Cold Meat Industry- live in Erlangen

Many thanks to Butch Clough for this review:

E-Werk itself is a cool club. The main concert room was a goodsize with a large stage in the front, a raised area in the backwhere music vendors tables were set up, and a cool pub off to oneside. Downstairs there was a nice cafe that lead off into anoutdoor courtyard that was a nice hang out between sets. I spenta good part of my between sets time in the vendor area, which wasjammed with people from beginning to end.

Saturday, July 20th.

Puissance:

Performing completely to a dat tape of their music, thePuissance performance was often silly, a bit slow after a while,but was still entertaining and a decent warmup to the show. Onstage most of the time was F. Soderlund who handled vocals and"crazy" eye and face gestures, and a female accomplicewho sang along and added an occasional insane screaming out justfor fun. H Moller joined them during key parts of some of thetracks wrapped in bandages and carrying a raw skinned pig'shead.At first he moved around the stage holding the pig head, acouple of songs later he took to chewing on it, and before theshow ended he dropped it tothe stage so he could hack it up witha large blade. Even F. Soderlund smirked more then a few times.

Ordo Equilibrio:

Performing to a dat of their work, with many new tracksincluded, OrdoEquilibrio's performance was very entrancing andstirring. Both Chelseaand Tomas stood in the darkness handlingthe vocals to their music, while behind them ran a film offetish, s&m, and pornographic scenes that fit perfectly withthe atmosphere their music creates. The set was a mixture ofknown and incredible new material, leaving me looking forwardeven more to their next release. The most "unusual"part of the performance was during "Safe Sane andConsensual", when Tomas was subjected to hot wax andwhipping by Chelsea, kneeling below her as she sang. Stillentranced...

Morthound:

Benny's performance was incredible. He and another performerdid an entire set of dark, intense, moving material seeminglyscored to the Japanese film "Tetsuo, The Iron Man. The musicbegan as the film opened, soon after the smell of burning incensefilled the room (it was passed out through the audience byBenny's helper), and music continued to shift with dark intensitythrough the film to the bloody "love" scene in themiddle of the film. Truly one of the best performances of thefestival.

In Slaughter Natives:

ISN pounded through a set of their heaviest, most knownmaterial for wellover an hour. On stage Jouni was joined by who Ibelieve was Lina from Deutsch Nepal, and an unknown person whowas incredibly good at handling the vocals. The performance, as Ihad always heard it would be, was great!

Mortiis:

The Mortiis show consisted of a super long dat tape that was amix of manyof his recordings, a Mortiis video that ran on screenbehind the stage,two monk like guys holding candles and remainingalmost completely stillthrough the show, and Mortiis walkingaround doing various poses in the thick smoke on stage. Differentthen I expected, but then again...

Sunday, July 21.

Sanctum:

If you have a chance to catch Sanctum as they tour, definitelydo! Their material is great live, and their performance was oneof the best. They played most of the tracks from the CD toperfection. An incredible band!

Raison d'etre:

Peter Andersson's set seemed to be mostly newly composedmaterial, much darker and heavier than the usual Raison d'etrematerial but still withthe choral elements found in most of hiswork. The background film was composed of shifting shapes andcolors that went well with the music.Great performance!

Mental Destruction:

The set by MD was thunderous! They played many of their knowntracks, but threw in a ton of great new material. The brotherswere joined on stage bya girl on bass who played along to theheavy pounding industrial mayhem.Another "one of thebest" performers.

Brighter Death Now:

Roger performed alone in the dense smoke and strobe lights onstage. Theset started with just his voice, moans rising andfalling, each time more intense and distorted. Suddenly hebrought hell into the room with a turn of a switch, and hellremained throughout his hour long set. His set seemed to end toosoon, but for a great fan of BDN it could only feel that way.Simply incredible.

After Roger finished the festival was over.

The festival was more then I could have hoped it would be,every moment memorable! Do hope that a show like this happensagain, for it would begreat to go through it all over again.

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