WGT part two
Night 3
mrph and I decided that we would actually manage to do a bit of shopping, so after brekkie we moved up to the Arga and had a bit of a nosey around the stalls. There wasn't anyhting shiny enough to spark the magpie instinct, so off to the bands it was.
Gods Army were a plesant enough band. Nothing especially noteworthy though, so I shan't note much. Instead I went for another bit of a wander, and ended up chatting to brute_force and I even considered taking a few pictures of things not band-shaped.... I didn't take any, that sort of thing was going to need building up to :) Its nice just to wander around for a bit and people-watch. The German goths do a good line in mohawks.
Scarlets Remains were an American band who were channeling Souxsie, and as they came on I bumped into charliemouse who was really enjoying them. Not really my thing unfortunately, and I didn't rate them so highly. We chatted for a bit whilst Venom and Bootle flyers were being distributed.
We poped back into the hotel to quickly back-up some photos and clear the CF cards off, with a bit of unintentional lazing about. Due to the lack of Decoded Feedback, I missed the start of Oomph!, who had been recommended by kneeshooter He was right, they were great and bounced around the stage cheerfully. I must get hold of some of their stuff. Whilst I couldn't understand what they were singing about, it definitely felt pretty happy-bouncy.
For some reason, I thought that it would be a good plan to go take some shots of WinterKalte, but Noise never seems to photograph that well. They did move a bit, but it wasn't all that exciting, and so I moved towards the Agra before the end of the set, to try and avoid the crush getting the tram out. To be fair to them, as a noise act they were pretty good, and did hold my attention longer than most noise acts would.
The final act of the night was Moi dix Mois. J-Rock is an exercise in visuals, and in that regard they didn't diasppoint. I guess that soft speed metal would be the best way to describe them musically. As would "Not very good." To them, image is everything, and we were kicked out of the photopit after the first song, and should anyone try to take a shot from further back after that song then they were in trouble. Which made for a rather entertaining evening. Eventually I got back, dumped my stuff, and got out clubbing. One song in a very crowded pit doesn't make getting a decent shot easy.
Night 4
Todays breakfast was blueberry muffin with bluberry cream cheese, I eat so healthily at these things. It was very nice, and possibly a little over the top. The open air venue was our first port of call today. First upThe House of Usher. Nice short review, they were boring, lets forget about them.
The reason I came to this venue today was to see Bloodflowerz, who I saw here a few years ago and really enjoyed. They are a metal band, and there was the appropriate on stage headbanging and quite a bit of the lead singer growling at the audience in a predatory way. They have enough hits that the audience knew a lot of the songs, and could really get involved with the gig. Perhaps the stage was just a little too big for the band, as at times they looked like they just were not quite managing to fill it.
Dope Stars Inc I had no idea of. And they were, after Oomph!, the find of this Treffen. Bags of energy, spilling around the stage along with young, good looking musicians. The sort of thing you could see being fairly MTV2 friendly in some ways, but bang on target when it came to delivery live, they were going at the audience and were not taking any prisoners. After they left the stage I got a CD of theirs, and I've been listening to it almost constantly at work since.
I've seen The Last Dance quite a few times before. In fact, I think that they might have been the first goth gig that I went to. They seem to be getting better every time I see them. They connected with the crowd, and seemed to be really enjoying themselves on the stage. Jeff, the lead singer, was covering the whole stage, and it did look like they were filling the room they had up. Important, given there were fewer of them than most of the more local bands (I don't know why the german bands are bigger, they just are.)
mrph and I moved on up to the Agra after this, so that we could catch some dodgy bagpipe bands. One of the fun bits of Leipzig is always the last night and the wierdass bagpipers. We got there for Cultus Ferox coming on. Loads of people on stage, and a strange visual cross between Highlander and Mad Max.
Next up was Saltatis Mortis. Getting in to get photos of this lot was delayed as they had set up the pyrotechnics at the front of the stage, so we waited until the explosions stopped before moving in. One of the important things to know about the last night at the agra is the element of competitivness regarding how many people there are on stage. Cultus Ferox only managed about 10, with just a few of them playing bagpipes. That set the bar for the next lot. At one point they had extra guest bagpipers on the stage, and 10 of the buggers twirling around and playing loudly.
The special finale was Cantatus Buranus. How were 10 bagpipers going to be topped. The last band used up all the spare mad German bagpiping goths, well, you just have to have an orchestra on the stage. And a couple of choirs. As well as the band, and more drums than you could shake a stick at. Luckilly they had several sticks to wave at them. As you might have guessed from the name, someone (Well, Corvus Corax) decided that they needed to re-interperet some of Carmina Burana and add their own twist on it. It was ... interesting. Entertaining for the most part, though my attention had started to wander by the later stages. mrph got a copy of it on CD, and I do think that it goes better live, as you get the rather mad spectacle of it.
In the evening I tempted Morph out, and we were off to the Moritzbastei. We managed to bump in to Sarn and Sanyra, who we only ever see there these days, and who we really should make the effort to get over and see some time. There were most of the usual crowd there for the final night, and we decided to head back to the hotel about 6, before anything too silly happened (You know who you are).
Tuesday, and back home.
We did manage to get ourselves shifted, picked up some bagels and grabbed the train, just about wedging the luggage into one corner of it. Once we got ourselves to the airport there were a lot of familiar faces waiting for the same plane as us, so I was able to properly catch up with giggly_teapot and ninshubur. Thanks to kneeshooter for the lift home from the airport. It was a really great long weekend, and I'm almost awake after it now. Roll on next year!
First part is over here