlemen: The March Violets.
The March Violets don't have it easy tonight, mind. On the face of it, all their ducks are in a row. It's the band's first gig outside the UK since they reformed, they've got old-school kudos and post-punky anthems in spades, they've got the surreal double-act of Rosie Garland and Simon Denbigh up front, and a keen crowd in front of them - ironically, much the same crowd that greeted The Merciful Nuns' Sisters-by-numbers set with such enthusiasm. So it should be a pushover, right?
Well, not quite. The March Violets' performance is somewhat squashed by a reverb-heavy soundmix that reduces the music to a formess blare and the vocals to an incoherent flurble-wurble. Hint for gomless sound engineers: don't pile on the reverb if the room has a naturally reverb-y acoustic, as the Felsenkeller does.
Meanwhile, throughout the set the stage lighting blazes directly at the audience with the intensity of an artillery barrage, reducing the band to vague shapes in the smoke, and causing everyone down the front to squint painfully against the glare.
The unfriendly mash-up of sound and vision amounts to an obstacle the band have to struggle to overcome to make that vital connection with the crowd. To their credit they give it all they've got. From the glorious excursion into the weird that is 'Fodder' to the alternopop anthemics of 'Walk Into The Sun', the March Violets hurl their greatest hits into the hall. And their future hits, too, for the new song 'A Little Punk Thing' punches its weight alongside the old stuff, and shows - if we were ever in doubt - that the essential maverick spark is very much present and correct in this band.
But the unfriendly sound and lighting inevitably take the edge off. Watching the set unfold from the back of the venue, where the relentless hostility of the light-barrage has driven me, it's uncomfortably noticeable how many people are drifting towards the exits. The Gothic Pogo Party is kicking off across town, and it seems the post-punky contingent in the Felsenkeller - ostensibly the March Violets' natural fanbase - reckons that's a better bet than sticking around on this audio-visual battlefield.
The March Violets don't exactly blow it tonight. But they don't exactly ace it, either. They're a band hamstrung by their presentation, scuppered by ham-fisted techies who don't know when to back it off a little and allow some space for the performance to happen. It's a frustratingly underwhelming end to a day at the WGT that never really got into its stride. Five bands, one of which was a bit close-but-no-cigar, two of which were competent but ultimately underwhelmimg, one of which was merely a deliberate exercise in being derivative, and the best of which never had a chance to shine.
You can't win 'em all, of course, and over a five-day festival it's inevitable that not everything is going to be excellent. But today in the Felsenkeller, things really should have been better.
On to Day 3 of the WGT here.
Back to Day 1 of the WGT here.
March Violets: Website | MySpace | Facebook
The Merciful Nuns: Website | MySpace | Facebook
Soror Dolorosa: Website | MySpace | Facebook
Lotus Feed: Website | MySpace | Facebook
Wave Gotik Treffen: Website | MySpace | Facebook
For more photos from the WGT, find the bands by name here.
