Die Apokalyptischen Reiter – Rock City 21/02/10

Wow. What a band.

Before being asked by my mate Joel if I’d like to be his +1 (he reviewed the gig for the Nottingham Evening Post, which is here if you’d like to read it!) I had never heard of this mob.

With the brief, but succinct (and entirely accurate) description: “If you like Rammstein you’ll probably like them” I was well up for it.

Die Apokalyptischen Reiter have the songs, the musicianship, the creativity, the diversity and the charisma to stand on their own merit alongside any of their contemporaries and compatriots.

The great thing about the most obviously comparable band, Rammstein, breaking out as big as they did is they’ve opened the ears and sparked the interest of non-German speakers to foreign-language music, paving the way for bands like Reiter to have a wider audience to play in front of. Bloody good thing too.

Rammstein’s biggest flaw, in my opinion, has always been their lack of diversity of sound. They become samey after a listen through of any one of their albums (although these days their biggest flaw is that they simply aren’t anywhere near as good as they used to be, but that’s another rant for another day).

Anyway, all comparisons aside, occupying a genre of music and having a great sensibility for entertainment & theatrics (as well as the music) is not something exclusively the domain of any one band.

Reiter’s performance was both diverse (as far as sub genre influence goes) and yet they too suffered from sounding a little samey toward the end (apart from that wacky Eurovision-style ‘Metal Will Never Die’ song!).

Perhaps my lack of Germanic-language fluency goes some way to explaining why this may be. Perhaps not speaking ‘das lingo’ means I’m removed a little from truly loving the music AND understanding it (maybe in a similar way as a foreign language subtitled films) but despite having NO idea what the non-English parts were all about (and despite the singer explaining what most songs were about prior to launching into them) they were still compulsive viewing and listening.

It won’t surprise me if they’re at Download this year opening up the main stage on Friday. A larger stage will free them up to fill the space with their ideas and irrepressible energy. But, constrained as they were to the tiny Disco 2 stage, they still managed to fill both stage and venue with more performance, theatrics and charisma than most bands on the main stage upstairs manage with ten times the space.

Highlights of these shenanigans were the aforementioned fan who was invited onstage and then both serenaded and stalked by Fuchs as she danced and he belted out his enormous voice. She then spent most of the rest of the gig either stood next to Dr Pest (their gimp-on-a-swing, cat o’ nine tails wielding keyboardist), being whipped by said Doctor or set afloat in a giant (fully inflated) rubber dinghy atop the crowd, whom she surfed above of rather majestically.

The visual of seeing Fuchs brandish and wave a giant flag with his band’s logo emblazoned upon it in a huge arc was impressive to witness, not only for the visual but also for the ability to do it in on such a small stage without knocking himself, a fellow band member or someone in the audience out cold.

Theatrics and stage gimmickry only get you so far though. And when you’re not striking poses, leaning over the audience looking mean, waving huge flags or kneeling at the feet of/whipping/setting sailing to a bemused audience member you and your band have to be able to ‘go’.

Good job then that Fuchs has an awesome voice and vocal range. Guttural black metal rumblings, anthemic/epic metal soarings, menacing spoken wordings and even that Eurovision pop metal number were all expertly within his chords’ reach.

His smile infectious from the start, he, and the entire band were clearly having an absolute whale of a time.

Set highlights for me were the awesomely anthemic ‘Adrenalin’ and, to break up the set, an epic percussion instrumental.

With drummer front & center leading the whole band, they put together quite the epic drum soundscape that was as impressive as it was booming.

A bit out of place? Perhaps.

A bit of a faff logistically to get everything on & then off stage again for this one bit? Definitely.

But, as mentioned before, a larger stage (on which they’ll surely be playing on subsequent visits to these shores) will free them up to do this, and possibly even more. And, despite this slight lull and  brief loss of  momentum, they soon easily kicked it back up to the previously loud volume and full steam ahead speed. To me it all served as showcasing another string from the band’s very well-strung bow.

All in all, an excellent band, a great gig and a great way to spend a freezing cold Sunday evening.

Still not sure about that ‘Metal Will Never Die’ song though.

And look; I wrote 600 words about German music without using the word ‘Teutonic’ once!

Oh, wait a minute.

Shit.