When we built our time schedule, we figured we would have plenty of time during the day to visit the city, attend concerts in churches, and have a look or even participate to the running event organized for the festival-goers. But are good resolutions not made to be broken? So, of course, we turned off the first alarm clock. And the second. And the third. And all the ones after that. We're not 20 anymore, and feeling so dozy to start the second day without having been at any after-party the day before doesn't give us much confidence for the three days to come. And to think that some people sleep at the camping...
Lucas Lanthier and his Esteemed Colleagues
So we start this beautiful morning at 7 p.m. Like normal. Let's go to Täubchenthal, in the west of the city. The venue, with a capacity of 1,500 people, usually welcomes rock bands at the WGT, and this day is no exception. The program today is deathrock, and so is the clothing style. When you wander from venue to venue at the WGT, you often don't need to look at the lineup to know what kind of bands are playing. You just have to look at the audience waiting outside. Does this mean that audiences don't mix during the festival? Or do festival-goers change between each concert like drag artists? At Täubchenthal today, the mohawk reigns supreme, the kohl overflows, the pants have stripes, and the belts chains.
Lucas Lanthier is a not new to the festival. We also saw him at Täubchenthal in 2016 with Cinema Strange. He's regularly invited to WGT for one or another of his projects, all of which are at a standstill for long, but still generate just as much enthusiasm. The proof is that we're here again, and so is the audience. Ten years later, the venue remains as young as back then. We scan spot a few newcomers, with a Pikachu tattooed on their back for example, but even the youngest people present know the Cinema Strange classics like the back of their hand. Because Cinema Strange is what this is all about. As we already told you during his visit to Paris last September, Lanthier brought along for this tour a former Cinema Strange member, Daniel Walker, and two esteemed colleagues, Daniel Munoz and Ashkelon Sain, both specialists in the tortured sound specific to deathrock.
The setlist won't surprise you much. Aside from Infirm Manor, a solo track he had already performed during his last acoustic tour, we mostly get to hear the good old tunes of his band Cinema Strange and two tracks from The Deadfly Ensemble. But what everyone is waiting for on that day is the performance. Admiring the double-jointed puppet, the crazy singer, the distorted music. And that's also what convinced us to attend this second leg. Goth festivals are often criticized for providing the same line-ups year after year. The Wave Gotik Treffen is one of the only festivals that offers a varied and renewed line-up. At that very same time, all over Leipzig, there was the possibility of seeing a Tchaikovsky opera, the musical Evita, Sixth June, which we love very much, Ashram, which I would really have liked to discover, or more classical at goth fests but oh so satisfying, S.I.T.D at the Agra, and many others. So we were really hesitant to come back and see, nine years later, Lucas Lanthier play the same old songs in the same old venue at the same old festival.
Absolutely no f***ing regrets. The sad clown, whose outfit reminds of Pierrot, sold us on this set once again. He spins and make faces relentlessly, admitting between two songs that putting on a show makes him sweat a lot more than when he was 20. But nobody noticed any sign of weakness. The performance remains just as spectacular over the years. This guy isn't on stage. He is the stage. And he takes everyone with him. At some point we can observe a mosh from the front rows. A moth composed of goths who don't want to destroy their 200 dollar New Rock and ruin their L'Oreal blow-dry, indeed, but still a mosh.
Setlist :
01. Unlovely Baby
02. Legs and Tarpaulin
03. Horse on the Moor
04. Catacomb Kittens
05. Speak, Marauder!
06. Bruise Animals
07. En Hiver
08. Infirm Manor
09. Greensward Grey
10. Aboriginal Anemia
11. I Remember Tendon Water
12. Agent X-Ray
Tristwch Y Fenywod
We leave the city center for what seems to be the worst idea we've ever had: heading to the Parkschloß. The building is located in the large, wooded Agra Park, south of Leipzig. This park serves as the main gathering place for the WGT. It's home to the exhibition center, which houses the festival's largest stage, as well as the shops where you can buy back those New Rocks you just ruined.
But it's also the location of the festival campsite, food stalls and attractions, a giant parking lot, lockers for storing your belongings, a bar and an after-party room, and where the festival organizers' offices are located. It's where you pick up your wristband on the first evening, where the artists' buses park. In short: the nerve center of the WGT. The Agra Park and the couple of streets around it are cordoned off for the duration of the festival. Everything is barricaded, signposted, and prepared for the occasion. And somewhere, far from all that, at the back of the park, there's the Parkschloß. Okay, not that far. In fact, it's a ten-minute walk from the main hall. In theory. Because during the WGT, the path connecting the two buildings is simply blocked by the campsite. To get to the Parkschloß, you have to leave your car at the Agra parking lot, enter the park, go around the entire campsite and the camper parking lots, cross the park lengthwise again, say hello to some horses, ask yourself at least once or twice if zou're really on the right path because, well, you're entering a wood right now and there's no one before or behind walking in the same direction and it's been a while since you saw the last sign indicating the venue. And finally, after 25 minutes, you hear music in the distance, you see a few red lights, and most importantly, a herd of people in black. Phew, we're almost there.
It takes courage to reach the Parkschloß, and generally, the festival-goers who are there stay there for the whole day. There's everything one could need there anyway: two stages, two bars, good wine, a restaurant, a quiet and pleasant park, a balcony with a view. Nothing to complain about. But for every person who had the tenacity to make it to the depths of these Lost Woods, we would have appreciated a free glass of sangria.
This journey may not be in vain as we're attending the concert of Tristwch Y Fenywod. The trio is an all-female supergroup singing exclusively in Welsh. This originality alone attracts many curious people, but the music is just as spectacular. You've never heard a sound like it. Could we call it folk, when two of the three instruments on stage are electronic drums and a bass guitar? The last one, played by Gwretsien Ferch Lisbeth, is a double zither, which can be placed either on one side or the other, or on its edge to play both at the same time. To stabilize it, nothing extravagant: a large, rigid notebook. Experimentation and minimalism are fitting characteristics of Tristwch Y Fenywod's music. The three sirens arrive in a deep silence and begin a sort of incantation out of reach of the sound system.
The rest is almost a secret we don't want to share. A long hypnosis session, an initiatory journey into which the audience is plunged despite themselves. The sirens carry you away, pull you towards them, with their strident laments, their trembling percussions, their transcendental refrains. They called us, in the lost woods, to bewitch us and play with us. The ethereal atmosphere of Welsh liturgies joins the entrails of Leeds' originated gothic rock from the Sisters of Mercy, The March Violets, and The Mission. Resolutely modern and deeply rooted in tradition, Tristwch Y Fenywod skillfully achieves this sweet blend. When it's time to take their leave, the artists embrace for a long time. The spectators, many of whom are new to the band, come to personally thank them for this experience from which no one emerged unscathed.
Kiss the Anus of a Black Cat
Downstairs, a different kind of literature awaits us. While the name Kiss the Anus of a Black Cat may seem less poetic than Tristwch Y Fenywod, the two bands have more in common than they seem. Before being a Belgian band that's been experimenting several genres for 20 years now, Kiss the Anus of a Black Cat is the name of a witchcraft ritual. This shamanic inspiration that initially led the band down the path of neofolk and experimental music, before diversifying.
The Parkschoß stage is surprisingly small for a band with four musicians, each with about as many instruments. As usual at a festival, soundchecks are held directly before the concert, which starts with almost half an hour delay. Stef Heeren apologizes for having to test his guitars one by one, the synths, the drums, and so on. An exercise that must frankly not be very pleasant, when you're being watched by several hundred people, on a stage barely thirty centimeters high, almost stuck to the audience.
But once the show starts, everything is forgotten. The songs follow one another and don't sound alike. Some very post-punk shoegaze, others rather indie rock, some sounds do remind of their fellow countrymen Girls in Hawaii. A genre that we're not used to finding at the Wave Gotik Treffen, and which gives us a breath of fresh air for what's to come.
Combichrist
Night has fallen on Leipzig, and we know we're going to have to get out of this mess. We had intended to check out the Agra for Combichrist. But with the delay caused by the Kiss the Anus of a Black Cat's soundcheck and the return walk ahead of us, we gave up on the idea. Luckily, an friend gives us a tip about a shortcut through the woods. So here we are, on our way, almost 11:30 p.m., flashlights in hand, on the Lost Woods trail. "It's here on the left," says one. "Of course not. Don't you remember, when we arrived from the other side it was on the left, so now it will be on the right," asserts the other. I just follow them without any reaction. No matter where we're going to, as long as we don't split up, we're less likely to die there. And This is the moment hypoglycemia chose to strike, reminding me that today once again, I forgot to eat. "Well, I think we've missed the shortcut. We'll have to take the long way around." Great.
As the fate of my death looms and I begin to see my life flashing before my eyes, a sweet melody reaches us, very distant at first, then more present. Guys, it's All Pain is Gone! Hope is not lost, the Agra must be behind the third tree after the fourth field. We pick up the pace. Lucky break: it was the first track. Not so lucky break: it was my favorite track and I missed it.
What an irony to see Andy Laplegua running back and forth on the big Agra stage compared to the 80 instruments (at least) crammed onto the small 3m x 3m stage of the Parkschloß for Kiss the Anus of a Black Cat. Combichrist is a sold-out house, the audience is wild. The band offers a well-balanced mix of old hits and more recent tracks. The first beats of Get Your Body Beat triggers a flashback of 20 years ago, teenage times, freedom, student parties, hard hangovers. How could I have just forgotten this song? The audience is now jumping up and down, hands up in the air, at the invitation of the band, who mimic them like a mirror.
It had been a long time since we last saw Combichrist, but no matter which lineup hits the stage, the live show still suffers from the same flaw, twenty years later: you can almost only hear the bass lines. The melodies are very much in the background, so much so that you need a little time to recognize the songs. But no matter, we couldn't have dreamt of a better way to relax to celebrate the end of this day 2. Filling a hypoglycemia by eating fries at midnight in front of Combichrist at full blast: that's the very definition of the good festival life.
