Royal Republic @ Zenith München

21.11.2024, Zenith, Munich, Germany

The full gallery can be found here

All the fans standing outside in the light snow flurries wanted just one thing: to get into a warm hall and enjoy an even hotter show. The former could be forgotten, because the hall is poorly insulated and it remained relatively fresh throughout the concert – sweat only ran down the faces of the bands, thanks to the warming spotlights.

But let’s start from the beginning – and the evening began with CARI CARI from Austria. If any of you have watched the American series “Shameless”, you may have heard the music of this band, which is relatively unknown in Germany. Like some of those present, I had already listened to the music before the concert and had only one hope: let it be more rocking live than canned. And the disappointment was great when this was not the case.

While the band was clearly having fun and enjoyed themselves on stage, musically it was certainly good but rather very relaxed – and that’s not what you want as a support act when you’re also playing during the week. The partly tired audience (understandable, after a full working day) stood in the cold hall looking relatively ambivalent, and for most of them the spark didn’t even begin to ignite.

For me personally, the band plays music that I like to listen to – on the couch, in the lounge corner of a club or a small bar – just to relax after a hard day, but not to wait for the main band with enthusiasm and excitement.

The expressions on the audience´s faces were all happier when the Swedes ROYAL REPUBLIC took over the stage – separated from the audience by a large photo pit, they did their best to get the spark going, but even they didn’t manage it completely and in the usual ways. The big photo pit, the big stage in this big hall – I think everyone involved still has to get used to it and then act accordingly.

Because what once seemed so intimate in smaller halls, such as the acoustic performance of parts of two songs – this time it was “Boomerang” and more recently “Wow Wow Wow” – was now a nice intermezzo, but nothing more. However, they still got up close and personal and really tried to maintain this connection: Singer Adam Grahn went into the crowd during “Ain´t got time”, chose a master of the cowbell and gave final instructions, and then the song was rocked, surrounded by the fans, most of whom were standing a little further back.

In addition to songs that had been on most of the previous setlists, there were also new additions – “Ain’t got time” had also made it onto the current setlist and, judging by the audience’s reaction, scored highly. However, the fans seemed to be more divided when it came to “Electra” – while ballad “Lazerlove” still seemed to make everyone happy, the audience was reserved during “Electra”. Something was missing from the song, which was definitely one of the favorites on the album – too rocky, played a little too fast, and simply too little passion and feeling in the vocals, those would probably be my reasons why the song might not have been convincing live and would be better left as an “album song”.

The “classics” a la “Tommy-Gun”, “Full Steam Spacemachine”, “Baby” were loudly celebrated by the front rows, but the general enthusiasm didn’t make it to the back rows, so that the overall atmosphere still had room for improvement during these songs, even if the hardcore fans in the front rows did their best to make it less noticeable. During some songs like “Back from Dead” you could almost think that the band was running through the song as if there was a prize for the fastest playing – there was a lot of headbanging and fun left out, which was different on previous tours.

All in all, a good show, but it has to be said that despite the humor, power, joy of playing and great songs, the band still has a lot of work to do if they want to completely win over these larger halls.

 

Setlist:
My House
LoveCop
Getting Along
Baby
Boots
Stop Movin’
Anna-Leigh
Back from the Dead
Freakshow
Full Steam Spacemachine
Wow! Wow! Wow!(Acoustic)
Boomerang(Acoustic)
Electra
Ain’t Got Time
Fireman & Dancer
Tommy-Gun
—-
Lazerlove
Battery (Metallica cover)
RATA-TATA

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