My review of the first edi­tion of E-tropolis fes­ti­val (Columbi­a­halle, Berlin, Ger­many, June 26, 2010) is a fes­ti­val log and a source of infor­ma­tion for peo­ple who have not attended an elec­tro fes­ti­val before (con­se­quently need to know what they are miss­ing), or some other elec­tro fans who did not make it to Berlin, and would like to have a rough idea of what hap­pened there. This review (pho­tos included) reflects my enthu­si­asm of both par­tic­i­pat­ing as an accred­ited reporter (thanks to the orga­nizer) and see­ing some bands for the first time. I strongly encour­age every per­son who likes elec­tro music to take a week­end off from other activ­i­ties and go to fes­ti­vals in Ger­many. The next one I am going to is Amphi Fes­ti­val in Cologne, July 24–25, 2010.

Gen­eral remarks about E-tropolis fes­ti­val: 13 bands, enthu­si­as­tic and fun audi­ence, eager for this almost exclu­sively elec­tro event, 2 per­fectly sized halls (capac­ity approx 4,000 in the C-Hall and 1,000 in the smaller C-Club), both never really crowded but always decently full, good coor­di­na­tion of per­for­mance and changeover, long per­for­mances (con­sid­er­ing it was a fes­ti­val), 2 cozy beer ter­races (although the high tem­per­a­ture killed some enthu­si­asm and sent some of the beer fans to shady areas), a nice meeting/food court that we all needed to wade through in order to get from a hall to the other, that made it eas­ier to meet peo­ple. I met a lot of friends and that was nice, as I trav­eled from Roma­nia to Ger­many alone. The par­tic­i­pants were mainly Ger­man, but I also met Swedish, Pol­ish (a large group), Lithuan­ian (3 gor­geous ladies) and British peo­ple. Only one short­com­ing: the lack veg­e­tar­ian food. I had 3 large glasses of sparkling water on the rocks between 2 pm and 3 am, and I chose to skip the large pret­zels, the only option I had. But I enjoyed my time there so much that hunger was not an issue. I was hun­grier for music.

Patenbrigade:Wolff (C-Hall)

The “reverse head­liner”, Patenbrigade:Wolff started their show at the E-tropolis fes­ti­val at 3 pm sharp, as they had pre­vi­ously men­tioned on their offi­cial web­site. “This is a Ger­man thing”, they stated, so they were punc­tual. The band was founded in Berlin, in 1998, by Lance Mur­dock and S. Wolff, who make no secret of their obses­sion with heavy machin­ery and con­struc­tion sites.

My info about Patenbrigade:Wolff was lim­ited to pre­vi­ously lis­ten­ing to their albums and know­ing that Antje Schultz (In Strict Con­fi­dence) col­lab­o­rated with them.

The show was quite a pleas­ant sur­prise, and I would cat­a­logue it as the most seri­ously the­matic I have ever seen. The Brigade sealed the stage with yel­low tape, worked hard on the con­struc­tion site that the stage was turned into – accom­pa­ny­ing all activ­i­ties by hard beer drink­ing, like any reg­u­lar con­struc­tion worker would do! The rhythm blew the audi­ence away quickly, and unlike other fes­ti­vals, peo­ple started danc­ing from the first per­for­mance. Patenbrigade:Wolff was 2 ladies and 5 gents on stage. Antje Dieck­mann, the lead singer, played the role of the super­vi­sor, while Lance Mur­dock and S. Wolff kept the music and beer pour­ing! The cos­tumes, builder imper­son­ations, elec­tric beat and the grind­ing machine sparks blow­ing from the two sides of the stage at the end of the show were the per­fect start for the fest.

Patenbrigade:Wolff, E-tropolis 2010, Viva­Mu­sic Pho­tos

KMFDM (C-Hall)

Spawned in Ger­many dur­ing 1984, the self-proclaimed fathers of industrial-rock, KMFDM “pio­neered the crossover between techno/dance and heavy metal with their sig­na­ture indus­trial sound”, reads the band’s offi­cial web­site.

KMFDM stands for “Kein Mehrheit Für Die Mitleid”, which lit­er­ally trans­lates as “no major­ity for the pity” but is typ­i­cally given the loose trans­la­tion of “no mercy for the masses”. Still, there is a lot of debate about the cor­rect mean­ing of the Ger­man expres­sion, whilst the band have tried to explain the mean­ing of their name in var­i­ous songs such as: “Mega­lo­ma­niac”, “Moron”, “Light” and “What we do for you/so good for you”. Since the release of their “UAIOE” album, KMFDM have fol­lowed a pat­tern of nam­ing their albums and cer­tain songs with a 5-letter word. They have even mis­spelled words in order to get them to fit into 5 let­ters, for exam­ple “Xtort” and “Attak”.

KMFDM’s “Blitz” album was released in 2009, so I expected to wit­ness inter­est from the audi­ence at the E-tropolis fes­ti­val. And right I was! The crowd was very recep­tive and danced away all per­for­mance long. From the first song I real­ized that Lucia Cifarelli (the lead singer) is a mem­ory that would stay with me long after the show. She is def­i­nitely a skilled sexy dancer, as well as a good look­ing and well endowed singer. I rec­og­nized the value of the per­for­mance, and the energy that was passed directly to the audi­ence who kept danc­ing all along!

KMFDM, E-tropolis 2010, Viva­Mu­sic Pho­tos

She’s All That (C-Club)

At 16:45, the first band to give the start in the C-Club made their appear­ance: She’s All That (SueShi, Bas­tard, Nik and Dirty J). The band’s offi­cial web­site offers good infor­ma­tion, and is worth check­ing in case you are inter­ested in fol­low­ing them on Twit­ter, Face­book, etc. The band has released one album so far, “Extra Fruity Dis­gust­ing” and their music is best described by them­selves: “…elec­tron­ics fed in with tight drums, mer­ci­less gui­tars and a soft sound of the 80s. Com­plex, ultra­groovy and with a gigan­tic value of recog­ni­tion.”

Their show at E-tropolis was not new, but unex­pected to me in terms of cos­tumes: the 3 guys who seemed to have some­how nat­u­rally con­tin­ued the Patenbrigade:Wolff tra­di­tion wore over­alls and rub­ber masks. The effect was inter­est­ing, as in the dim light, at least for a few sec­onds, I did not know whether the guys were wear­ing masks, or they were just plain ugly as hell!  Their moves and music made me think of a Daft Punk video shot on a space­ship. Def­i­nitely a must see in the future if I have the occa­sion, as I missed the female singer’s per­for­mance, SueShi.

She’s All That, E-tropolis 2010, Viva­Mu­sic Pho­tos

Leæther Strip (C-Hall)

It is with great­est plea­sure that I write about Leæther Strip (Claus Larsen) per­for­mance at E-tropolis. I have been lis­ten­ing to his music for a long time now, and I knew a few details both about his pro­fes­sional and per­sonal life. The Dan­ish artist offi­cially started his career in 1989, and later, he took a 5 year break from 2000. He came back, and we can only be grate­ful to him for decid­ing to do so. I never expected such a totally over­whelm­ing, bril­liant, breath­tak­ing per­for­mance from a man and his key­boards! Claus Larsen is an indus­trial music mas­ter who sings with his heart, not with his voice.

“My Shadow Is Your Home”, my favorite song from Leæther Strip, has a cir­cu­lar, obses­sive struc­ture that resem­bles the sound of a bar­rel organ processed and pushed to the limit until the instru­ment itself explodes at the end of the song, barely com­plet­ing the last loop of the cir­cle. Live, it was heart melt­ing and I could tell gen­uine emo­tion in Mr. Larsen’s voice.

Claus Larsen wore a pair of black pants with red side stripes, comfy shoes, a black vest and a blue shirt that he took off later dur­ing the show. Noth­ing fancy, but it suited him per­fectly. He is very tall and mas­sive, and adding the fact that he moved a lot cov­er­ing the entire stage, it was very hard not to like his sin­cere and mov­ing per­for­mance. I also liked a lot “Japan­ese bod­ies” and “Don’t Tame Your Soul”, but I guess they stood out just because they hit the crowd at the right time either to pump up some energy of to end the excel­lent show. I liked the entire show and I hope to see him again soon.

Leæther Strip, E-tropolis 2010, Viva­Mu­sic Photos

Cyborg Attack (C-Club)

Cyborg Attack was totally unknown to me before E-tropolis. The 4 guys: Pun­isher, Zerindi, Eucha and Eno have released 3 albums so far, and have as motto the phrase “Resis­tance is futile”.

<Cyborg Attack has earned an extremely faith­ful fan­base of EBM fol­low­ers, being uncom­pro­mis­ing in their pur­suit of old-school EBM sounds, even when the musi­cal style was out of vogue on under­ground dance floors world­wide. Finally return­ing after 4 long years since their last album “Blut­geld” and the “Toxic” EP, the new “Stoerf***tor” CD is loud, solid, straight for­ward and uncom­pro­mis­ing EBM that takes no pris­on­ers and cuts no cor­ners.> More info about the band on their web­site.

The lead singer and the 2 key­boardists offered a lively show that gave me the feel­ing that I was wit­ness­ing a hard rock con­cert. I guess that effect is given mostly by the front­man, Pun­isher, whose voice and moves are mer­ci­less and harsh.

Cyborg Attack, E-tropolis 2010, Viva­Mu­sic Photos

DAF (C-Hall)

Deutsch-Amerikanische Fre­und­schaft is a major Ger­man electropunk/NDW band from Düs­sel­dorf, formed in 1978, today fea­tur­ing only Gabriel Delgado-López (vocals) and Robert Görl (drums, per­cus­sion, elec­tronic instru­ments) after start­ing with 6 mem­bers. They are a leg­end in the elec­tro scene, def­i­nitely hav­ing their pros­e­lytes among the EBM bands, I could name a few but I think it’s bet­ter if you lis­ten to their music and dis­cover yourselves.

Gabi Del­gado kept pour­ing water on his head and throw­ing the plas­tic bot­tles with artis­tic moves, mak­ing some of the audi­ence very excited. He is a very charis­matic lead singer, and although DAF are only 2 peo­ple on stage, the show was com­plete and very eye catching.

Their music sounds like marches/anthems, and the songs can be labeled bet­ter as elec­tro incan­ta­tions, espe­cially due to the fact that most of the lyrics are partly recited in a very con­vinc­ing man­ner by Mr. Del­gado.

DAF, E-tropolis 2010, Viva­Mu­sic Photos

Mergel Kratzer (C-Club)

The Mergel Kratzer show at E-tropolis had a pleas­ant impact both visu­ally and acousti­cally. Joel Nygren (vocals, music, lyrics, pro­duc­tion) and his female com­pan­ions — Angel­ica Klüft (vocals, drums, visu­als, design) and Julia Meller (syn­the­sizer, Russ­ian inter­preter) are excit­ing to see and hear.

Mr. Nygren is really tall and very well built, and the choice of out­fit for that night was excel­lent. The white con­tacts con­tributed to the out of space young war­rior effect. The per­for­mance was con­vinc­ing, the music had an attrac­tive beat and the sound was good. All in all, I would see them again to wit­ness their growth and new mate­r­ial. As I have always said, there is some­thing about Swedish synth and elec­tro bands that blows your mind.

Mergel Kratzer, E-tropolis 2010, Viva­Mu­sic Photos

Feind­flug (C-Hall)

I have tried repeat­edly to lis­ten to Feind­flug (trans­lated “air raid”) and never man­aged to get to the end of their CD’s for var­i­ous rea­sons, one of them being the fact that their music is entirely instru­men­tal except for some pas­sages taken from Adolf Hitler’s speeches. The band was founded in 1995 and they have released 3 albums since.

I missed their entire show last year at WGT. So, I had to wait until June 2010 to finally get to wit­ness one of the most ener­getic shows ever. First and fore­most, in case you decide to go to one of their future shows, pre­pare your­selves for a lot of noise!

Feind­flug is a Ger­man aggrotech band whose live per­for­mance stands out because of the drums and very lively (read wild) band mem­bers (6 of them at E-tropolis on stage, but the offi­cial mem­bers are DJ Felix and DJ Banane). This time, the stage was dec­o­rated with cam­ou­flage nets, so we all expected a war com­ing! And it did. If you are into heavy march like tunes, Feind­flug is the best choice. The var­i­ous size drums seemed to get louder with every song. At moments, I felt like I had to duck and cover as the enemy pilots were going to drop the bombs! Dark stage against flash lights, apoc­a­lyp­tic sounds, hell ris­ing rhythms, gas masks and uni­forms blended all with the war scenes pro­jected on the screen behind the stage, trans­formed the C-Hall into a hell pit for an hour and some­thing. Aggres­sive and wild are prob­a­bly the best adjec­tives to use for this show.

Feind­flug, E-tropolis 2010, Viva­Mu­sic Photos

mind.in.a.box (C-Club)

One of the most pop­u­lar elec­tronic bands with my Face­book and Twit­ter fel­lows is the Aus­trian duo mind.in.a.box. Their music style is very eclec­tic, and they man­aged to add a very per­sonal touch to the either bare or extremely processed elec­tronic sounds. I was very curi­ous to see them live, as they have just started giv­ing live con­certs not long ago and, so far, you can count their live per­for­mances on the fin­gers of one hand.

Oth­er­worldly metaphors about impris­oned minds – that’s the tagline of the per­for­mance by mind.in.a.box. Can a mind be free, and how, is one of the core ques­tions that prompts the rhythm of the 4-piece Aus­trian group. mind.in.a.box live at E-tropolis was: Ste­fan Poiss (vocals, synths), Roman Stift (bass), Ger­hard Höf­fler (drums) and Adam Wehsely-Swiczinsky (gui­tar). The liv­ing proof techno-pop is a con­quest tech­nique that reminds at the same time of strat­egy com­puter games and a well cadenced his­tor­i­cal past, their orches­trated endeavor to please an avid audi­ence being a win-win situation.

“Amne­sia”, “Remem­ber” and “Dead End” – the lat­ter being a very lyri­cal and heart­felt test for Mr. Poiss’ voice – were amaz­ing pieces. The gui­tar was pro­found, the drum sounded dif­fer­ently, and the band tack­led a new dimen­sion of their music dur­ing their E-tropolis live performance.

The atmos­phere they engen­dered spoke about pas­sion, patience and delu­sion – very pre­cise emo­tions that find on rare occa­sions, such as mind.in.a.box’s per­for­mance, their true melody.

A nice thing that hap­pened dur­ing sound­check was that Ste­fan Poiss blasted a full frag­ment of a song a capella to test the mic. At the end of the short per­for­mance, the par­tic­i­pants started applaud­ing and cheer­ing. The start of the show was great already!

I have to make 2 remarks though: the lights did no jus­tice to the guys. I wish I saw more of what was going on stage and that takes me to my sec­ond remark: for the time being there is no show attached to their amaz­ing music. I cer­tainly hope that the band will work on that in the future.

mind.in.a.box, E-tropolis 2010, Viva­Mu­sic Pho­tos

Com­bichrist (C-Hall)

Com­bichrist was formed in 2003 by Nor­we­gian Andy LaPlegua (the man behind Icon of Coil and Panzer AG, the lat­ter being one of my favorite music projects). Com­bichrist is: Andy LaPlegua (vocals, lyrics, pro­duc­tion), Joe Letz (live drums), Trevor Friedrich (live per­cus­sions) and z_marr (live keys, synths). Since 2003, the hard work­ing band released no less than 7 EP’s and 4 stu­dio albums. If there is a def­i­n­i­tion of pro­fes­sion­al­ism blended with very care­fully staged sur­prises (in my opin­ion) that is Com­bichrist in the indus­trial scene.

The 4 guys on stage not only blow your mind away by blast­ing the most rev­o­lu­tion­ary and bom­bas­tic sounds, but they play with your eyes like wiz­ards. Andy LaPlegua made me take 500 pics dur­ing the first 3 songs from the pho­tog­ra­phers’ pitch. I had the feel­ing that there was not enough time, and I felt the urge to cap­ture all his ges­tures on cam­era. Unfor­tu­nately, my cam­era did not help very much this time, but I am plan­ning to give my equip­ment an upgrade very soon.

The image on the back screen said sim­ply: Com­bichrist. The songs they played were not new to me at all. And still, the spell of vio­lent, bru­tal and sar­cas­tic Com­bichrist worked for me. The tempo of the show increased with every song, although their songs are all fast paced, ter­ri­bly ener­getic and madly blunt indus­trial waves. The sound was per­fect, loud enough to give me goose bumps and help me enjoy the dis­torted sounds that go hand in hand with Joe Letz’s mad­ness and Andy LaPlegua’s dark evil grins, faces and bold body moves. Dur­ing the entire show (I was bouche bee all the time, I have to admit) I found it hard to con­cen­trate solely on Mr. LaPlegua, although I felt I was sort of betray­ing him while not doing it. He is a hard worker, a show­man, an indus­try, a genius and an absolutely ter­rific per­former who enjoys what he does galore! Con­se­quently, I tried to visu­ally cap­ture as much as I could watch­ing the stage like a par­tic­i­pant to a ten­nis match, fol­low­ing mostly the ball that rolled from side to side (that descrip­tion would fit Mr. LaPlegua). There was so much hap­pen­ing on that stage: from vio­lent out­bursts of rage against the drums and key­boards from every­one, to Joe’s rage against the oth­ers, who started dis­man­tling and throw­ing at this col­leagues pieces of this drum kit!

Bad lan­guage found a comfy nest in Com­bichrist lyrics. I can’t recall a band with more f***s per song! How­ever, the lan­guage is part of the con­glom­er­ate: the rage, vio­lence, ugli­ness, hate, con­tempt, sex, drugs, booze and other dirty, filthy, dis­gust­ing or totally revolt­ing things have to be expressed via appro­pri­ate lan­guage, which turned out not to be proper at all! To use a phrase that goes with their lyrics: Com­bichrist f*** your brains out!

Com­bichrist, E-tropolis 2010, Viva­Mu­sic Photos

Xotox (C-Club)

Xotox was founded as a solo-project by Andreas Davids in 1998. The Xotox sound is ade­quately described by him as “indus­trial for hyper­ac­tive peo­ple”. After numer­ous releases along the years, Xotox has man­aged to attract both the Ger­man media and audience’s atten­tion. Once Xotox was selected by the indus­trial label Pronoize, the project got a much higher pro­file in part through their con­tri­bu­tions to high pro­file com­pi­la­tions put together by the Ger­man scene mag­a­zine Orkus. In 2009 the split-EP “We are deaf” with Detune-X was released in Sep­tem­ber on the Ital­ian label Rust­blade as a guest appear­ance and by cour­tesy of Pronoize. Mr. Davids is also a sought after dj on the elec­tro, indus­trial and noise scene.

The E-tropolis per­for­mance of the duo on stage was pretty sim­ple and decent, the choice of out­fits being orches­trated by the manda­tory masks. Watch­ing the artists dj, I noticed with great delight that the good com­mu­ni­ca­tion between peo­ple was eas­ily turned into an ener­getic music dia­logue that lead to the audi­ence move along the elec­tric beats.

Xotox, E-tropolis 2010, Viva­Mu­sic Pho­tos

Covenant (C-Hall)

Covenant is today Eskil Simon­s­son (vocals, song­writer), Joakim Mon­telius (key­boards, song­writer) and Daniel Myer (key­boards, synths, pro­duc­tion). The band went through los­ing a mem­ber and a law­suit, as another band took the same name, and man­aged both sit­u­a­tions successfully.

Covenant is one of the few bands I know (and like for that rea­son) who man­aged to keep their iden­tity and ini­tial com­mit­ment to qual­ity elec­tro sound and also evolve through­out the years. There aren’t many songs I can­not enjoy and sing along with Covenant. They are well known for the suit and tie appear­ances and very ele­gant front­man, Mr. Simon­s­son, who puts a lot of energy into his performances.

It was very nice to meet Covenant again, after only 2 months (Viva Music orga­nized their Bucharest gig on April 8, 2010). I cer­tainly look for­ward to their next album, “Mod­ern Ruin” and more live per­for­mances. I have to con­fess that their new song “If I would give my soul” moves me every time I hear it, although I am more used to club hits from Covenant! I will skip the details of the actual per­for­mance at E-tropolis and move on to the next bands. Covenant are one of my favorite bands, and a very well known band in the scene, so I am sure that most of the read­ers have already had the plea­sure to see them live at least once.

Covenant, E-tropolis 2010, Viva­Mu­sic Pho­tos

Hocico (C-Hall)

Hocico was founded in 1993, but the 2 Mex­i­can cousins, Erk Aicrag (vocals, lyrics) and Racso Agroyam (pro­gram­ming) had been doing music long before that. “We try to rouse the demon inside of every lis­tener. They should rec­og­nize their dark side and they should develop their own hate. We won’t take to self destruc­tion, but to an intel­li­gent art of cre­ativ­ity” state Hocico.

The cor­rect pro­nun­ci­a­tion of the band’s name is: “Osziko”. That means “jaws”. “Hocico” is an aggres­sive word. In Mex­ico it is offend­ing, and I guess it’s ono­matopoeic, as it expresses vio­lence even before you know the mean­ing! Well cho­sen name, then.

I had 3 rea­sons to be biased watch­ing Hocico live at E-tropolis: I saw Rabia Sorda (Mr. Aicrag’s side project) in Prague on May 8 and I loved them, Hocico’s came after Com­bichrist’s and, also, I was tired after tak­ing pics of twelve other bands earlier.

It was late in the night when Hocico started their per­for­mance. The band was pre­ceded on stage by a woman and a man who were car­ry­ing TV sets as big as China and heavy as hell, I could tell by the posi­tion of their bear­ers. Both were wear­ing masks, hit imag­i­nary ene­mies with sticks and basi­cally tried hard to cre­ate a hor­ror atmos­phere. The mas­sive mic was dec­o­rated with skulls, while cru­ci­fied death mannequins/Voodoo dolls guarded the sides of the stage.

I found Hocico’s per­for­mance inter­est­ing espe­cially because of the vis­i­ble efforts the lead singer was putting into get­ting the people’s atten­tion. The famil­iar by now rou­tine of grin­ning, mak­ing faces, pos­ing and shout­ing from the bot­tom of his lungs made me think that I was clearly wit­ness­ing the sec­ond band that falls in the same cat­e­gory as Com­bichrist: harsh sounds, sex, abuse, vio­lence, atti­tude. Hocico took the visu­als seri­ously by com­par­i­son, and showed a very dirty video for one of their songs. After an exhaust­ing show (Mr. Air­crag’s cos­tume was so heavy and the boots, oh) Hocico closed the night with an encore com­pris­ing 2 songs.

Hocico, E-tropolis 2010, Viva­Mu­sic Pho­tos

I could not miss the oppor­tu­nity to lis­ten to AndyK’s dj set (Andy Krueger is the lead singer of Melotron, whose show in Bucharest was also pro­duced by Viva Music). I enjoyed a few songs and then I said good bye to Columbi­a­halle. By that time, the weather was cold, and I saw peo­ple freez­ing out­side. Funny how we all com­plained about both extremes in tem­per­a­ture in one day!

AndyK, E-tropolis 2010, Viva­Mu­sic Pho­tos

E-tropolis fes­ti­val was worth being there. Every moment was a delight, from meet­ing friends to see­ing the amaz­ing bands on the lineup! Viva Music will make every effort to orga­nize sim­i­lar fes­ti­vals in Roma­nia in the future!

vivi, Viva Music

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Tagged as: amphi festival, AndyK, cologne, combichrist, covenant, cyborg attack, DAF, e-tropolis, Feindflug, hocico, in strict confidence, kmfdm, leaether strip, Leæther Strip, melotron, Mergel Kratzer, mind.in.a.box, patenbrigade:wolff, rabia sorda, she's all that, viva music, viviana ball, xotox