Candy Spooky Theatre, The - Berlin 2008

K17, Berlin, Germany
21st March 2008
The Candy Spooky Theatre
 
THE CANDY SPOOKY THEATER describe their music as “Your mom being stabbed to death in your closet as you sleep” - gothic rock with a taste of horror and humour, combined with a promise of tongue-in-cheek theatrics which could have been easily invented by Tim Burton himself, this Japanese Visual Kei band sounded extremely exciting. With an entrance price of € 25, THE CANDY SPOOKY THEATER could align itself with the big names that have played K17. I was ready for a huge Visual Kei Harajuku fest, a giant gathering of Germany’s most extreme Visual Kei fans, a cool insider-version of what I’d seen a few months earlier in the huge Treptow Arena when Girugamesh and Aural Vampire played for free. God, was I wrong. http://www.myspace.com/candyspookytheatermurder

Music & Performance
K17’s concert hall was already reserved for some metal bands, and so it happened that THE CANDY SPOOKY THEATER ended up playing on one of the four dance floors that K17 houses (mistake nr 1). Consequently, the stage was tiny, and so I was wondering beforehand how all the theatrics were ever gonna fit on stage, which was still terrifyingly empty. However, the audience provided the eye-candy that the stage couldn’t - luckily the abundance of wide Lolita and Lolita-inspired dresses made the floor look at least a bit full. Many more than 60 people couldn’t have been there (mistake nr 2). When the band was announced (no support act) the stage was still empty, nevertheless we were warned that we were absolutely forbidden to use the flashlight, or else the band would stop playing. Pretty childish to say such a thing, I thought.


 
However, as soon as the concert started, I started to understand why. These Japanese clad Visual Kei fans didn’t only make an effort out of their looks, they also made an effort out of acting as Japanese as possible - screaming hysterically, and continuously making pictures. It seemed more like an outrageous photo-competition than a concert, and it was all but easy to make pictures without other cameras on it. Anyways, back to the band. The concert started by the introductory song ‘This is Halloween’ from Tim Burton’s “Nightmare before Christmas”. It was the perfect preface to the show. Each band member entered the stage separately, wearing some kind of horror-costume and outrageous horror make-up, and was received by loud screaming, the loudest saved for singer...


 
After finally having managed to make some decent pics, I could start to listen and enjoy the concert. However, there wasn’t all that much to enjoy. Apart from the wild looks of the band, there was hardly anything visual about the empty stage. No theatrics, no wild stuff - I saw my expectations vaporize in thin air. However, they were playing with full conviction, interaction and having fun on stage, pretending to be scary. The music itself basically sounded like a noisier version of ‘This is Halloween’, at times successful, but mostly - honestly - ridiculous. The tongue-in-cheek carnavalesque clownesque attitude and devotion displayed by the band made it at least somewhat entertaining and very Tim Burton-ish indeed, but I didn’t feel the need to cue up for the signing session afterwards.