PART FOUR: 
Live Bands at Haus Leipzig and the Agra 
(in order of appearance):
Dance On Glass
Closterkeller
Diary Of Dreams
Black Tape For A Blue Girl
Faith And The Muse
The 69 Eyes
Deine Lakaien
Tanzwut
Letzte Instanz
Subway To Sally
 

Is it Sunday? Yes, it must be. After a few days at the Wave Gotik Treffen, normal time ceases to have any meaning. The real world - out there, somewhere - seems utterly irrelevant. We have our own reality here, a parallel universe miles away from the MTV-and-McDonalds lifestyle of the rest of the world. Soon, I know, it will all end. The WGT doesn't last for ever. Real life lurks in wait. It's going to pounce very soon. But...not just yet.

Today, I particularly want to go to Haus Leipzig and catch Dance On Glass, who have a relatively early slot at the venue. The band have toured quite extensively around the UK in recent months, but I've managed to miss every gig so far. The only show where our trajectories were supposed to intersect was the Beyond The Veil fest in Leeds - and Dance On Glass pulled out. But, dammit, now both the band and Uncle Nemesis are right here in the same city, so *this* time I'm not going to miss 'em!

Except...Uncle Nemesis very nearly does miss them, for the foolish reason that although I *know* the band are playing at Haus Leipzig, I confidently direct our steps to a tram for Werk II. On arrival, a passing Fross points out that it's powernoise day at Werk II today, and we won't find Dance On Glass here. They have their loud moments, but they're definitely not powernoise. Bugger. With great fortitude, Bunny Peculiar refrains from braining me. Two trams later, we arrive at Haus Leipzig to find Dance On Glass are close to finishing their set. Double bugger.

There isn't enough time to do more than loose off a few photos and gain some fleeting impressions of the band. It's immediately obvious that the sound has been toughened up quite a bit compared to the 'Daydreaming' album. This version of Dance On Glass - with a full line-up, drum kit and all - rocks a lot harder than the studio incarnation. But they don't fall over the edge into metal, and for that I'm grateful. The guitar-work is clipped and economical, the band as a whole plays fast and tight - and, oddly enough, I'm reminded of the old-skool punk band Penetration, which is perhaps not the most obvious comparison. But in the heat of the moment, that's the reference point which floats into my mind. It's probably something to do with the vocals: clear, strong, emphatically the focal point of the music. Ania, the singer, is also the visual focal point, dashing about the stage in a red and black PVC outfit while the boys in the band stay back, and allow her to whip up her own storm.

Closterkeller arrive on stage on directly after Dance On Glass, in a haze of smoke and red light. Now, Closterkeller *are* a metal band. But, like Bloodflowerz, their saving grace is their singer, without whom I suspect the band would come across as a somewhat class-average bunch of rockers. Anja Orthodox is her rather unorthodox name, and she's wearing an unorthodox dress, like a set of theatre curtains which have become stuck in the half-raised position. Fortunately she has the personality to transcend this bizarre outfit, and a voice which transcends the lads' vaguely proggy metalnoize. The band have a bunch of devoted fans down the front which testifies to their appeal. In fact, given the fact that the big bad music biz seems to have recently discovered female-fronted metal bands, it occurs to me that Closterkeller are probably only a major label marketing campaign away from Evanescence-style chart success.
 

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE AGRA...

More trams. Back to the Agra. We arrive half way through Diary Of Dreams. Watching them play here, on a big stage, in front of a huge crowd who seem to know all the songs and cheer the band like conquering heroes, I'm struck once more by the yawning gulf between the small-scale UK scene and the powerhouse that is the continental circuit. There are probably more Diary Of Dreams fans in this venue than there are in the entire UK. Adrian Hates looks entirely at home on the large stage - his trademark dramatic gestures, which, I recall, seemed rather overdone in the compact surroundings of the Underworld in London, make much more sense here. The crowd-crush is so great that I can't get near the front, but I shuffle close enough to notice that the guitarist's mohawk has gained an extra few inches in height since the London gig.

At the end of the set there's a distinct change-over in the audience, as the Diary Of Dreams devotees wander away, and the stage-front area fills up with the Projekt Barmy Army. Next on stage: Black Tape For A Blue Girl, who have never played in Europe before, although from the build-up of the crowd it's clear they have a certain following. This show, here in the big tin shed of the Agra, is probably a rather harsh introduction to the Euro-touring experience. Black Tape For A Blue Girl's music demands an intimate setting, a certain ambiance. At the Parkbuhne stage, in the cool of the evening, with the dusk drawing in, perhaps with candles placed here and there around the stage, the band would have found their ideal surroundings.  Here, in a vast, echoing aircraft hanger with a security pit and a Berlin wall of monitor wedges between artist and audience, incongruously billed among bands who play it fast and loud - frankly, this was never going to be an easy gig.

The name of the band is projected onto a screen, a handy reminder in case we should suddenly take it into our heads that we're watching Extreme Noise Terror. The musicians array themselves across the stage in line abreast, as if they're waiting for the number 11 tram. The line-up includes Bret Helm of Audra on guitar and occasional vocals, Elysabeth Grant, who I last saw singing with Rachael's Surrender, and, on keyboards, Sam Rosenthal himself - who, as it happens, I last saw single-handedly saving Saturnalia from the forces of chaos. Am I imagining this, or do I catch him glancing quizzically in the direction of the FOH desk, just to reassure himself that he won't be called upon to save *this* festival as well? The band eases gently into a set of neo-classical-cum-folkie atmospheres. I nearly said 'The band kicks off...' but Black Tape For A Blue Girl would never do something as vulgar as that. They're definitely an 'ease gently' band. It's pleasant, but, as I suspected, the venue just isn't right for this kind of music, and the atmosphere never really builds. The band themselves hang back behind the monitors, seemingly absorbed in the music...which is nice for them, I'm sure, although it does rather leave the audience out in the cold. The only moment of real contact comes when someone in the crowd calls out to Bret. In response, he makes a very discreet waist level metal-fingers gesture - the only piece of on-stage action which looks in any way spontaneous. In truth, Black Tape For A Blue Girl do OK, but the unsympathetic surroundings and the band's distance from their audience - both physically and in terms of communication - meant they don't really sparkle. Weirdly, the sound engineer seems to respond to the relative quiet of the band's music by turning the levels down even further: the hiss of the smoke machines is sometimes louder than Sam's vocals!

Now here's a funny thing. I thought Faith And The Muse were quite big on the continental circuit. I expected them effortlessly to claim a WGT headline slot as their acknowledged right. And yet, here they are, third band down, and only 45 minutes on stage - what happened? The answer, perhaps, is that Faith & The Muse have been relatively quiet over the last couple of years or so - they've lost a certain amount of momentum, and now they've got to build it all up again. And, ironically enough, the set they play this evening reminds us that losing momentum is what Faith And The Muse do best. They spend their 45 minutes of stage time alternately stomping on the accelerator and then standing on the brakes. If their live show was a car, it would progress in a series of bunny-hops. Far too frequently, the set simply grinds to a halt as the band takes time out between songs to swap instruments, adjust the hardware, re-tune, and to allow both William Faith and Monica Richards to address the audience at great length on such topics as the new album, the band's new direction, the forthcoming tour, and their earnest wish that we should decamp en masse to the merchandise stand and buy their wares. Now, as it happens, I'm a fan of Faith And The Muse. I think they've made some damn fine music in their time. But the band's apparent inability to get through a relatively short live set without staggering from one hiatus to another makes me fidget with frustration. I want to hear the *music*, dammit, not witness prolonged bouts of muso-tinkering, or listen to lengthy dissertations on the subject of merchandise availability!

Fortunately, the music more than makes up for the disjointed stop-start show. It's essentially a greatest hits set. The band, it seems, are taking this opportunity to give some of the old favourites a good shake-out before the new album comes along and the new material arrives in the live repertoire. The stage is dominated by William Faith - in his suit and cropped-off barnet he looks like a cross between John Lennon and John Cooper-Clarke. He paces to and fro, and looms alarmingly over the monitors. Some musicians were born to rock; William Faith was born to loom. Monica is a more subtle presence, stepping back, eschewing any dramatic moves, simply allowing her vocals to grab the crowd's attention. The other members of the band, whoever they might be this time around - the worker bees to William and Monica's king and queen - keep their heads down and the sounds coming. 'Sparks', as ever, is a delight: if songs were colours this one would be the most piercing cobalt blue, winking out as if reflected from the facets of a diamond. 'Trauma Coil', on which William favours us with a gung-ho vocal performance, is abluff, no-nonsense rocker which all but descends from the stage and shoulders its way through the crowd. There's also a cover of Kate Bush's 'Running Up That Hill', which fits in so well with the band's own stuff you'd think they'd written it in the first place. It's all a timely reminder of just what a great band Faith And The Muse actually are in terms of sheer musical creativity. Their songs are so packed with ideas you can almost hear them tumbling over each other. Now, if only they could get through a set without doing that infuriating stop-start-stop-delay-wait-lecture-the-audience-fart-about-and-start-again thing, they'd be an equally great live act, too. Even so, the fact that they only had a 45 minute set is a distinct injustice. More next time, please!

And now, The 69 Eyes. Wait a minute - Faith & The Muse were cut short for THIS? I fully intend to complain to the Wave Gotik Treffen Quality Control department! The 69 Eyes are a woefully cheesy glam-metal band from Finland who leave no cliche unturned. The band, I'm informed by some singularly unimpressed Finnish friends in the crowd, started life as a bunch of Hanoi Rocks wannabees, until they realised that all they had to do was drop the vocals by an octave and write a few songs about vampires, and they could capture the gothic market. Sure enough, their repertoire seems to include the most clod-hoppingly cliche-ridden goth-by-numbers drivel, churned out in full-on RAWK mode, as if every member of the band had sat up all night watching the Keith Richards Rock God Workout video. The singer - who, it must be said, fancies himself no end - introduces almost every song with a rambling and pointless homily, along the lines of 'Wherever you are, and whatever you do, one thing you should always remember: you'll always be...'  - and then he announces the song title, which is usually something absurdly clunky and meaningless like 'Framed In Blood' or 'Wasting The Dawn'. These aren't song titles, this is just random word association! They even have a song called 'Gothic Girl' which is all about how the singer wants to sleep with, wait for it, a gothic girl. And when the song is announced, all the gothic girls in the audience squeal like a bunch of teenyboppers at a Busted concert. I am, frankly, stunned. This band is like a parody put together for a TV comedy show, and yet they're real. Otherwise rational human beings take them *seriously*. Oh, the audience loved them, make no mistake about that. They played a mind-bendingly lengthy set, milking the audience for every scrap of applause all the way, to a forest of frantically waving metal fingers. Personally, given half a chance, I would've run 'em out of town on the end of a blunderbuss.

In another of those incongruous collisions of style which seem to occur quite regularly at the WGT, the final band of the night is something utterly different. Deine Lakaien (a name I confess I always find difficult to pronounce) are utterly different to The 69 Eyes; utterly different to just about everything on planet Earth, come to that. The band, which on this occasion has expanded to include a string section, is under normal circumstances a two-piece - and the two main members are utterly different to each other. The vocalist is Alexander Veljanov, gothed up to the max in an elaborate coat and a bizarre bouffant hairstyle which appears to have been modelled on Professor Quirrell's turban in the Harry Potter movie. The principal musician is a scruffy mad scientist type, Ernst Horn, on towering racks of synths and an old upright piano which looks like it's been borrowed from the local pub. If my eyes don't deceive me, he's also got a Mac G4 in a flight case, don't ask me what for. Indeed, whether all the electronic gear is strictly necessary for the live show is a debatable point. Much of  Deine Lakaien's music is based around layered sequences, which, although they build into an impressive whole, are relatively simple in themselves. Ernst Horn's apparent enthusiasm for piling up the gear reminds me of the hospital administrator in Monty Python's Meaning Of Life, who thought he wasn't getting value for money until the doctors had wheeled in the machine that goes 'Ping!' Deine Lakaien certainly have the machine that goes 'Ping!' They also have the machine that goes 'Whoop-whoop-whoop!',  the machine that goes ''Chunkata-chunkata-chunkata!', and the machine that goes 'Freeeeeeeow!' Very impressive machines they are, too, stacked up like electronic skyscrapers, LEDs winking like landing lights for any passing UFO - but I can't help thinking the band could quite easily make all their essential noises without dressing the stage like the control room at Cape Canaveral. The fact that Ernst Horn doesn't actually touch much of the gear (he certainly never glances at the G4) reinforces the impression that a lot of this gubbins is just for show.

Well, what the hell. The show is the thing, and in spite of the fact that Alexander Veljanov is the frontman, Ernst Horn steals it. His mad-professor antics at the piano, pounding and stabbing at the thing like Jerry Lee Lewis after too much coffee, and then reaching inside with a pair of pliers to detune the notes as he plays them, mean that he becomes the visual focus of the set even though he's off to one side, hemmed in by the banks of equipment. Meanwhile, his colleague simply strolls casually to and fro, never breaking sweat and never putting a hair out of place. The other musicians stand back, clearly under instructions to leave the stage clear for the two main men. The only exception to this comes during one song when the cellist steps forward and starts thrashing at his instrument as if it were a Stratocaster. It's a moment of visual drama, but he's quickly packed off to his position at the back. The stars of the show aren't going to give an inch more stage space than they have to! The music is a bizarre amalgam of electronica, avant-jazz, and modern classical - but somehow they hold it together. Imagine New Order, Keith Tippett, and the Kronos Quartet having a jam. It's astonishing (and, indeed, encouraging) that this kind of stuff - resolutely uncommercial, barely related to ye olde rock 'n' roll, at times wilfully difficult to listen to - can be so popular. Because, make no mistake, Deine Lakaien *are* popular. Several thousand WGT-ers give the band rapt attention, and nearly lift the roof with cheers and applause at the end of every song.

When Alexander Veljanov sings, in his careful, precise, Andrew-Eldritch-after-intensive-vocal-coaching voice, the crowd hang on every word. It's a pity, then, that the words are Deine Lakaien's weak spot. I realise that Veljanov is not writing in his first language, but that's no excuse for such trite doggerel as this: 'When you hear me calling/Will you be there?/When you see me falling/Will you be there?'  A lyric like this, coming as it does over such inventive and left-field music, just sounds lazy. It's rhyming-dictionary stuff, no more than that. Other songs, alas, also feature lyrics which have a similar dashed-off-in-five-minutes feel. Try this: 'Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, like I kiss you/Miss me, miss me, miss me, like I miss you'  This lyric, delivered in suitably portentous tones as if it taps into the very fabric of the human psyche, just sounds like a parody - until you realise that it's meant in all seriousness. Perhaps we should be grateful that Alexander Veljanov didn't turn over a few more pages in his rhyming dictionary and come up with 'Piss me...' Now that really would be a lyric too far! Ah, well, that's Deine Lakaien for you: an illogical mash-up of the creative and the banal. A band with a staggering musical vocabulary who can't write a good lyric for toffee. Weird.
 

AVOCADOS AND FOLK-METAL

Monday tends to be the wind-down day for many WGT attendees. A day to hang out with friends, wander around the city, maybe do some everyday tourist stuff. The Uncle Nemesis Tourist Guide To Leipzig recommends the Avocado vegetarian restaurant, conveniently situated on the number 11 tram route between Werk II and the Agra. One of the conventional wisdoms about the WGT which you'll hear time and again is that it's a complete nightmare zone for vegetarians - what with it being Germany, where the entire population, the scaremongering has it,  supposedly subsists almost exclusively on meat. And *East* Germany to boot, a land where, to listen to some of the nay-sayers, you'd think nobody had ever seen a carrot. All this, like so much received wisdom, is a load of old tofu. It's entirely possible to do a veggie WGT, and, indeed, possible to do it as a vegan with no more than the ordinary amount of forward planning. You'd probably find yourself in the Avocado quite frequently, but, as a well-fed customer, I'm here to tell you that wouldn't be any kind of problem.

Today, there are assorted atmospheric bands (it says here - I'd never actually heard of any of them) playing at the Schauspielhaus, an elegant old theatre in the centre of Leipzig. As it happens, the elegance of the theatre is also something I cannot confirm at first hand, since the queue to get in was so absurdly long - and only moving forward when somebody came out - that we turned tail and left without attempting to enter. Back at the Agra, it's folk-metal night, apparently. Folk-metal? Yes, I kid you not. Folk-metal, bizarrely enough, is *huge* in Germany. There are any number of bands who combine 'Huuuuurrrggghh!' style doomcookie metal with hi-diddle-diddle folkie fiddling and/or squalling bagpipes. Imagine Marilyn Manson crossed with The Dubliners, featuring special guest interludes by the pipes and drums of the Queen's Own Scottish Borderers. All this, while the bands typically dress up like a bunch of extras from Mad Max meets Braveheart. If this seems like an illogical combination, then you obviously haven't seen Tanzwut, who were stomping alarmingly around the Agra stage when we arrived. We stay back, at a safe distance. These men play their bagpipes as if they're rocket launchers.

When Letzte Instanz arrive on stage, I courageously venture forward into the crowd of seething metal fans. Fortunately, most of the seething metal fans are no more than five feet tall (have you noticed this? The more cartoonishly aggressive the music, the shorter the fans - it's a fact!) so I have no problem drawing a bead on the band for photographic purposes. Letzte Instanz are nothing if not showmen. Their intro is an explosive fire-eating routine, and then they crash into a hollering tornado of slammin' metal. With a folkie string section. There seems to be anything up to eight people on stage, but in the battlefield surge and roar of the show it's difficult to be sure, or even figure out what each member of the band actually does. I can reliably report that the string section comprises a violin, played by a manic young gentleman in a leather skirt, and an amiable crusty geezer with red dreadlocks, who saws away on a cello while seated on a throne constructed of scrap metal. The visual spectacle is quite something, but behind the crazed image there lurks a frankly rather mundane rock band. The singer's voice is really quite ordinary: a mid-range rock foghorn without the depth or presence to provide any kind of focal point amid the rumbustious music. He certainly knows how to throw all the rock star shapes, mind. One to watch with the volume turned down, I think.

Knowing nothing about Subway To Sally aside from the name, I had foolishly assumed they'd be some sort of post-punk influenced outfit. There's something about the name that suggests the band might be contemporaries of Magazine or Echo and the Bunnymen - don't you think? In reality, Subway To Sally are more like something Billy Idol would hallucinate after necking some bad acid. They're all decked out in heavy-duty leather, as if they'd watched a Judas Priest video and little light bulbs had come on over their heads - 'Yes! *That's* our image!' - and they sound like Metallica with a bad case of the collywobbles. Yep, there's a violin in the line-up, and several guitarists, one of whom plays a several-necked guitar. The singer is a portly little chap with a wispy thatch of bleached hair - he looks like a cross between Billy Idol's dad and the late Ian Dury. He's dressed up in hardcore rocker leathers, but all the image in the world can't disguise the fact that he looks like he'd be more at home having a game of darts with the other old codgers in his local pub. Still, he rampages around the stage as if  he's gearing himself up to slay a dragon, and even brings out a set of bagpipes at one point, to add that essential 'Whonnnnk!' sound to the mix, without which you're nothing in the world of folk-metal. Meanwhile the rest of the band strike one rock-hero pose after another.

It's all utterly OTT, so much so that I can't believe the band don't have a sense of their own absurdity. In fact, there's one little vignette which perhaps gives it away: one of the guitarists marches up to the bassist, and they stand there, face to face, rockin' away. The bassist begins to nod his head in the time-honoured headbang, whereupon the guitarist solemnly shakes his head as if in strict disapproval. Both of them standing there, nodding and shaking their heads at each other, every move exactly on the beat, is only a small moment of humour, but it's enough to make me suspect that to a certain extent they're playing it for laughs. The audience, however, has no time for such subtleties. As far as they're concerned, they're in the presence of their all-time gods of rock 'n' roll, and the reaction to every song is louder than bombs. The band clearly have a massive fanbase, although it seems to be entirely a German thing. (Try this simple test: see how many Subway To Sally web pages you can find which are *not* German-language). Their show, and the hero-worshipping reaction of the fans, is ultimately a baffling spectacle - the kind of thing which demonstrates that no matter how international the goth scene becomes, there will always be certain elements that just don't travel beyond their natural territories. Even here, at the Wave Gotik Treffen, the international gathering point for the world of goth, Subway To Sally just go to show that there will always be certain elements of the scene for which the boundaries will always exist. A suitably paradoxical note, I think, on which to end.

And that was the 12th Wave Gotik Treffen, 2003. Or, at least, as much of it as is possible for one human being to absorb without tripping all his overload switches. If ever an event deserved the accolade 'an embarrassment of riches', the WGT is it. And yet, because the festival is not on one site, is not entirely focused on one stage, has no single big event, and definitely no overall headline band, it never feels overwhelmingly huge. It is, when all's said and done, simply a series of gigs, club nights, film shows and other assorted events, gathered together over a convenient four-day period - you can dip in and out as you please, custom-build your own WGT, and make it as large or as small as you wish. If you want to obsessively chase up the maximum number of bands, you can do that. If you want to go clubbing all night, every night - that, too, is on offer. Or if you simply want to spend an evening sitting in a friendly bar on a back street, chatting to your friends - well, Leipzig has no shortage of bars! Take your pick. Mine's a schwartzbier, by the way.

In short, the WGT is probably the ideal festival for people who don't like festivals. And, given its status as the international crossroads of the contemporary goth scene, it's certainly an event which anyone who wants to get a handle on all things goth-related in the 21st Century should not ignore. These days, when the world and his brother seem to be throwing a few bands together and calling the result a 'festival', the Wave Gotik Treffen is a class apart. Anyone who wants to see the goth scene in action - let them come to Leipzig!