Nemesis To Go - Live: Wave Gotik Treffen

15th Wave Gotik Treffen - part 4

Bands in order of appearance:
Vivus Temporis
God's Army
Scarlet's Remains
Chants Of Maldoror
Nosferatu
Garden Of Delight
Clan Of Xymox
Deine Lakaien
Moi Dix Mois

Medieval Market and Agra, Leipzig
Sunday June 4 2006

On top of the Moritzbastei, the medieval market is in full swing. Pour some fruit wine down your neck, get your Aurthurian jerkin here. Medievalism is a big part of the German goth experience - crossing over with the folk scene at the authentic end, colliding with rock 'n' roll at the opposite extreme.

At the WGT there are plenty of opportunities to experience a bit of re-created history, and here, on the wood and canvas stage at the far end of the market, Vivus Temporis are about to party like it's 1399. Bagpipes and drums kick up a racket, and, with many a nod and a wink, the band bob and weave through some amusingly choreographed soft shoe shuffle routines, like a fourteenth century Shadows, honking and thumping all the way.

Vivus Temporis clearly aren't heavily into the serious end of medieval re-enactment: their main purpose is to have fun, and they manage to sweep everyone - from hardcore bagpipe aficionados to diehard rivetheads - along with them. Fun stuff, but now it's time to catch a tram to the Agra, the WGT's biggest venue, to see what the twenty-first century can give us by way of entertainment.

God's Army The Agra is a complex of exhibition halls centred around two vast steel hangars, which, for the purposes of the WGT, become a huge market area and an unlikely venue for live music.

It's just after five in the afternoon, hardly the most rock 'n' roll hour of the day, but nevertheless we're gonna rock. I can't resist a small smile at the name of the band I catch on stage. God's Army, at first glance, looks amusingly close to Dad's Army. That's one for students of British TV comedy shows.

For students of smoothly competent metal, God's Army certainly do the business, with perhaps a dash of T'Pau-style eighties power balladry thrown in. Or perhaps it's just the female singer's white suit putting that impression into my head. I confess I'm not tempted to pay the band close attention, because God's Army don't inhabit my kind of musical area, so we'll just award them a 'good at what they do' accolade and move swiftly on.

Now this is more my musical area. I wonder if Scarlet's Remains are a little daunted by the huge stage and vast venue - surely this must be the biggest gig they've ever played. Still a fairly new band, still building things up on the club circuit, and currently shaking down yet another new line-up, it would be understandable if the band were hesitant and nervous. But they stride out with a fine display of Scarlet's Remains confidence, and unleash their powerful wall of sound as if they play Enormodomes every night.

This latest version of the band features Bari-Bari of Mephisto Walz on guitar, standing impassively stage right in his flouncy shirt and leggings - what you might call the traditional Californian goth bloke look. Oddly enough, even if you didn't know, you could hazard a guess as to where Scarlet's Remains hail from. There's something about the band that just says 'Californian goth scene'.

But Bari just keeps on stacking up those walls of sound, as vocalist eveghost flits about up front, her flat-top mohawk making her look like Anabella of Bow Wow Wow. She's always in motion, covering the stage as if guided by ley lines, and her vocals, blazing, impassioned and splenetic, effortlessly fill the metal hangar of the Agra.

If ever there was a band born to rip up a big venue, it's Scarlet's Remains. Having said that, it strikes me that I'd like to see them in a smaller club, which I think would concentrate their intensity in marvellous fashion. It would be nice if someone could sort them out with a gig in London next time they take a swing through Old Europe (that's a hint, by the way). But here, they comprehensively flatten the big tin shed of the Agra with their gleefully relentless noise, and it's good to experience them doing it.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The lead singer of Chants Of Maldoror looks like he's completed a correspondence course at the Peter Murphy Rock Star Academy. That's not a bad thing, of course: if you're going to be inspired by anyone, Peter Murphy makes a good mentor.

The band perform a kind of mannered glam-goth, never racking it up into the freak-out zone, always keeping things controlled. It's good stuff, but, compared against the big-stage assurance of Scarlet's Remains, it's noticeable that Chants Of Maldoror seem a little bemused by the wide open spaces of this venue.

The vocalist, upon whom the band's visual identity almost entirely rests - all the other musicians maintain poses of downbeat efficiency throughout - keeps on getting down in a crouch, giving the audience the eye from more or less a kneeling position. That's doubtless an effective move at a small club gig, where such a ploy can inject a moment of dramatic intensity. At a venue of this size, it's a no-no, because every time the singer does his get-down thing, he vanishes from view to everyone except the first three rows, leaving most of the audience gawping at a big gap.

It's not like I want Chants Of Maldoror to big it up like Bon Jovi, or anything, but I think the band does need to work out a way of getting their show over at a large venue. They just don't seem quite at home in these surroundings. I'm left with the impression that what we have here is an interesting band that hasn't quite managed to flam up their show to the big-stage-at-the-WGT level. Promising stuff, but a bit of game-raising wouldn't go amiss.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

What's this? Nosferatu? Didn't they split up? Ah, but no band stays split up for long these days. Nosferatu are back, with yet another line-up, and - astonishingly enough - a new, rocky, sound and image. The band's old uber-vampire, none-more-gothick schtick has been booted out the door. The nu-Nosferatu has adopted the guise of a grizzled and scruffy hard rock band, and bizarrely enough it suits them rather well.

Only guitarist Damien Deville and a keyboard player way in the background maintain anything resembling the old gothic look. What the old uber-goth fanbase will think of this transformation is a point to ponder, but Nosferatu do actually work rather well as a a no-shit rock band. Away with the frills and flounces, and turn them guitars up loud, that's the ticket.

The band's vocalist - their original singer, apparently, now returned after many years away - leans on the mic stand, all hair and shades, giving it the rock god thing like he's singing with the Black Crowes. The band rock out around him like they've all got lifetime subscriptions to Kerranng! magazine, and the old gothic hits sound unexpectedly convincing in their new, beefy, rock-bastard guise.

In particular, the vintage tune 'Wiccaman' (which always sounded like a rock song trying to escape the clutches of the goth monster anyway) cuts through like Black Sabbath in part mood. Nosferatu's comeback amounts to an unexpected revival, and an unexpected stylistic reinvention to boot, but, weirdly enough, it works. If the goths aren't too alienated by the rock makeover, the Nossies just might be on the road to paydirt city at last.

The info sheet tells me that our next band is 'Garden Of Delight featuring Lutherion'. Which sounds very impressive, but for the fact that I have no idea who the mysterious Lutherion actually is. I'm sure he's frightfully important, mind.

Garden Of Delight turn out to be the band that Midnight Configuration always wanted to be: deep, melodramatic vocals, robust guitars, programmed beats - and a huge, appreciative, audience. The band rumble and grumble sepulchrally, hammering out a big portentous sound.

Trouble is, I have no idea if any of their supposedly deep 'n' meaningful grandstanding actually has any real meaning, or if it's all basically one big effect. The singer, behatted and bearded like Al Jourgensen's little brother, waves a flag bedecked with...what? Mystical symbolism, or meaningless squiggles?

That, in a nutshell, is the problem I have with Garden of Delight: does any of this have substance? Or is the band just meaningless squiggles made flesh? Does the band's show articulate any real ideas, or is it all just empty doom-rock bluster? Frankly, I incline to the latter. Sorry, Lutherion, whoever you are. Your band doesn't convince.

Clan Of Xymox take the stage with their trademark downbeat efficiency. They're the absolue antithesis of Garden Of Delight, in that the band has no truck with melodrama or grandstanding. What you get with Clan Of Xymox is an assured, self-possessed peregrination through a set drawn from a career that must extend well beyond twenty years now.

The band's calm, just-get-on-with-it approach can sometimes backfire - last year at the WGT, I recall, I was rather underwhelmed by a Xymox set which seemed to veer worryingly close to the going through the motions zone. But this time they seem to rise to the occasion a little more. It's not that the band ramps up the drama like U2 on steroids, or anything - that kind of extravagance just isn't the Xymox style. They keep things downbeat as ever, but paradoxically they also seem to have some fire in their bellies this time.

The songs roll out with a certain here-we-stand-we-can-do-no-other conviction. Centre stage, toting his guitar like a - well, I was going to say 'machine gun', but that's a little OTT: let's say like a set of golf clubs - main man Ronny Moorings takes a swing through his back catalogue with a certain keen amiability, but it's the new song 'Weak In My Knees' which really hits the spot. Curiously, because the song title doesn't really hint at it, this number is built around a driving dance pulse over which Ronny's guitar crash lands, and the resulting rattle and thrum prods the audience into enthusiastic motion. A definite result, and proof that Xymox have still got it...even if they don't necessarily wave it in your face.

Oh dear, it's Deine Lakaien. Genuine superstars in Germany (although still a minor cult outfit elsewhere), this band never fails to rub me up the wrong way. Employing a vast array of sophisticated electronics to create simplistic, mawkish, hand-staple-forehead power ballads, Deine Lakaien command a level of adulation from their fans that's downright scary - especially if, as I do here, you find yourself one of only a handful of unbelievers in a vast sea of glassy-eyed acolytes.

The Agra crowd goes star-crossed crazy as the band emerges on stage, but the most massive cheers are reserved for the appearance of vocalist Alexander Veljanov, who wanders out wearing a brown overcoat, as if he's just got off the bus.

Veljanov has a performace style that basically amounts to strolling to and fro across the stage, as he croons lyrics which sound like they've all been cribbed from cheap greetings cards. In fairness, I must acknowledge that he's not writing, or singing, in his first language, but even so there's no excuse for such inane doggerel as 'Kiss me, kiss me kiss me like I kiss you/Miss me, miss me, miss me like I miss you', and certainly no rational explaination for the reverence which this stuff is received by the fans. Frankly, I put it down to mass hypnotism.

Meanwhile, the band's musical maestro, electronics wizard Ernst Horn, makes like a mad professor, poking and manipulating an old piano as if the ghosts of Chas 'n' Dave are fighing it out in his psyche, and the cellist gives his instrument a good old rock 'n' roll seeing-to. But for all the bursts of showmanship from the band, it's Alexander Veljanov who controls the show, crooning like a Bing Crosby for the doom generation, keeping it all smoothly offhand as his emotion-bunny ballads slide along. By the end of the set, there's not a dry eye in the house. Personally, I'm crying with relief that it's all over.

Moi Dix Mois are next on stage. Moi Dix Mois are also, apparently, the next big thing. They're part of the Japanese phenomenon known as 'visual kei' - a highly stylised, image-heavy take on otherwise unexceptional rock music which, in the western world at least, seems to have gained an extra exotic cachet simply by virtue of the fact that it's Japanese.

Over the last few years I've seen many zines and scene-observers, from Meltdown magazine to Mick Mercer, confidently bigging up this stuff, as if it's poised to sweep through the world-o-goth like an unstoppable tide: the new cool sensation. The inconvenient fact that none of visual kei bands have shown the slightest sign of making the much-predicted breakthrough has not dampened the soothsayers' ardour one bit.

Ah, yes, you might say, but surely the visual style has become influential on the goth scene at large? Well, to a point, yes, Mioi Dix Mois although I would dourly point out that handful of elegant gothic lolita girls in the clubs does not constitute the much heralded breakthrough. In any case, the original influence went the other way: from the western goth scene to the world of Japanese rock. We did it first, and with more musical invention, too.

Thus it is that I'm entirely unconvinced by the predictions of next-big-thingery, especially as it seems that none of the principal cheerleaders for visual kei have ever seen the bands in action.

Call me a cynical old bugger if you will, but I prefer to taste the dish before I compliment the chef, and since Moi Dix Mois are almost universally hailed as the leading lights of the visual scene, it now appears that I have the chance to do just that.

The first thing that happens is a long, long wait. The usual convention at festivals, that everyone busks it on a line check, obviously doesn't apply here. It appears that Moi Dix Mois ain't gonna play a note before their road crew has painstakingly taken almost as long as the entire duration of the Japanese imperial dynasty to quadruple-check everything, by which time the small but enthusiastic bunch of visual goths (visigoths?) who have crushed themselves down the front to wait for their heroes are looking distinctly bedraggled.

Eventually, the lights go down and the band comes out, and the glory of the visual kei concept is revealed to us in all its magnificence. What is it like? Well...in a nutshell, average heavy metal played by a bunch of slim young chaps who appear to base their image entirely on old publicity photos of Siouxsie Sioux. For all the big build up, that's pretty much all we get.

As a concept, the notion of playing OTT rock music while dressed in outlandish outfits is hardly new, of course. While Moi Dix Mois might have a slight selling point in that they employ a gothic image, here at the WGT, where elegantly dressed goths can be seen any day in the streets of Leipzig, it's hardly an astounding idea.

The music, meanwhile, touches all the right hard rock bases - Moi Dix Mois are nothing if not competent rockers - but descends into cliche too often for comfort. Maybe that hoary old 'metal fingers' gesture, flung out from the stage as if the band are trying, rather self-conciously, to assert their rocker credentials, means something frightfully mystical in Japan, but you know what? I don't think so. I think what we've got here is unspectacular metal in costume, nothing more.

Interestingly enough, a sizeable chunk of the crowd seems to be similarly underwhelmed. As I stand at the back of the hall watching the second half of Moi Dix Moi's set unfold, I'm suddenly struck by the number of people walking away from the band, heading for the exits in search of other entertainments, or maybe just a tram back to the hotel. The fans down the front are still enthusiastically cheering, but Moi Dix Mois certainly aren't winning over any converts.

So, is this the new cool phenomenon to sweep through the world of goth? In a word, no. Because, while I may not know much about visual kei, I know this: nobody walks away from the next big thing.

This way for the Wave Gotik Treffen - part five

Back to the Wave Gotik Treffen - part three

Essential links:

Wave Gotik Treffen: Website | Myspace | Livejournal

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


Home \| About \| Live \| CDs / Vinyl / Downloads \| Interviews \| Photos \| Archive \| Links Email \| LiveJournal \| MySpace \| Last FM
15th Wave Gotik Treffen - part 4 Bands in order of appearance: Vivus Temporis God's Army Scarlet's Remains Chants Of Maldoror Nosferatu Garden Of Delight Clan Of Xymox Deine Lakaien Moi Dix Mois Medieval Market and Agra, Leipzig Sunday June 4 2006 On top of the Moritzbastei, the medieval market is in full swing. Pour some fruit wine down your neck, get your Aurthurian jerkin here. Medievalism is a big part of the German goth experience - crossing over with the folk scene at the authentic end, colliding with rock 'n' roll at the opposite extreme. At the WGT there are plenty of opportunities to experience a bit of re-created history, and here, on the wood and canvas stage at the far end of the market, Vivus Temporis are about to party like it's 1399. Bagpipes and drums kick up a racket, and, with many a nod and a wink, the band bob and weave through some amusingly choreographed soft shoe shuffle routines, like a fourteenth century Shadows, honking and thumping all the way. Vivus Temporis clearly aren't heavily into the serious end of medieval re-enactment: their main purpose is to have fun, and they manage to sweep everyone - from hardcore bagpipe aficionados to diehard rivetheads - along with them. Fun stuff, but now it's time to catch a tram to the Agra, the WGT's biggest venue, to see what the twenty-first century can give us by way of entertainment. The Agra is a complex of exhibition halls centred around two vast steel hangars, which, for the purposes of the WGT, become a huge market area and an unlikely venue for live music. It's just after five in the afternoon, hardly the most rock 'n' roll hour of the day, but nevertheless we're gonna rock. I can't resist a small smile at the name of the band I catch on stage. God's Army, at first glance, looks amusingly close to Dad's Army. That's one for students of British TV comedy shows. For students of smoothly competent metal, God's Army certainly do the business, with perhaps a dash of T'Pau-style eighties power balladry thrown in. Or perhaps it's just the female singer's white suit putting that impression into my head. I confess I'm not tempted to pay the band close attention, because God's Army don't inhabit my kind of musical area, so we'll just award them a 'good at what they do' accolade and move swiftly on. Now this is more my musical area. I wonder if Scarlet's Remains are a little daunted by the huge stage and vast venue - surely this must be the biggest gig they've ever played. Still a fairly new band, still building things up on the club circuit, and currently shaking down yet another new line-up, it would be understandable if the band were hesitant and nervous. But they stride out with a fine display of confidence, and unleash their powerful wall of sound as if they play Enormodomes every night. This latest version of the band features Bari-Bari of Mephisto Walz on guitar, standing impassively stage right in his flouncy shirt and leggings - what you might call the traditional Californian goth bloke look. Oddly enough, even if you didn't know, you could hazard a guess as to where Scarlet's Remains hail from. There's something about the band that just says 'Californian goth scene'. But Bari just keeps on stacking up those walls of sound, as vocalist eveghost flits about up front, her flat-top mohawk making her look like Anabella of Bow Wow Wow. She's always in motion, covering the stage as if guided by ley lines, and her vocals, blazing, impassioned and splenetic, effortlessly fill the metal hangar of the Agra. If ever there was a band born to rip up a big venue, it's Scarlet's Remains. Having said that, it strikes me that I'd like to see them in a smaller club, which I think would concentrate their intensity in marvellous fashion. It would be nice if someone could sort them out with a gig in London next time they take a swing through Old Europe (that's a hint, by the way). But here, they comprehensively flatten the big tin shed of the Agra with their gleefully relentless noise, and it's good to experience them doing it. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX The lead singer of Chants Of Maldoror looks like he's completed a correspondence course at the Peter Murphy Rock Star Academy. That's not a bad thing, of course: if you're going to be inspired by anyone, Peter Murphy makes a good mentor. The band perform a kind of mannered glam-goth, never racking it up into the freak-out zone, always keeping things controlled. It's good stuff, but, compared against the big-stage assurance of Scarlet's Remains, it's noticeable that Chants Of Maldoror seem a little bemused by the wide open spaces of this venue. The vocalist, upon whom the band's visual identity almost entirely rests - all the other musicians maintain poses of downbeat efficiency throughout - keeps on getting down in a crouch, giving the audience the eye from more or less a kneeling position. That's doubtless an effective move at a small club gig, where such a ploy can inject a moment of dramatic intensity. At a venue of this size, it's a no-no, because every time the singer does his get-down thing, he vanishes from view to everyone except the first three rows, leaving most of the audience gawping at a big gap. It's not like I want Chants Of Maldoror to big it up like Bon Jovi, or anything, but I think the band does need to work out a way of getting their show over at a large venue. They just don't seem quite at home in these surroundings. I'm left with the impression that what we have here is an interesting band that hasn't quite managed to flam up their show to the big-stage-at-the-WGT level. Promising stuff, but a bit of game-raising wouldn't go amiss. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX What's this? Nosferatu? Didn't they split up? Ah, but no band stays split up for long these days. Nosferatu are back, with yet another line-up, and - astonishingly enough - a new, rocky, sound and image. The band's old uber-vampire, none-more-gothick schtick has been booted out the door. The nu-Nosferatu has adopted the guise of a grizzled and scruffy hard rock band, and bizarrely enough it suits them rather well. Only guitarist Damien Deville and a keyboard player way in the background maintain anything resembling the old gothic look. What the old uber-goth fanbase will think of this transformation is a point to ponder, but Nosferatu do actually work rather well as a a no-shit rock band. Away with the frills and flounces, and turn them guitars up loud, that's the ticket. The band's vocalist - their original singer, apparently, now returned after many years away - leans on the mic stand, all hair and shades, giving it the rock god thing like he's singing with the Black Crowes. The band rock out around him like they've all got lifetime subscriptions to Kerranng! magazine, and the old gothic hits sound unexpectedly convincing in their new, beefy, rock-bastard guise. In particular, the vintage tune 'Wiccaman' (which always sounded like a rock song trying to escape the clutches of the goth monster anyway) cuts through like Black Sabbath in part mood. Nosferatu's comeback amounts to an unexpected revival, and an unexpected stylistic reinvention to boot, but, weirdly enough, it works. If the goths aren't too alienated by the rock makeover, the Nossies just might be on the road to paydirt city at last. The info sheet tells me that our next band is 'Garden Of Delight featuring Lutherion'. Which sounds very impressive, but for the fact that I have no idea who the mysterious Lutherion actually is. I'm sure he's frightfully important, mind. Garden Of Delight turn out to be the band that Midnight Configuration always wanted to be: deep, melodramatic vocals, robust guitars, programmed beats - and a huge, appreciative, audience. The band rumble and grumble sepulchrally, hammering out a big portentous sound. Trouble is, I have no idea if any of their supposedly deep 'n' meaningful grandstanding actually has any real meaning, or if it's all basically one big effect. The singer, behatted and bearded like Al Jourgensen's little brother, waves a flag bedecked with...what? Mystical symbolism, or meaningless squiggles? That, in a nutshell, is the problem I have with Garden of Delight: does any of this have substance? Or is the band just meaningless squiggles made flesh? Does the band's show articulate any real ideas, or is it all just empty doom-rock bluster? Frankly, I incline to the latter. Sorry, Lutherion, whoever you are. Your band doesn't convince. Clan Of Xymox take the stage with their trademark downbeat efficiency. They're the absolue antithesis of Garden Of Delight, in that the band has no truck with melodrama or grandstanding. What you get with Clan Of Xymox is an assured, self-possessed peregrination through a set drawn from a career that must extend well beyond twenty years now. The band's calm, just-get-on-with-it approach can sometimes backfire - last year at the WGT, I recall, I was rather underwhelmed by a Xymox set which seemed to veer worryingly close to the going through the motions zone. But this time they seem to rise to the occasion a little more. It's not that the band ramps up the drama like U2 on steroids, or anything - that kind of extravagance just isn't the Xymox style. They keep things downbeat as ever, but paradoxically they also seem to have some fire in their bellies this time. The songs roll out with a certain here-we-stand-we-can-do-no-other conviction. Centre stage, toting his guitar like a - well, I was going to say 'machine gun', but that's a little OTT: let's say like a set of golf clubs - main man Ronny Moorings takes a swing through his back catalogue with a certain keen amiability, but it's the new song 'Weak In My Knees' which really hits the spot. Curiously, because the song title doesn't really hint at it, this number is built around a driving dance pulse over which Ronny's guitar crash lands, and the resulting rattle and thrum prods the audience into enthusiastic motion. A definite result, and proof that Xymox have still got it...even if they don't necessarily wave it in your face. Oh dear, it's Deine Lakaien. Genuine superstars in Germany (although still a minor cult outfit elsewhere), this band never fails to rub me up the wrong way. Employing a vast array of sophisticated electronics to create simplistic, mawkish, hand-staple-forehead power ballads, Deine Lakaien command a level of adulation from their fans that's downright scary - especially if, as I do here, you find yourself one of only a handful of unbelievers in a vast sea of glassy-eyed acolytes. The Agra crowd goes star-crossed crazy as the band emerges on stage, but the most massive cheers are reserved for the appearance of vocalist Alexander Veljanov, who wanders out wearing a brown overcoat, as if he's just got off the bus. Veljanov has a performace style that basically amounts to strolling to and fro across the stage, as he croons lyrics which sound like they've all been cribbed from cheap greetings cards. In fairness, I must acknowledge that he's not writing, or singing, in his first language, but even so there's no excuse for such inane doggerel as 'Kiss me, kiss me kiss me like I kiss you/Miss me, miss me, miss me like I miss you', and certainly no rational explaination for the reverence which this stuff is received by the fans. Frankly, I put it down to mass hypnotism. Meanwhile, the band's musical maestro, electronics wizard Ernst Horn, makes like a mad professor, poking and manipulating an old piano as if the ghosts of Chas 'n' Dave are fighing it out in his psyche, and the cellist gives his instrument a good old rock 'n' roll seeing-to. But for all the bursts of showmanship from the band, it's Alexander Veljanov who controls the show, crooning like a Bing Crosby for the doom generation, keeping it all smoothly offhand as his emotion-bunny ballads slide along. By the end of the set, there's not a dry eye in the house. Personally, I'm crying with relief that it's all over. Moi Dix Mois are next on stage. Moi Dix Mois are also, apparently, the next big thing. They're part of the Japanese phenomenon known as 'visual kei' - a highly stylised, image-heavy take on otherwise unexceptional rock music which, in the western world at least, seems to have gained an extra exotic cachet simply by virtue of the fact that it's Japanese. Over the last few years I've seen many zines and scene-observers, from Meltdown magazine to Mick Mercer, confidently bigging up this stuff, as if it's poised to sweep through the world-o-goth like an unstoppable tide: the new cool sensation. The inconvenient fact that none of visual kei bands have shown the slightest sign of making the much-predicted breakthrough has not dampened the soothsayers' ardour one bit. Ah, yes, you might say, but surely the visual style has become influential on the goth scene at large? Well, to a point, yes, although I would dourly point out that handful of elegant gothic lolita girls in the clubs does not constitute the much heralded breakthrough. In any case, the original influence went the other way: from the western goth scene to the world of Japanese rock. We did it first, and with more musical invention, too. Thus it is that I'm entirely unconvinced by the predictions of next-big-thingery, especially as it seems that none of the principal cheerleaders for visual kei have ever seen the bands in action. Call me a cynical old bugger if you will, but I prefer to taste the dish before I compliment the chef, and since Moi Dix Mois are almost universally hailed as the leading lights of the visual scene, it now appears that I have the chance to do just that. The first thing that happens is a long, long wait. The usual convention at festivals, that everyone busks it on a line check, obviously doesn't apply here. It appears that Moi Dix Mois ain't gonna play a note before their road crew has painstakingly taken almost as long as the entire duration of the Japanese imperial dynasty to quadruple-check everything, by which time the small but enthusiastic bunch of visual goths (visigoths?) who have crushed themselves down the front to wait for their heroes are looking distinctly bedraggled. Eventually, the lights go down and the band comes out, and the glory of the visual kei concept is revealed to us in all its magnificence. What is it like? Well...in a nutshell, average heavy metal played by a bunch of slim young chaps who appear to base their image entirely on old publicity photos of Siouxsie Sioux. For all the big build up, that's pretty much all we get. As a concept, the notion of playing OTT rock music while dressed in outlandish outfits is hardly new, of course. While Moi Dix Mois might have a slight selling point in that they employ a gothic image, here at the WGT, where elegantly dressed goths can be seen any day in the streets of Leipzig, it's hardly an astounding idea. The music, meanwhile, touches all the right hard rock bases - Moi Dix Mois are nothing if not competent rockers - but descends into cliche too often for comfort. Maybe that hoary old 'metal fingers' gesture, flung out from the stage as if the band are trying, rather self-conciously, to assert their rocker credentials, means something frightfully mystical in Japan, but you know what? I don't think so. I think what we've got here is unspectacular metal in costume, nothing more. Interestingly enough, a sizeable chunk of the crowd seems to be similarly underwhelmed. As I stand at the back of the hall watching the second half of Moi Dix Moi's set unfold, I'm suddenly struck by the number of people walking away from the band, heading for the exits in search of other entertainments, or maybe just a tram back to the hotel. The fans down the front are still enthusiastically cheering, but Moi Dix Mois certainly aren't winning over any converts. So, is this the new cool phenomenon to sweep through the world of goth? In a word, no. Because, while I may not know much about visual kei, I know this: nobody walks away from the next big thing. This way for the Wave Gotik Treffen - part five Back to the Wave Gotik Treffen - part three Essential links: Vivus Temporis: Website God's Army: Website \| Myspace Scarlet's Remains: Website \| Myspace Chants Of Maldoror: Website Nosferatu: Website \| Myspace Garden Of Delight: Website \| Myspace Clan Of Xymox: Website \| Myspace Deine Lakaien: Website \| Myspace Moi Dix Mois: Website \| Myspace Wave Gotik Treffen: Website \| Myspace \| Livejournal For more photos from the WGT, find the bands by name here.
Home \| About \| Live \| CDs / Vinyl / Downloads \| Interviews \| Photos \| Archive \| Links Email \| LiveJournal \| MySpace \| Last FM
Back to top	Page credits: Review, photos and construction by Michael Johnson. Nemesis logo by Antony Johnston, Red N version by Mark Rimmell.