Apoptygma Berzerk - Bielefeld 2009

Apoptygma Berzerk

Stephan Groth, Geir Bratland, Angel and Fredrik Brarud are APOPYTGMA BERZERK 2009! Stefan Groth has come a long way with his band APOPTYGMA BERZERK! Starting as solo project in the Goth / EBM underground, evolving to one of the pioneers of a whole new genre, Future Pop, to embracing Alternative Rock as a fully-fledged band, APOP does indeed have a long and rich history. Not all old APOP fans are happy with this evolution; some of the old Electro heads feel somewhat alienated by the recent Rock tendencies of the last two APOPTYGMA albums. I surely don't mind some nice, guitar-driven Rock but still I'm not too fond of their 2005 album ‘You And Me Against The World’ and, in particular, their new album ‘Rocket Science’. While their 2005 effort spawned great Pop singles like ‘In This Together’ and ‘Shine On’ their new full-length release sounds a bit too flat and uninspired. Well, APOPTYGMA BERZERK is always a different thing and so far they never failed to put on a great show so I nevertheless looked forward to check them out at the “Rocket Science” tour. http://www.apoptygmaberzerk.de/ / http://www.myspace.com/apoptygmaberzerk



Music & Performance
It was a good decision to relocate the gig to the smaller hall of the Ringlokschuppen, as the main hall is pretty huge and the approx. 500 people who turned up for the APOPTYGMA BERZERK show would have looked lost there. The smaller hall looked quite packed, and after all it's a pretty nice venue. APOPTYGMA BERZERK entered the show fairly quickly after the support act and started off with ‘Weight of The World’, the opener of their new album. I ticked the first point in my check list - yes, the new songs do indeed sound better live than they do on record! The lead single of ‘Rocket Science’, ‘Apollo’ followed as the second song of the set already, but it was the classic ‘Eclipsed’, performed as a reasonably reworked version, which truly raised the pulse. The light show was pretty stunning and clever, with five LED screen hanging from the stage top between the band members. These LEDs allowed everything from video displays to cool light effects. Eye candy!



The band was apparently also quite happy with what they saw - an audience which was truly up for it and ready for a good party. Honestly, I expected that quite a few fans would wait for the old stuff while being rather indifferent to the new songs, but it wasn't like this. After ‘Eclipse’, APOPTYGMA BERZERK presented a selection of their rockier stuff from their last two albums, including the frenetically applauded hit single ‘In This Together’. But old buggers like me also got what they desired - ‘Love Never Dies’ (from 1997) was quite a treat, while ‘Until The End Of The World’ (from 2002's ‘Harmonizer’ album) caused a big dancing fest among the crowd. With the new song ‘Butterfly Defect’ the ballad department came on, nicely blending over to the first piano bars of ‘Bizarre Love Triangle’ - a nice obeisance of one of Stefan Groth's heroes, NEW ORDER, and a pretty different and wonderful version!



The end of the show was a true APOP hit parade. ‘Kathy's Song’ is Synth Pop galore and of course still a fan fave, while the HOUSE OF LOVE cover ‘Shine On’ was the sing-along of the night. I would have loved to hear ‘Deep Red’ (performed at other shows of this tour) but APOPTYGMA offered more classics in their encore, with the stomping ‘Starsign’, ‘Mourn’ and the 1996 single ‘Non-Stop Violence’. I'm still no big fan of APOPTYGMA BERZERK's latest releases but at their “Rocket Science” tour they proved that they still haven't lost it, and that the Norwegian outlet is simply, a great live band!