I’ve seen KMFDM twice before although by the date of this gig I should have seen them thrice! They were due to tour in June or July but postponed until Sept. They were playing at the O2 Academy in Islington. I saw them here once before and also at M’era Luna this year.
The O2 Islington is a twenty minute walk from Kings Cross, which is handy as that’s where my train gets to after leaving Kent. Yep, that is the wrong side of London for most of Kent, but it’s perfect for me. Most of the venues I go to are up in the NE of the city. After a drink at The Angel Wetherspoons with #3 and we went to the venue to find Lord Of The Lost playing.
To me, this almost felt like being at home. They are a very “German” rock band. I say that as someone who has experienced a lot of German rock over the last three years with time at the M’era Luna festival. I had seen them before although I wrote very little about them in this communication. They were very good. They looked like they were having fun and the music was crafted well along with sounding good. I particularly liked two songs: La Bomba, which I’m pretty sure was a samba, and I.D.G.A.F. which is obvious. Their interaction with the crowd was very good.
Both of those songs are on the above EP. Next band up were Inertia, whom I don’t think I’ve seen before.
I’ve just searched my website and I saw them play when they supported Ayria. It turns out I didn’t much like them then and I wasn’t impressed last night. My notes for this time say: slow plodding songs and few audience interactions, odd. I did take a photograph but a picture here isn’t warranted.
Headliners were KMFDM. They started with D.I.Y. and continued with ninety minutes of excellent heavy music. It was a really good set and thoroughly enjoyable.
Their guitarists were the chaps from Lord Of The Lost, which makes sense really. If your normal pickers aren’t around use those travelling with you. There wasn’t a huge amount of crowd interaction by the main two but the guitarists made up for that. Having seen them at M’era Luna this year it was clear that all the chatting to the audience back then was them try to cover the technical issues that surrounded that gig.
After the first song the main man actually smiled and showed emotion. This was a little surprise! It was nice to see that one of the guitarists [the main singer from Lord Of The Lost] was wearing a Combichrist t-shirt, a good endorsement.
It was really enjoyable and a solid professional set, as you’d expect.
AS a side note I’ve decided I might start wearing some ear defence to gigs. It’s just a thought at the moment. I’ll have to ponder it over the next year or so.
