Day 3 - Bands in order of appearance:

The Cemetary Girlz
Squishy Squid
House Of Dolls
Castrati
The Last Days Of Jesus
Cinema Strange
The Damned

Werk II, Leipzig
Saturday June 11 2011

Well, we're in the deathrock zone now, that's for sure. The Cemetary Girlz come from France, but they've entirely assimilated the Californian deathrock look and sound - distressed glam-punk outfits, distressed punker riffs, the whole shot through with a horrorshow B-movie aesthetic.

Deathrock has plenty of followers in Germany, and plenty of those followers are here in Werk II - the audience is almost as comprehensively glam-punked up as the band.

But the curious thing about deathrock is that while the music, the aesthetic, the genre as a whole remains popular, no contemporary deathrock bands since Cinema Strange have ever made an unequivocal breakthrough.

Every year at the WGT we see the latest contenders. Last year it was Christ vs. Warhol. The year before that it was Fangs On Fur. The year before that, New Days Delay.

You can go back as far as you like, picking out the cool new deathrock bands for every year, and they all seem to have one thing in common: they all seem to vanish off the radar once their WGT appearance is over. The vacancy for a new Top Band in deathrock circles remains open because - bizarrely enough - none of the up and coming bands ever really stake a claim to it.

Will The Cemetary Girlz buck the trend? Or will their WGT appearance be followed by the traditional one-way ticket back to garageland?  Well, they've got the image nailed - the singer, all cheekbones and PVC, coming on like a Warm Jets-period Brian Eno who opened the style manual at 'Sci-Fi Stooges' rather than 'English Whimsy', while the bassist - the only real girl in the Girlz - stalks the stage in big boots and a big mohawk. Perhaps more importantly they've got the right racket, too - the wall of guitar, the anguished caterwaul of the vocals, the crash and rumble of the drums. There are keyboards somewhere in the noise-assault, too, although the surging guitar swamps them like a flooding river.

Yes, The Cemetery Girlz have all the essential ingredients to make a move on the top spot. The Girlz are good. The Girlz are cool. But what happens next?

What happens next here at Werk II is the appearance of our second band of the day. To me, Squishy Squid sounds like an accident at a sushi restaurant. Perhaps, in the band's home town of Vienna, accidents at sushi restaurants are a kewl new trend, or something.

Yes, Squishy Squid are Austrian, but thye've got an English-language name, they mostly sing (and address the audience between songs) in English, and they're on an Austrian label - Las Vegas Records - that at first glance you'd think comes from the USA.

Notwithstanding the band's keen interest in anglophonics, as far as I can tell they've never actually played in an English-speaking country. We've certainly never seen them in the UK. Which is a shame, because Squishy Squid would fit right in with the new wave angularity that is carving up London with geometrical precision right now.

The Squids (or do we call them the Squishies?) make engaging other-pop, the songs built around an ever-present framework of nimble bass guitar, each note thunked into position with the no-shit accuracy of a bricklayer building a wall. The bass, for Squishty Squid, is their main instrument. You could remove the pummelling drums, the sweeps of synth, the punctuating guitar, and you'd still have Squishy Squid. Take out the bass guitar, and you'd effectively switch off the band.

The vocalist declaims her lyrics as if they're one half of a conversation: she swings between assertive and reflective, humourous and disdainful, all the while exuding an idiosyncratic charm like the kooky new wave girl next door telling you her adventures over the garden fence. It's all a rhythmic rough and tumble: 'Teenage Dead Babies' rattles along like the Delta Five on overdrive. I'm an instant fan. I think the band would make a real impact with the twenty-first century British new wave. Squids for London? I think it should happen. One of you post punk London promoters - make it so.

A curious thing about the WGT is that occasionally a band utterly unsuited to the aesthetic of the festival will appear, as if randomly dropped on Leipzig from a passing helicopter. Given that the festival happily embraces everything from punk to folk, it's actually quite hard to be the odd ones out at the WGT - but House Of  Dolls manage it.

A tousle-headed bunch of indie-rock blokes in scruffy casualwear, their sound seems to be influenced by 70s west coast psychedelia, filtered through 90s grunge. At best, they sound like a fuzzed-out Psychedelic Furs. At worst, they sound like an out-of-focus Oasis.

Either way, it's not exactly attention-grabbing stuff. House Of Dolls provide me (and, it must be said, a large contingent of the audience) with a handy go-to-the-bar moment.

From a safe distance, I wonder how on earth the band ended up here. Is it because they've got a song called 'Vampires' (don't get excited: it sounds like a bar band doing Teenage Fanclub), and someone made the rather over-obvious assumption that they must be a bunch of goths? Or did it come down to some sort of misguided back-room deal between the WGT promoters and the band's industry partners?

Whatever machinations brought the band here, nobody's getting anything good out of the situation. House Of Dolls aren't exactly winning over the suddenly sparse crowd, and the WGT has just wasted a key slot that could've gone to any number of more suitable contenders. I don't know who booked the bands for Werk II today, but they got this one embarrassingly wrong.

We'll abandon the bar and shuffle to the front now, to get a load of Castrati. Given that castrati are male singers who have been castrated to prevent their voices breaking, I have to say the band's name doesn't exactly fill my mind with happy thoughts.

I don't know if Castrati themselves have had their balls cut off. If they haven't, they might be in breach of the Trades Descriptions Act. I'm not about to check, mind. But I can tell you this: here's a band clearly inspired by Cinema Strange - and not the old-skool, mohawks 'n' fishnets, deathrocky Cinema Strange, either.

Nope, Castrati take their cue from latter-period, arty 'n' weird Cinema Strange, which is interesting in itself. I would've thought Cinema Strange ended up so far out on their own limb as to be almost inimitable - but Castrati have evidently found something to imitate.

The singer lurches and twirls around the stage in a series of comedy gymnastic moves, at times up-ending himself so we can admire his arse (his trousers have so many holes it's almost possible to verify the band name). He sings in a high-pitched yelp, as if being perpetually pinched by an unseen hand. Meanwhile, the band make a noise like a cranked-up King Crimson, as much proggy as punky.

It would be an entertaining spectacle but for the fact that I've seen Cinema Strange do this stuff with more finesse, more humour, and, frankly, more of an artistic idea behind the whole caboodle. And definitely more originality: why, Castrati even have a glamourously hawt bassist in the Daniel Ribiat role. In the end, Castrati are more interesting as a phenomenon than as a band. Whoda thunk that Cinema Strange's influence - which has surely inspired umpteen latter-day mohawks 'n' fishnets outfits - would extend to the art zone?

Talking of bands who have changed over the years, here comes another one. I remember The Last Days Of Jesus when they were a buch of whackos from Bratislava, all theatrical goofing and stop-start music, funny costumes and herky-jerky songs. Well, The Last Days Of Jesus still come from Bratislava, but these days they're doing a kind of Bad Seeds-ish low life rock-noir.

But it's an evolution, not a sudden reinvention. The band still has a touch of an eastern European carnival act about them, and frontman Mary O still lurches and gurns as if his inner Scary Clown is struggling to get out. The essential identity remains, although the band have honed their music to a finer point now.

It's an effective transformation. The Last Days Of Jesus work rather well as purveyors of a darkly tinted low-slung boogie. Where this leaves the band's erstwhile position as deathrock scene jokers is ayone's guess - or, rather, where it leaves the deathrock scene is the point I suppose we should ponder. As The Last Days Of Jesus broaden their appeal, does that mean there's one less band in the deathrock zone?

Maybe whoever drew up the WGT schedule was trying to make a point. Because next on stage is Cinema Strange. An interesting juxtaposition, so soon after Castrati: the pupils and the masters, almost cheek by jowl but for the tactful insertion of The Last Days Of Jesus.

Mind, it's a slight surprise to see Cinema Strange here at all. The band has kept itsef tucked behind the parapet for the last few years, never actually splitting up, but not exactly doing much, either. The absence of Cinema Strange has been largely responsible for that tantalising vacancy for a Top Deathrock Band I referred to earlier - the gap that nobody yet has been prepared to step up and fill.

It's interesting that although Cinema Strange abandoned the straight-up deathrock aesthetic long ago in favour of an extended excursion into the wierd art zone, they are still regarded as deathrock heroes by exctly the mohawks 'n' fishnets crowd that the band themselves no longer represent. That in itself emphasises the lack of other contenders.

But there's no doubt that Cinema Strange still hold sway over the deathrock audience. The crush down the front increases to frightening levels as the band troop on stage. Everyone's piling in to see the heroes' return.

There's even a small group of observers sitting on stage. It's as if Cinema Strange are reviving the sixteenth century theatrical tradition of allowing the audience onto the stage itself - or maybe it's some sort of audience-as-scenery concept. Either way, it wouldn't be Cinema Strange without some sort of baffling art concept on the go.

It also wouldn't be Cinema Strange without Lucas Lanthier, swooping and wailing around the stage, a one-man whimsical whirlwind in what looks disturbingly like a cub scout's outfit. On guitar, Michael Ribiat looms in the background, bearded and behatted, hanging back as if he's not entirely sure this madness is a good idea, but he's in too deep to get out now. Daniel Ribiat, the original hawt bassist of deathrock, strikes a sucession of dramatic attitudes while peeling off those high-tension basslines that give Cinema Strange's music its curious teetering-on-the-edge quality.

It's a greatest hits set. 'Greensward Grey' sounds like an over-cranked barrel organ, 'En Hiver' is all lope and sway and dramatic enunciations, the vocals keening through the sonic soup like something unearthly.

Frank Vollman - aka Frank The Baptist - makes a special guest appearance, suited up like the ringmaster of the circus.

He and Lucas duet mightily on 'Spanish Ladies', and if there's something decidedly surreal about the sight of two heterogenously costumed Californian gentlemen singing an old English sea shanty to an audience of German deathrockers - well, it's Cinema Strange, innit. Decidedly surreal is what they do.

At the very end, there's another guest appearance by Monica Richards of Faith And The Muse. An incongruous collaboration in a way, since Monica's from-the-heart folkisms sit rather oddly with the arch contrivances of Cinema Strange. But Cinema Strange eat incongruity for breakfast. Somehow, Monica's interlude works, just like everything Ciinema Strange do somehow works. Me, I hope they'll carry on working for a long time yet.

Notwithstanding Captain Sensible's occasionally outlandish costumes, you coudn't get a greater contrast between Cinema Strange's surreal art rock and the familiar boisterousness of The Damned. This year, the band celebrates 35 years in showbiz, and an erratic career that's taken them from the crash-bang garage-punk of their early days, through assorted excursions into psychedelia, all the way to the tidy pop-rock of their latest album, So, Who's Paranoid?

There's nothing from the new album in this set, though. The Damned know what this crowd wants, and they duly deliver: a hit-heavy selection drawn mainly from the band's earlier albums, the ones that probably - if you squint a bit and keep the generic edges suitably fuzzy - count as honourary deathrock classics.

So it's 'I Just Can't Be Happy Today', 'Wait For The Blackout', '13th Floor Vendetta' - the songs where The Damned went ever so slightly darkly-tinged at the edges, but retained their two key attributes: punky energy and their winning way with a tune you can whistle.

Dave Vanian, in white threads and hefty leather gauntlets, as if he's planning to chainsaw a few cadavers after the show, is the consummate rock frontman. He's unflappable behind his shades, giving us his repertoire of rock 'n' roll moves as he lets go a vocal that's almost Jim Morrison-esque in its crooning noncholance and moments of high drama.

The good Captain mugs and showboats and goofs around - we expect nothing less, of course - but he's effortlessly in control of his six strings throughout. For all The Damned's reputation as ramshackle roustabouts, they've got their music impressively well nailed.

'Eloise' erupts like a fountain, all cranked-up melodramatics, and if Dave steps neatly around the high notes these days instead of meeting them head-on, the sheer force of The Damned in full cry means the song loses none of its impact. Naturally, 'Smash It Up' is the big finish, and a bona-fide deathrock moshpit breaks out down the front as band and crowd together give it loads.

Yes, The Damned deliver the goods, and Cinema Strange showed us that the force of their art atack is undiminished. But that still leaves the question of who's going to be the new Top Band on the deathrock scene unanswered. The best bill-toppers the WGT could muster today were a British punk band with 35 years under their belts, and a Californian art-rock collective who have themselves been around for 17 years - and have been so far under the radar of late that their Wikipedia page got deleted, surely the twenty-first century's unkindest cut . What does that tell us?

There's room at the top, but does anyone want to climb up?

On to Day 4 of the WGT here.

Back to Day 2 of the WGT here.

The Damned: Website | MySpace | Facebook

Cinema Strange: Website | MySpace | Facebook

The Last Days Of Jesus: Website | MySpace | Facebook

Castrati: Website | MySpace | Facebook

House Of Dolls: Website | MySpace | Facebook

Squishy Squid: Website | Facebook

The Cemetary Girlz: Website | MySpace | Facebook

Wave Gotik Treffen: Website | MySpace | Facebook

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