This might become a reoccuring theme, so best get used to it:
We interrupt our coverage of the Roadburn Festival (so far Wednesday and Thursday) with a smaller event that has taken place in Hamburg in the meantime. For both bands of the night, headliner and support alike the connections to the Dutch festival are obviously there...
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| MINAMI DEUTSCH |
My first live encounter with the Japanese Krautrock quartet took place at Roadburn 2018, where they were joined on stage by late ex-Can singer Damo Suzuki. Furthermore I saw them play an inspiring cosmic eighty-minutes show at the Knust in 2023.
As opener they naturally couldn't show their whole bandwidth here, but what they could fit into the limited playing time was easily enough to get the - mind you, mostly still Death Metal-oriented - audience onto their side quickly. Seeing the great acceptance of their hypnotically robotik jams, which often hold back for long just to make the ecstatic crescendos all the more satisfying, was something which made me very happy. I'm old enough to remember times when this tour constellation would probably have failed spectacularly. It's a good thing to see the Metal community grow up (except for that little childish front row fight, which reminded me of some even more stupid behaviour at last year's Sepultura farewell show).
Minami Deutsch surely deserved the enthusiastic response. Kraut and Fortune Goodies forever!
As opener they naturally couldn't show their whole bandwidth here, but what they could fit into the limited playing time was easily enough to get the - mind you, mostly still Death Metal-oriented - audience onto their side quickly. Seeing the great acceptance of their hypnotically robotik jams, which often hold back for long just to make the ecstatic crescendos all the more satisfying, was something which made me very happy. I'm old enough to remember times when this tour constellation would probably have failed spectacularly. It's a good thing to see the Metal community grow up (except for that little childish front row fight, which reminded me of some even more stupid behaviour at last year's Sepultura farewell show).
Minami Deutsch surely deserved the enthusiastic response. Kraut and Fortune Goodies forever!
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| BLOOD INCANTATION |
Of course the headliner wasn't exactly attracting the most orthodox Metal crowd either, even though I don't know many Death Metal groups unleashing a both equally professional and infernal onslaught live. I had seen Blood Incantation absolutely crushing it on the Roadburn Main Stage with a career-spanning killer set - yet also performing their completely Metal-free Ambient "Timewave Zero" show the day before with similar success.
As everyone knows by now, since it made waves even beyond the Metal scene, their recent album "Absolute Elsewhere" combined both their Technical Death Metal and their Tangerine Dream / Pink Floyd sides to an astounding whole. And on this tour they played the whole thing, flanked by two egyptian / alien obelisks with glowing hieroglyphs, which made you wonder whether they would also add "Stonehenge" or "Powerslave" to their set. But no, after the three tablets each of "The Stargate" and "The Message" followed their 2019 instrumental "Inner Paths (To Outer Space)" and the encore "Obliquity Of The Ecliptic" from the "Luminescent Bridge" EP, both tracks foreshadowing the mix of musical directions of the recent album.
So all in all this wasn't a particularly long show. But it didn't feel too short at all, because of the tons of things which happened and of course the almost outragous amount of brutal energy which was released into the audience. I would have loved to hear a little bit of the synths, which were played by a guest musician, but it was enough to affirm that Blood Incantation nailed every aspect of their varied performance, from kosmische trance to technical madness and raging furor.
As visitors of the Gruenspan know, it's a sometimes problematically loud venue. I remember the Jazz police lamenting the volume of Kamasi Washington here, as well as Motorpsycho absolutely pulverizing hearings and brains to dust. So naturally I was checking on the intensity of my right ear tinnitus in the pause of the middle of the performed album. So I didn't understand all of Paul Riedl's lead-in to the second part as I was concentrating on the noises inside my head.
And of course exactly then the frontman picked out specifically me out of all people in the crowd in the packed room to do... something. (Give a symbol to continue? A specific one? I don't know...) Yeah thanks. I was just in Come on, I'm tired and confused! mode and waited for the situation to resolve itself somehow. Which it did? It's actually a (probably needlessly stressed and embarrassed, since noone else cares) blur and I actually hate to now forever associate an amazing show with this poorly timed and handled moment of unwanted attention. No, I honestly much prefer being spat on with fake blood by feminist Satanists - which in fact may or may not be a spoiler for one of my upcoming Roadburn reviews...
Unfortunately feeling like an idiot in front of the class room spoiled the rest of the night a bit for me for some reason. And there all chances of this performance ever becoming my live show of the year are going ot of the window, no matter how granted it might have been otherwise!
At least I slept some of my discomfort off earlier than expected, because I was so tired that I had to take an hour-long nap on an Autobahn rest area on my way home.
Well, anyway... Blood Incantation, what a freakishly great band! And what a fitting closure to two weeks, in which I sandwiched the whole Roadburn experience between this and none other than Tangerine Dream.
As everyone knows by now, since it made waves even beyond the Metal scene, their recent album "Absolute Elsewhere" combined both their Technical Death Metal and their Tangerine Dream / Pink Floyd sides to an astounding whole. And on this tour they played the whole thing, flanked by two egyptian / alien obelisks with glowing hieroglyphs, which made you wonder whether they would also add "Stonehenge" or "Powerslave" to their set. But no, after the three tablets each of "The Stargate" and "The Message" followed their 2019 instrumental "Inner Paths (To Outer Space)" and the encore "Obliquity Of The Ecliptic" from the "Luminescent Bridge" EP, both tracks foreshadowing the mix of musical directions of the recent album.
So all in all this wasn't a particularly long show. But it didn't feel too short at all, because of the tons of things which happened and of course the almost outragous amount of brutal energy which was released into the audience. I would have loved to hear a little bit of the synths, which were played by a guest musician, but it was enough to affirm that Blood Incantation nailed every aspect of their varied performance, from kosmische trance to technical madness and raging furor.
As visitors of the Gruenspan know, it's a sometimes problematically loud venue. I remember the Jazz police lamenting the volume of Kamasi Washington here, as well as Motorpsycho absolutely pulverizing hearings and brains to dust. So naturally I was checking on the intensity of my right ear tinnitus in the pause of the middle of the performed album. So I didn't understand all of Paul Riedl's lead-in to the second part as I was concentrating on the noises inside my head.
And of course exactly then the frontman picked out specifically me out of all people in the crowd in the packed room to do... something. (Give a symbol to continue? A specific one? I don't know...) Yeah thanks. I was just in Come on, I'm tired and confused! mode and waited for the situation to resolve itself somehow. Which it did? It's actually a (probably needlessly stressed and embarrassed, since noone else cares) blur and I actually hate to now forever associate an amazing show with this poorly timed and handled moment of unwanted attention. No, I honestly much prefer being spat on with fake blood by feminist Satanists - which in fact may or may not be a spoiler for one of my upcoming Roadburn reviews...
Unfortunately feeling like an idiot in front of the class room spoiled the rest of the night a bit for me for some reason. And there all chances of this performance ever becoming my live show of the year are going ot of the window, no matter how granted it might have been otherwise!
At least I slept some of my discomfort off earlier than expected, because I was so tired that I had to take an hour-long nap on an Autobahn rest area on my way home.
Well, anyway... Blood Incantation, what a freakishly great band! And what a fitting closure to two weeks, in which I sandwiched the whole Roadburn experience between this and none other than Tangerine Dream.
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