Wave Gotik Treffen
Day 5 - Bands in order of appearance:
Soul In Isolation
Midnight Caine
Neon Kross
The Beauty Of Gemina
Tying Tiffany
Mephisto Walz
Chris & Cosey
Parkbühne and Pantheon, Leipzig
Monday June 13 2011
Last day of this twentieth anniversary, five day WGT. And I don't know about you, but I could do with a bit of fresh air.
So let's see what's going on at the Parkbühne, the open air stage set amid the greenery of Clara Zetkin Park. One day I'll find out who Clara Zetkin is, but for now I can tell you that her park is resounding to the racket of the day's first band, Soul In Isolation. Now there's a name that doesn't exactly say 'Party!'
Yes, I know the name comes from a Chameleons song, and thus makes the right kind of vintage UK alternative rock reference (if there's one thing that's more popular in Germany than vintage UK goth, it's vintage UK alternative rock).
But the name has a certain gothic melancholy about it, too, and I suspect that's why the band chose it. Because Soul In Isolation are all about the gothic melancholy. They play a kind of earnest, lachrymose rock, all chiming guitars (that'll be the Cameleons influence, then) and deep, dramatic, hollered vocals (which suggests they've got a few Nephilim albums in their influence-bank, too). It's robust but essentially no-surprises gothic rock, really, and the set turns into one of those rather inconclusive experiences about which the best I can say is that the band are entirely competent at what they do. But I always think that competence is the worst kind of compliment. I'd rather see a brilliant fuck-up than a display of workaday competence.
Did I say that Soul In Isolation probably have a few Nephilim albums in their influence-bank? Well, Midnight Caine obviously have all the Nephilim albums in their influence-bank. The band is merely a Nephilim pastiche outfit, of the sort we used to see with tedious frequency in the UK during the doldrums of the early 90s, when the Sisters/Neph influence loomed too large and goth became the province of dull rehash merchants.
Midnight Caine (the name is doubtless supposed to have a certain after-dark edginess, but it reminds me hilariously of Michael Caine in pyjamas) seem intent on rehashing the rehash.
They're like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy: a poor-quality third generation reprint of the original. All the essential elements are present and correct - down to the melodramatic, gruffly hollered 'Huuurgh!' vocals, and the not-quite-metal guitar riffin'. But the quality of the reproduction ain't great.
The singer sports a McCoy-style hat (of course he does: no self-respecting Nephilim-pastiche vocalist can operate without his McCoy-style hat) and even contrives to tilt the mic stand like a canoe paddle, just like we saw Carl himself do, last night at the Agra. I bet the Midnight Caine boys were there, picking up some tips.
This blatant lo-rez photocopy of the Neph might just about work in a cheesey tribute band way if it wasn't for one awkward problem: Midnight Caine aren't actually very good at being the Nephilim. The guitar sound is flimsy, the vocals are strained and thin - the McCoy 'Huuurgh!' is obviously not within the singer's normal range, and he struggles to plumb the sepulchral vocal depths.
The whole thing is driven along by a hilariously weedy ticky-tocky drum machine that sounds like someone mistreating a clockwork toy. Even the audience - and this is a crowd that's normally quite receptive to derivative gothic rock - treat Midnight Caine with lukewarm politeness. The applause is as skimpy as the band's creativity.
Fortunately, our next band takes us out of the Nephalike wastelands and into the zone of - well, I was going to say psychobilly, but then Neon Kross aren't a psychobilly band.
They're far too nice for that. Niceabilly? Yes, that suits them.
The singer sports a big green mohawk and 'nuff tattoos, but Neon Kross aren't in the business of firing up the wreckin' crew.
In spite of the 'billy styling cues, they're more of an 80s alternopop outfit than anything. They're bouncy and catchy and accessible, and I guess that's the point. For the green-mohawked lead singer is Daniel deLeon of Rezurex - a psuitably psycho psychobilly band if ever there was one. Neon Kross is his light-relief side project.
Neon Kross aren't bad, in a 1980s MTV kind of way, but I can't quite find it in my heart to dig a band that seems to take A Flock Of Seagulls as its inspirational starting point. I suppose, for American 40-somethings whose teen years were spent in front of the telly watching the over-stylised videos of 80s 'British invasion' bands, Neon Kross are a pleasant throwback to the days when pop music seemed colourful and enticing. But I spent those days in grubby gig venues, experiencing the sharper end of things. I was always more Zig Zag than Smash Hits, and that's why I say No to niceabilly now.
The lead singer of The Beauty Of Gemina has an Andrew Eldritch-style grumble of a voice - so far, so standard - but he looks uncannily like JG Thirlwell, of Foetus fame. In a way, I wish it was JG THirlwell, because a little bit of Foetus-style craziness would liven up today's rather underwhelming selection of bands no end.
The Beauty Of Gemina don't do craziness, but at least their brand of gothic rock has enough scuttling electronics in the mix to give it a hint of edginess. We have to take our crumbs of comfort wherever we can find them today, that's for sure.
Mind you, the band does teeter dangerously on the brink of self-parody when the singer dedicates a song 'To all the fallen angels.' The song is called 'Suicide Landscape', and its lyric refers portentously to 'the shadowlands'. Well, of course it does. 'The shadowlands' are Gothic Rock Songwriting Cliché Number 427. It's practically the law to include a reference to 'shadows' somewhere in your lyric, otherwise you're just not doing it right.
I'm sure The Beauty Of Gemina mean it with total sincerity and not a drop of irony, but that's the problem. If gothic rock has reached a point where a simple assemblage of clichés, intoned in a Sisters-style drone, is all you have to do - either that, or some Nephilim-style quasi-metal - well, it seems to me that the creativity train really has hit the buffers.
All of which makes Tying Tiffany something between a revelation and a revolution. Certainly, in this company - staid gothic rockers, playing strictly by the rules - she counts as a downright subversive element.
At first, enveloped in a safety pin-encrusted hijab, she's an enigmatic figure, delivering first song in mysterious anonymity. Then, as the band hits its stride and it all kicks up a gear, she yanks off her headgear and emerges in full-on techno-punk glory.
Tying Tiffany songs are short, sharp, electric shocks of buzzsaw guitars, built upon hammering rhythms like speedfreak machine guns. Programmed beats fight it out with acoustic drums, and, over everything, Tiffany herself belts out the words in a listen-to-me-or-else yell that would instantly get her honourary membership of the riot grrl club.
She flings herself about as the beat 'n' noize barrage resounds, dancing like an assertive punk rock dervish and surveying the crowd as if sizing us all up for a programme of forcible re-education in the true spirit of raucous rock 'n' roll. Up against the sedate gothic rockers we've seen so far, she's an uncompromising dose of now, a contemporary artist who pulls in influences from all over and creates something of her own out of them - and delivers the results in authentic bullet-to-the-brain fashion.
Strangely - and perhaps significantly - she goes down a storm with the assembled audience of gothic rock fans. I suppose it just goes to show that even devotees of sober, play-by-the-rules formality enjoy the occasional overturned applecart. It's especially interesting to note the girls in the audience getting into Tying Tiffany's punky rush. On a day which, so far, has been an endless procession of blokeish bands, it's a great thing to see a sister kicking out the jams on her own account. Maybe there's a bit of riot grrl in all of us.
The Mephisto Walz Wikipedia page tells me, in a pedagogic tone oddly reminiscient of a stern schoolmaster, that the band's albums "have received high acclaim from the gothic community and stand as early monuments to the movement."
Blimey. That makes Mephisto Walz sound like the Druids who built Stonehenge, or something.
They look fairly lively as they troop on stage for their headline slot, but then this line-up of Mephisto Walz is almost entirely new. Aside from founder-member Barry Galvin, nobody on stage today had a hand in carving those early monuments to the gothic movement. Let's see how this new incarnation of the band wields its chisels.
Mephisto Walz ease into their set with a certain magisterial panache. The band may be nearly new, but they're coming on like elder statesmen, stepping up to claim the attention that is their due. After Tying Tiffany's no-shit assault, they seem strangely restrained: cruising rather than putting the hammer down. The band's new singer, oddly enough, doesn't seem to do much in the way of singing. I find myself taking umpteen photos of her holding the microphone, but I don't think I get one shot of her actually singing into it.
Perhaps Mephisto Walz switch off the cruise control and crank it a bit later in their set - if so, we'll have to leave them to it. It's time to tram it across town now, for the last band of this year's WGT: Chris & Cosey at the Pantheon.
The Pantheon was known until last year as the Volkspalast. Now that all evidence of the former East Germany is steadily being obliterated - there's a little less of it each year - I suppose it was inevitable that a typically Ossi name like 'People's Palace' would have to go. But the building itself - an exercise in neo-classicism, constructed entirely of moulded DDR concrete - is the same as ever. Let's enjoy it while we've got it. One day it'll be all tinted glass and brushed aluminium around here, you wait and see.
Chris & Cosey, of course, are famous as 50% of Throbbing Gristle. But their excursions into synthpop (some say they invented the genre), while never less than accessible, have an odd and off-centre charm all of their own. Somewhere between kinky and whimsical, the meticulous machine-beats generated by Chris Carter meet the human warmth of Cosey Fanni Tutti's vocals, and somewhere in that ever so precisely managed collision a little bit of magic is made.
It's a curious thing how synthpop, as created here tonight by Chris & Cosey, two unassuming figures amid flickering projections, seems to have so much more substance and depth than synthpop created by anyone else.
Perhaps that's because there are no factory pre-set arpeggios or off-the-shelf sounds being used here: Chris Carter, a man who was making synthesizers before most of today's synthpoppers were old enough to buy ice cream, would clearly have no truck with such easy options. Perhaps it's simply in the quality of the songs, for technology is nothing without a song to sing. Tonight, 'October Love Song', with its lilt and sway and genuine emotional pull, fair brings the house down.
Well, that was the 20th anniversary WGT. A curate's egg of an event this year, I think. Parts of it were excellent, but it did seem as if the organisers had used the opportunity to retreat into a gothic rock bunker.
There are always a few standard-issue Sisters/Nephilim quasi-tribute acts at each WGT, of course. I suppose, like the common cold, they will always be around. Such bands are part of the gothic landscape. But this year it did seem as if the WGT had shied away from artists that threaten to give the envelope a push, in favour of nods to a familiar past.
Maybe that was the point - after all, if you can't look back on the occasion of your 20th anniversary, when can you look back? Maybe the next WGT will have more of an eye for the current, the contemporary and the new. If nothing else, the fact that that so many standard gothic rock bands were given a run-out this year means that they can't simply repeat the trick next year. There's a limit to the number of times you can book The Merciful Nuns, after all.
Chris & Cosey: Website | MySpace | Facebook
Mephisto Walz: Website | MySpace | Facebook
Tying Tiffany: Website | MySpace | Facebook
The Beauty Of Gemina: Website | MySpace | Facebook
Midnight Caine: Website | MySpace | Facebook
Soul In Isolation: Website | MySpace | Facebook
Wave Gotik Treffen: Website | MySpace | Facebook
For more photos from the WGT, find the bands by name here.
Back to Day 1 of the WGT here.
