Ouch, an unexpected amount of days passed between posts, simply because I am completely stuck with listening to a handful of bands, among which are "Wolves In The Throne Room" and "Nadja", so I just couldn't make my mind think and write about anything else. I was also, kinda desperately, waiting for four expected interviews to arrive, but since they still haven't arrived I guess it is time to write something here. Like the previous gig review, this will be more of a comment of sorts, since I already reviewed "La Dispute" and "Touche Amore" in the Fluff Fest report...and more than a month has passed since the gig, so my thoughts about it are already fading a bit.
In any case, the show was held on Monday, 1 August 2011, in a venue called "Dürer Kert" in Budapest. The location of the place is very cool, since it is close to a huge park through which I walked prior to the gig, so from my perspective it seemed as if it is quite secluded from the rest of the city. The complex where the venue is found is quite a big one, composed out of an indoor bar and a sort of cafe, an outdoor bar/cafe as well with a lot of benches, swings and generally a lot of room for hanging out. And of course, the big room where the gig was held. The room was in constant darkness, except for the stage lights, so I kinda failed to pay attention to the design of the place. What did attract my attention immediately when "Libido Wins" started playing was that the sound was horrible, but I will get to that a bit later.
So yeah, first band started playing, but I wasn't actually present in the room, instead diving my nose into the distro section which was placed in a long corridor outside of the gig space. After some drooling and in the end picking up a "Pg.99/Reactor No.7" split and some other sweetness, I went inside the venue to see "Wasted Struggle" playing, completely missing out on the first band. Generally speaking, the band wasn't really to my liking, since the vocal constantly seemed out of place. The drummer however, was a total enjoyment to watch, since he has a very interesting style of playing and the drums themselves really jump out from the rest of the band, in a positive way of course. While the drums proved to be a solid and enjoyable piece, the other elements of the band seemed overtly chaotic and in disarray. In defense of the band I have to mention the sound issue here. The sound bouncing around the venue was extremely obnoxious, the volume being too loud which resulted in the listener unable to hear everything due to the crunchiness and general dispersion of the sound throughout the room. It really took me some time to get used to the audio mayhem and this experience is actually a good reminder to bring ear plugs to gigs in the future.
"Dance Or Die!!!" was up next and I was extremely happy that I will get to see them. In case you are not familiar with the band, I did a review of their release some time ago, so if you missed that one definitely check it out. It is quite short, since it is from the early days of the blog when I wasn't such a "wiseass know-it-all", so take a quick read to get the general picture of the band. The review is found here. Anyways, the band managed to live up to my expectations as a hyper, insane and maniacal entity, simply devastating the crowd during their set. All the chaos and unexpectedness from the recordings is perfectly reflected during their show and the feeling is increased a tenfold with added aggression and the visual part of the performance. As much as I was impressed with them, later I heard from my Hungarian host that the band prefers not having a stage under their feet and at times randomly running into the crowd with their instruments while still playing, so this definitely sparked some more interest about seeing them again. It is really worth mentioning that "Dance Or Die!!!" provided an excellent show despite the awful sound of the venue, bending the chaos and the raspy sound to their will. A totally crazy band, which by the way released two splits, one being a tape with "The Balls Of Justice" and the other a seven inch split with "PFA". You can check out those on their bandcamp page, found here.
"Death Is Not So Glamorous" was next, though I am not a big fan of their music, so I opted to spend some time with my friends outside. After some hanging out, we got inside to find neat spots to listen to "La Dispute". I have to say that I enjoyed the band here more than on Fluff Fest, since, as I mentioned in the festival report, I consider them not really being an open air festival material, instead excelling at a show with a small number of people. And as expected, the atmosphere was great and the overall connection between the band and the audience was on a much more intimate level than when I previously saw them live. There was a lot of energy flowing around from both sides and it was a real enjoyment being a part of that. The song selection was almost copied from the one on Fluff Fest, with the addition of "Said The King To The River" as an encore song and one new song from their upcoming release. I don't know what else to say, since I pretty much covered it all on the festival report.
The same goes for "Touche Amore" who were really great, but with an even wilder atmosphere, more stage diving, singalongs and rapid movement in the crowd. And it was finally great to witness everyone screaming the lyrics of "Honest Sleep" and being able to participate in that as well, since on Fluff it was just one dude next to me who knew the words...which was ultimately retarded. All in all, it was a great gig and I was extremely happy to be able to see "Dance Or Die!!!", who are definitely a personal highlight, since I already saw the main bands before. The only downside was the sound of the venue, but hey, you can't have it all.
