Christian Death (Ljubljana - Metelkova - 17.03.03)
Written by: Primoľ Čater
Christian Death back in Slovenia! This time with much less propaganda than 2 years before, but still some die-hard gothic fans were present at the show. Of course the main attraction of the night was Christian Death guitarist Gian Pyres, to black metal crowd much more familiar as an ex-Cradle Of Filth member. We showed up at the concert place at about 12 o'clock and we were all surprised when we were told that the concert has just started! The reasons for 3-hour delay were technical problems, which have luckily been improved. I would like to thank the organisers of Vampyria for giving us free tickets, for which we thought at first: "Wow, they must be kidding!" So there we were...(un)fortunately we missed the first band, Diet of Worms, but what the hell...
The second band on stage that night were Italian 'vampires' Theatres des Vampires. Seven Romans were having a hard time in that small stage, but they were getting used to it during the show. Theatres des Vampires is a mix of black and gothic metal with Scarlet and Alex on the vocals. They played most of the songs from their last album 'Suicide Vampire', which has been released last year. During an hour long gig, Scarlet was performing all sorts of shows like bible burning, which turned out pretty cool and they got even more connected with the crowd. They made a true vampiric and energic atmosphere and some people in the crowd were just going crazy! To be honest, I didn't expect such a cool show... After they had finished we talked a little and they were satisfied with the whole evening, maybe a few more people wouldn't hurt, but still... During the conversation we also talked about soccer. I seriously don't know how we got to that, but it seemed like they could to talk about this for hours... They were also happy to meet someone outside Italy who knows something about their favourite game, so they gave me a free CD! What a night... free entrance, free CD, too bad beer wasn't that cheep.
After a break it was time for the next band, Lover of Sin. It's a sideproject of Christian Death female bassist Maitri on the vocals and the mighty Tony Norman of death metal legends Monstrosity on guitar!!! Maybe I expected too much from Norman & co., to be honest I was totally disappointed. Their show was simply boring. Tony sounds much better in Monstrosity with a single guitar, than here with another guitarist. And if we add Maitri's 'annoying' vocals and some average drumming... Luckily it's a sideproject!
Last time I checked my watch it was about 3 in the morning and there were still some preparations being done for Christian Death before they showed up. Crowd looked like it had lost passion for living, but it would have been ridiculous to wait for such a long time and leave before hearing the headliners. Ok, after 15 min Christian Death finally showed up in following line-up: Gian (guitar), Maitri (bass) and Valor on vocals, who seemed to be pretty pissed off about sound at first, although I must say they sounded much better than the others. Their performance was quite good, but the crowd was simply to exhausted to cooperate with the band. Maybe they burnt their last energy when 'Zodiac' was played (from the album 'Born again anti-christian'), but that was it. Drum sound was great, while guitars sounded 'empty' from time to time... Maybe another rhythm guitarist wouldn't be such a bad idea. The whole thing ended around four o'clock, when everybody hardly kept their eyes open.
In the end I could say that Theatres des Vampires were far best band of the evening. From the other bands I expected a little more. Perhaps next time.... |
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