Reflections of Darkness - Music Magazine - Die Art

Details: Written by: Sebastian Huhn; Published: 16 January 2010

Underground, Cologne, Germany
14th January 2010
Die Art

German band DIE ART was founded in 1986 and is the follow-up to DIE ZUCHT which had a rather short-lived existence with two years in total. The band quickly caught the attention of a bigger audience and having their song ‘Chrome’ played on the radio might have helped their popularity grow as well. After the German Unification the band has released their debut full-length ‘Fear’ which remains to be the most successful album of DIE ART up until now. After a concert in Leipzig’s Moritzbastei in 2001 the band disbanded and left a back catalogue of nine album, various tapes and singles.

In February 2007, the reunion of DIE ART was announced, ever since they’ve released two new studio albums with ‘Funeral Entertainment’ being the latest, released in October 2008. In September 2009, the first Best-Off compilation ‘Für immer und Ewig’ was released, holding exclusively German tongued tracks. DIE ART is Holger “Makarios” Oley (vocals), Thomas Gumprecht (guitar), Conrad Hoffmann (bass) and Thomas Stephan (drums). http://www.die-art.de/ / http://www.myspace.com/dieart007

Music & Performance
The upside of a concert taking place with only a little number of people in a smaller room is that the overall atmosphere is much more intimate, the band contact more direct, and you can be sure you’ll have only people who have come to exactly see this band. The downside in Cologne was that you could watch the air getting thicker every minute in that small room. So much for the critics, now to the concert! There’s been no support act this time and around 8:45 PM, the band entered the stage through the audience, starting their set shortly after the intro with ‘Endlos’. That one was quite a post-punk influenced one, reminding of such old heroes as JOY DIVISION (Note: That’s a compliment) with such thoughtful German lyrics, far away from clichés and cheesiness. During the next tune ‘Heimatlied’ already many nodding heads could be spotted when looking around.

That was just, because they wanted to take things slow as they still needed energy for the rest of the set. The next couple of songs covered the era of the band’s last album ‘Funeral Entertainment’ which displayed a sound progression towards heavier rock elements, working very well with the Post punk parts. ‘Obsession is sad Passion’ for instance also had a spherical guitar make-up in parts of the track which I thought was giving the track even more depth. Speaking of which, the “Ocean trilogy” had plenty of that. ‘Ozean’, ‘Das Schiff’, and ‘Samtmarie’ let you drift off in your thoughts to the sea, to its loneliness and the fatal dangers it holds. Particularly on this tracks, you could notice how deeply personal the lyrics were for singer Makarios. It was like he wasn’t even in the same room with us others anymore, living through the events that led to the creation of these words. After way over an hour of playing, the guys said their first goodbye to the main set closer ‘Pale’ but would return soon with ‘Wide Wide World’, which had the crowd ultimately dropping all hesitations and dance to the immensely rocking track.

Time flew again and the first encore block was over before you knew it, so another one had to follow. It started with a slightly altered version of the JOY DIVISION classic ‘Love will tear us apart’ and was continued by an own classic ‘Irish Coffee’, which broke once more the speed limit. After ‘Symbole’, it was definitely over and everyone made their way home to get some sleep to recover from that exhausting but great show of a band more people should know.

Setlist
01. Enter the intro
02. Endlos
03. Haimatlied
04. Alles was dein Herz begehrt
05. Paradise
06. Obsession is sad Passion
07. The Seventh Unneeded Aborted Start
08. In The Gallery
09. Nur ein Traum
10. Heer Litz
11. Eternal Fall
12. Sie sagte
13. Weich wie Schnee
14. Ozean
15. Das Schiff
16. Samtmarie
17. Heaven Knows
18. Pale
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19. Wide Wide World
20. I Love You (Marian)
21. Black Dust
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22. Love will tear us apart (Joy Division Cover)
23. Irish Coffee
24. Symbole

Rating
Music: 8
Performance: 8
Sound: 8
Light: 3
Total: 7.3 / 10