Kulttempel, Oberhausen, Germany1st May 2015
Suicide Commando & Reaper
Did you ever want to see Johan van Roy alias SUICIDE COMMANDO to play a special vintage show? Here’s your go! The Belgian electro mastermind came to Oberhausen to play some really old tracks. Not enough to catch your attention? Harsh electro doesn’t make you leave your sofa? Or is one band not enough? Well, here’s the solution: a special guest. In this case it was REAPER opening the evening.
Reaper
Back in 2005 the band REAPER was founded by Vasi Vallis to entertain people with harsher electronic music. The lyrics were full of clichés, of course with huge portion of humour and fit perfectly to the concept of being a fun type of band. During the COMBICHRIST tour when REAPER was the support act, Gregor Beyerle joined the band and is now also responsible for the production of the songs. The band took a break for a few years and is currently working on a new single and a new album sounding less genre-limited and open to several styles of electronic music. www.facebook.com/reaperelectro
Music & Performance
As mentioned in the short band description above, the band consists of Vasi Vallis and Gregor Beyerle, so I expected both to be on stage on that Friday evening. But Greg changed his look a bit and looked more like Torben Schmidt of Infacted Recordings. Of course I’m a bit joking when I say that Gregor changed his look. As he’s a member of other bands too, he was busy playing at Dark Munich Festival and Torben Schmidt was so kind to join Vasi on stage. The band didn’t start with a boring intro but bam! Right into the face with ‘X-Junkie’, one of their most known tracks (and a personal favourite of mine). Thank you for saving me from an overly long intro or boring instrumental to prepare people for their appearance on stage. The stage was a little too dark for my taste, it was a bit hard to see what Vasi and Torben were doing there. Not that much, it looked more like a DJ-Set than a band performance. No guest singer or Vasi Vallis with a microphone in his hand, like in the past. It looked a bit static in my eyes as I still had past REAPER shows in my head.
Call it DJ-set and no one will expect something else, just a little hint from my side. Apart from that, some people were dancing around, others were just waiting for Johan van Roy to play and looked not that much impressed by what the band was doing there. Of course they played not only older tracks, but also an instrumental which can be found on Vasi’s Soundcloud page too and ‘Der Schnitter‘, which will be the soon released single. Danceable music, not too much of old harsh-electro-like tracks and a little look on what will be up this year – good setlist in my eyes. Performance a little too boring, cause you might go to the show expecting things to be like back in 2009.
Setlist
01. X- Junkie
02. Urnensand
03. Weltfremd
04. One of a Kind
05. Der Schnitter
06. Last Mention
07. Robuste Maschine
Rating
Music: 10
Performance: 7
Sound: 10
Light: 8
Total: 8.7 / 10
Suicide Commando
What to do when you live in Belgium and are into electronic music? Right! Found a band, name it after a song of the band NO MORE and show everyone that Belgium is not this super nice country everyone knows and that there are much more things to listen to than FRONT 242. At least this is what Johan van Roy, mastermind behind SUICIDE COMMANDO did back in the 80s. And as there are now quite a bunch of songs sounding from old-schoolish to what is now called Harsh Electro Johan thought about pleasing the fans of his earlier musical works and decided to play vintage shows here and there. www.suicidecommando.be / https://www.facebook.com/IIXIII
Music & Performance
REAPER left the stage and I thought Torben Schmidt who’s usually on stage with Johan van Roy would just stay there – but no! I was wrong. Even Torben left the stage and two synthesizers were brought to the stage. Moaning around the stage. Whispering. Waiting for what songs would be presented. Johan started with ‘Murder‘, a song I don’t like that much and I don’t think it was a perfect opening track, but the fans were attracted by the very first seconds. You could see in their faces that they were excited about this evening and were quite thankful that older tracks were brought back to (stage) life. Johan, still suffering from his knee injury last year, was not that much jumping around as usually. Not sure if he felt uncomfortable, nervous or if there were still struggles with his health- the fans didn’t mind that he was not that much active this time.
I really loved that he was playing ‘The Ultimate Machine‘, one of the songs I always carry around on my beloved MP3-player and of course ‘Necrophilia‘. Fans singing along in front row, the simple but amazing music arrangements, a Johan van Roy on drums and close to the end ‘See you in Hell‘, though there were speculations if this songs would be played or not. Well, it was. I missed the younger fans, the mid-twenties. Not sure if they’re not into SUICICDE COMMANDO’s beginning or went to Dark Munich Festival this weekend to see more “modern” bands performing tracks that have been on the DAC Top 20 over the past five years. I can only recommend the Vintage Set of SUICICDE COMMANDO as I tend to hear certain bands way to often and mostly they don’t change their setlists that much from show to show.
I was happy that there wasn’t played ‘Attention Whore‘ or ‘Die Motherfucker Die‘ and I guess the people being there shared my opinion.
Setlist
01. Murder
02. TV obsession
03. Traumatize
04. Sheer horror
05. The ultimate machine
06. Necrophilia
07. Mortal combat
08. Where do we go from here (feat. Dirk Ivens)
09. Never get out
10. Save me
11. Time
12. Fate
13. See you in hell
14. So many questions
15. The end of your life
16. The mirror
Rating
Music: 10
Performance: 9
Sound: 10
Light: 8
Total: 9.2 / 10
Pictures by Susann Lucas (editing by www.fabianhaas.de) and Tanja Schilling (http://www.darkstarphotographics.de)
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