So, I have written about music a lot. If people ask what sort of music I like I answer: metal. It’s the easiest answer and everyone pretty much understands what it means. I wrote about my descent into metal here. Something strange happened since I saw Rammstein at Wembley Arena in February 2010. My music tastes shifted after seeing Combichrist. I wrote about that here as it distressed me somewhat.
Now, to give you a taste you can listen to the music here:
There’s plenty of stuff here that I know and quite a bit I don’t. It’s all good by association. It makes me happy, smile and want to dance. It’s new and different.
Met with Smith last night and we chatted about which music festival to attend this year. You may have read about M’era Luna from last year. It was a very good time but this year there’s more choice!
Our preferred choice was to head to Munich for the Dark Festival, but this has been cancelled which is a shame. There were a lot of good bands that we would have liked to see there.
So now there are two choices. M’era Luna at Hildesheim again or Amphi Festival in Cologne. Here’s the line up for M’era Luna:
Of the bands in the above list I would really like to see VNV Nation, Eisbrecher, Combichrist, Hocico and Suicide Commando. But there are more:
This list has a few tasty treats: [:SITD:], Noisuf-X and Centhron. So, M’era Luna has a good selection, worth travelling the 500 miles for!
Next up we have the selection from Amphi Festival.
The list of bands to definitely see at Amphi is: Aesthetic Perfection, Covenant, Faderhead, Frontline Assembly, Mono Inc, Suicide Commando, Unzucht and [X-RX].
It’s a tough choice. The current preference is M’era Luna. Wait and see.
So, it has been written within these communications that I have seen Combichrist a few times. , here, here and here. In fact it would be easier just to search Fooyah.net here.
So, out of those four gigs I reckon that the best set was the Old School Set they performed at Electrowerkz. I have now created a playlist on my iPhone and Sonos system that reflects what I think this concert was. I don’t have an exact list but this is close enough and a bloody good list of songs it is too!
Early one Monday morning I returned from Germany and a music festival there. Some details are contained within this communication. After getting home and sleeping for a short while I had to get ready to see Combichrist at the O2 Academy in Islington.
The above set list is for a gig in Bristol although it looks pretty similar to the gig I saw.
Stereo Juggernaut and Controlled Collapse were the support bands. I seem to remember that both bands were pretty good and enjoyable.
Combichrist were pretty darn good. They were impressive and the crowd was very active. Having just come from a weekend at a festival where the crowd all stood where they were and didn’t rush the stage this was a very different experience. There were some quite violent people in the mosh pit and, maybe I’m too old, but this was a bit of a turn off.
Now that Combichrist have guitarists the older songs have been adjusted to keep the musicians busy. They have created guitar parts to the mostly synth music and I think this detracts entirely from the quality of the original songs.
Even with all that this was still a bloody fantastic gig. Not quite as good as being at Electrowerkz but close.
Smith and I travelled to Germany to a music festival over the summer. We searched many festivals to find the right one for price, distance and bands, although that wasn’t the order of the criteria. We settled on M’era Luna, a gothic/industrial festival that takes place on an old British Army Air Corps airfield near the town of Hildesheim, just south of Hanover.
On the Friday we traversed the channel via a train that carries cars [just imagine! a train that can carry cars! UNDER the sea! We humans are ingenious!] and headed to Germany. We used just a Sat Nav device, neither of us had a proper map. France, Belgium and the Netherlands were all pretty boring and we longed for some hills or vague scenery. The world kept track of our journey via twitter.
In Germany! Passing Wankum. And now there’s hills! — Ian Parish (@iparish) August 7, 2015
The route took us on the ring roads of two large towns and the traffic slowed a lot around them, hindering our progress! Once in Germany we travelled fast on the autobahn although we did have a detour around the northern edges of Dortmund as the sat-nav didn’t quite warn about a lane change on a slip road in time and then the next junction was closed. Dortmund looked like the edges of any town.
The temperature was hitting 32 Celsius along the way and finally we arrived at the airport near Hildesheim. 500 miles, 1 tank of diesel and plenty of snacks and LOTs of music.
We only just managed to find somewhere to put up the tent. There wasn’t a great deal of space left in any of the campsite. Our spot was furthest as could be from the main festival area, but reasonable close to toilets and leaving on the Sunday.
That evening we wandered the festival area, drank some alcohol already purchased from a service station and went to the disco hangar. There was some pretty good music played and it was good fun.
After a good sleep we awoke to find that the air bed had stayed up and was really comfortable. We both went about our routines to get ready to leave our tent area. I needed to satisfy my caffeine addiction and stave off withdrawal symptoms by finding more caffeine to ingest. Just as we were getting dressed Andy managed to puncture the airbed. It slowly deflated. We found a repair kit and tried to stick on a patch. We would have to wait 6 hours before we knew whether it had worked.
I found coffee. I also found some food. The weather for the Saturday was meant to be slightly overcast with a chance of rain showers. It had rained quite heavily in the early morning but the ground was so dry from the scorching summer that it didn’t really create any puddles or mud. Shortly after the sun had arisen the whole place was dry. Once we were ready we headed to the festival area to check out the shops, food places and mediaeval village (with food places and shops). It was also a good chance to see how the arena and hanger were set up so we knew where toilets, drink entrances, exits etc.
There now follows a list of bands we saw with comments about them if I can remember them. It is a good few months since the festival while writing this, unlike my detailed descriptions about Download.
Nachtgeschrei
Versengeld (with person playing the hurdy gurdy and another on bag pipes)
Speilbann
Coppellius (who played some Maiden covers in the style of mediaeval rock)
The Other
Frozen Plasma (half of this band is Reaper which is good, but Frozen Plasma were a bit dull)
Lord of the Lost
L’ame Immortal
Aesthetic Perfection (3rd or 4th time seeing these and they were awesome)
In Strict Confidence (surprisingly ok even with a female singer)
Blut Engel (just no)
X-RX this band replaced Suicide Commando who had to pull out of the weekend. They were good and I liked it, but left to see . . . .
Rob Zombie who just blew the competition away and was professionally brilliant.
Sunday started with the search for caffeine and then food. The air bed did not stay inflated and so the night was reasonably uncomfortable. We had decided we would probably leave M’era Luna that evening and then drive as far as we could home before kipping in the car. The bands on Sunday were:
Private Pact (a bad goth, stand still, band)
Schwarzer Engel getting better, quite thrash, goth and heavy.
Unzucht were just a great band with heavy thrash riffs and a great guitarist.
Dope Stars Inc. were good but looked as though they had just come from the 80s!
Tying Tiffany was the surprise of the weekend. They started slow and boring but from the third song onwards it was full of energy and heavy. Just a great find for the summer.
Assemblage 23 dull. very dull.
Rotersand a great band, a great show and really put previous band to shame. I loved it.
Nachtmahr were slightly disappointing. It’s hard to pin point this. Their music is very good. But live, they just didn’t capture the mood. It was almost boring, even with two women acting out a fetish scene it was dull. Can’t quite figure it out.
Nightwish we said we would stay for two songs but managed just a half of one song. We then drove towards the UK.
A strange thing about the German crowds is that if you had your spot to watch from everyone stayed in that spot. No-one moved when a band appeared. There was no crush at the front. Andy and I were in the second row for a number of bands on the Sunday and there was room to dance, moved around and no crush. This was actually refreshing and pleasant. It made the weekend a much more enjoyable event that had there been the UK crush.
Nachtmahtr
Rotersand
Rotersand
Assemblage 23
Rob Zombie
Private Pact
Schwarzer Engel
Unzucht
Dope Stars Inc.
X-RX
Aesthetic Perfection
Frozen Plasma
The Other
Blut Engel (I think)
Spielbann
Coppellius (possibly)
Smiff and Tent
It was easy to leave the festival as the final band hadn’t finished. The roads were clear and we made fast progress across Germany and then the Netherlands. We agreed between us that we would stop at the first rest area we found after midnight. It was fascinating to see how the landscape changed from central Germany to the low lands. Flat and straight is pretty much every road after Germany. We stopped at some services about 1km before the Belgian border. I think we slept ok.
The Monday we woke, I found caffeine and then we drove towards Calais. We arrived at the tunnel way before we were due but we paid some extra money to be on an earlier train. This was worth it as it meant I got home before my family left for other things.
The excitement of the weekend continued to the Monday evening as Combichrist played the O2 Islington thing.
To me, this is still a new and fresh album. I think of Peace Sells as an “old” album and “Rust In Peace” as new! The good thing is that this album is brilliant. I don’t think there’s a bad song on here. The previous couple had a dodgy song or two [Mary Jane, Anarchy, I ain’t superstitious] but this album is truly a classic. Everyone should own it.
It’s an 80s album that begins with “F” from AC/DC. This means it’s not that good. Even the title track isn’t that great, but it is played as the last song at every concert.
I may be slightly out of touch here as when I bought this album I bought it on vinyl rather than tape like most of the other AC/DC albums I had. This meant I listened to it less that the others. I don’t really know the songs, they just don’t bother me.
Up front confession. I really like AC/DC. I always have. This album is far superior to Flick Of the Switch. I think the production has a better quality and the vocals are cleaner. Obviously most of the songs are about sex, as with every single AC/DC album ever.
A few years (many years really) I bought a couple of AC/DC VHS tapes. One was the video of them live in Paris, the ending of which I cried at. The other VHS tape was a collection of the videos from this album.
Fly on the wall – the anticipation for the start of the steady beat makes this song genius.
Shake Your Foundations – awesome riff and a real “boppy” feel.
First Blood – Good steady rock track.
Danger – Just don’t talk to strangers. A scary opening sound!
Sink The Pink – obviously it’s about playing a game of snooker/pool! A great song.
Playing With The Girls – good song with a rolling rhythm.
Stand Up – ingenious mix and arrangement with the kick drum.
Hell or High Water – The verse riff annoys me a little but the chorus riff is great.
Back In Business – A faster, almost ZZ Top, song!
Send For The Man – Good opening riff. The rest is OK.
There are three albums from the 80s for AC/DC which don’t reach the majesty of the 70s music. This is one of them. They all start with “F”.
I love AC/DC. Even the shit albums. This is one of those. There was a period in the 1980s when, after Back In Black, it all went a little sideways for AC/DC. But then, what would you expect with one of the top ten albums of all time behind them? Regression to the mean.
The songs on this album are solid AC/DC. They are well written and jaunty. There isn’t a song they play live though.
For sheer crazy you could try Bedlam In Belgium.
I would argue that Guns For Hire is a pretty good song, especially the opening few bars!
I remember I poster in our sixth form common room where all the members of this band looked like women. Tight clothes, big hair and loads of make up. Very strange.
This album isn’t that great. I’ve listened to it while writing this and I find it mostly irritating. I can see why the teenage me liked it, it has power chords, ballads and lots of “bouncy” tunes. The current me doesn’t like it much. I’m into dirty sounding electronic music with nasty lyrics.
If I try and be slightly objective then I would say there are a couple of good songs:
Sacrifice
Let It Play
However there are some terrible songs, the worst being Unkinny Bop.
