Emergenza Festival 2013
Once more I visited the Underground in Cologne, and once more it´s all about the Emergenza Festival. With one difference to the week before: this time it´s about the progress to the next round in the competition, therefore the bands had nicely tried to get as many as possible of their own fans to attend. The audience was relaxed and excited, once again you could just fully enjoy the music.
It started with MONDPILOT, whose lyrics were easy to identify with and were put into diverse songs, combined with a lot of fun on stage. Nevertheless, something was missing and probably also the audience realized that, since a really enthusiastic mood didn´t come up. A possible reason might have been the fact that more and more people just arrived at the venue and the crowd wasn´t present right from the beginning. One thing is for sure, it was´t caused by lacking interaction with the audience, because the band did it really well!
The next band hitting the stage was SECOND HORIZON and they tried to win people´s hearts with their solely instrumental songs and surely had some success with it, yet I thought that it´d be just perfect with edgy vocals accompanying the nice melodies and great guitar riffs. All in all they are a band that has a lot of potential, but the music clearly isn´t everyone´s taste, which also showed in the different reactions of the visitors.
Even more rocking and with vocals the stage was entered by STOLEX, who had a really nice Rock´n´Roll sound and quite a few of their own fans in the first rows, who then again pushed the audience even more. Full and strong vocals of a charismatic singer, alongside with an energetic performance – just as the rest of the band. Time passed by fast, which could also be seen as a sign for the success of the band´s performance.
The audience was just as convinced about TRAFFIC JAM, who presented their songs with much power and skillful expression and thus rocked the audience. The joy of playing could be seen on the face of every band member, absorbed with melodies and their music, even though all of them had different ways to live the music. All in all an performance that couldn´t have been better music wise, and this is what counts.
THE FAT CAT were the next one in the row and beat the previous bands by length, which might´ve been caused by the vocal abilities of their singer as well as their guitarist. Those two voices didn´t only show a nice contrast when being combined, but also sounded amazingly solo. The band presented their music on a very high level – they surely are one of the bands that will make it far and not only in this competition.
The second last band in this competition was [DA] Zoik, for whose music you needed a bit more than just humour – those that didn´t have this humour, couldn´t really get a grip of the music and, looking at the audience, quite a few had this problem. The band led the crowd through their entertaining set with a lot of fun and interaction, yet left quite a few questions open for myself.
In the end there was also the band 13TH CURBSTONE who were the last ones to rock the stage and the audience – and, they were the only band with a female vocalist, who was really outstanding with her vocal volume and range that was stunning and fascinating. Diverse and easily changing from mood to mood, this is how they pulled the audience on their side.
Whilst the results were worked on, a special guest played, namely the band THE JERKS from Stuttgart, who themselves were a part of the Emergenza competition a few years back. The band managed to push the audience for a last time and offered the audience a lot of versatile and rocking songs – as one of the people in the crowd mentioned, one could have “listened and watched the band for hours”, because music and performance couldn´t have been any better.
At the end of the evening, the voting results were announcecd – the following four bands will proceed to the next round:
1. The Fat Cat
2. Traffic Jam
3. Stolex
4. [Da] Zoik
More photos: https://www.facebook.com/carinaullmannphotography