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Cradle of Filth / Gorgoroth / Moonspell / Septic Flesh / Asrai

20.12.2008 Osnabrück GER

Filth Fest Darkest Tour – the mix of bands and especially Cradle of Filth and Gorgoroth are auspicious arguments for a very dark concert evening or rather concert day. The tour concert almost became a little festival due to the 5 announced bands, of which for unresolved reasons one band didn´t appear. At the parking place in front of the concert venue you were welcomed by a red illuminated scary statue and deep road holes just like in „From Dusk till Dawn“ in front of the „Titty Twister“ but without fireworks – scrumptious! The location named Hyde Park in Osnabrück dressed up spookily according to the motto with giant bats and skeletons at the ceiling combined with snowflake decoration – a mixture between Halloween and Christmas decoration, so to say. In this bizarre surrounding you could prepare perfectly for what might come…

Septic Flesh
Let´s begin with a Greek Death Metal Band from Athens named Septic Flesh. After some painful sound check problems accompanied by heavy feedback you must have feared that the quite numerous admirers in the first rows might have lost their hearing, but the excitement that followed contradicted this thesis – errrr it depends on how you see it… Septic Flesh play technically blameless very basic death metal of which – sad but true – almost nothing reached the listeners. If you didn´t stand right in front of the stage, you could only make out an undefined sound mush, which completely destroyed the character of the band – too bad!

Moonspell
Now it´s getting Portuguese with Moonspell. This gothic metal band already exists since 1989, that means a lot of stage experience! Singer Fernando Ribeiro did his performance very self confidently, with a beamer- video show running in the background, which depending on speed and theme of the songs displayed a stormy sea or dropping blood and so on. So we were entertained very well visually, and although the sound was a lot better than with Septic Flesh, they didn´t light my fire. The crowd was more than excited and receptive for the here and there hidden hints on the new album and DVD. I personally felt distracted by this according to the provoked vampire romanticism, surely Dracula doesn´t do cinema commercials! My personal highlight was the encore „Full Moon Madness“ from the second ever Moonspell album „Irreligious“. A re-view of better times so to say, which has been a good deed after the piercing woman´s shriek, which concluded the normal set.

Gorgoroth
Finally we come to the comfortable part of the evening! Gorgoroth – Norwegian black metal! In contrary to the previous acts, they stand out with their blameless, clear sound, which still has a lasting impact on me. The mostly quite young Cradle followers seemed a little irritated, as three naked shadows climbed up the already placed crosses on stage and covered their heads with black bags… you might think that today we are blunted enough to not react on seeing naked people and blasphemy, but far wrong! I fell a little strange as well although I´m already a big girl, but standing right in front of singer Gaahl in the photo pit sure is a little scary! Seems like I´m not the only one affected, because almost like in a theatre no one dares to disturb the band with applause, and prefers to rise the metal hands. Gorgoroth control their audience, so this was another great Gorgoroth experience!

Cradle of Filth
After an seemingly endless stage conversion we see the headliners Cradle of Filth. To finish the multicultural evening, this time it´s English dark metal. This should be my first Cradle concert and I came with great expectations! I don´t want to say I felt disappointed, but after Gorgoroth I was not easily impressed. The already 5 hours lasting band marathon had noticeably taken a lot of the audiences´ energy. Towards the end of the show, along with the song „The Twisted Nails of Faith“ from the 2002 Best of Album „Lovecraft and Witchhearts“, the excitement inflamed again and some people even did crowd surfing. True to a old known metal tradition, Cradle of Filth had a tall, black mascot with red glowing eyes and a spark spraying machine on stage, which didn´t let already very tiny Dani Filth seem bigger. Again very interesting was the often stressed throat screaming of Dani, which made him seem like a defiant infant. In a whole, I thought that the show was quite powerless and poorly motivated. I won´t accept this show as an official first impression, for the bands sake.

Katrin Dietl

GastmitarbeiterInnen / guest contributions

Regular guest contributors e.g. Melanie Kircher, Tatjana Tattis Murschel, Grit Kabiersch, Marina Minkler, Jasmine Frey, Maria Levin, Elvira Visser, Nina Ratavaara, John Wisniewski