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Icon of Coil HamburgMS Stubnitz, Hamburg, Germany
27th December 2018
Icon Of Coil - Tour 2018 - Support: Telemark

It is 27th December, so the first day after Christmas and what would you like to do the most? Right! Let’s go to a gig of electro pioneers ICON OF COIL in the fabulous location MS Stubnitz (a historical museum and event ship!) in the harbour of Hamburg. Though I just came back from an extended tour of another Norwegian band (SEIGMEN), it was my pleasure to finish my concert year with another Norwegian “classic”: ICON OF COIL, supported by the Swedish project TELEMARK (you can also see both main characters play in the same band - COMBICHRIST).


Telemark

TELEMARK is a Swedish Dark Electro / Indie project that was founded in 2012 by Elliott Berlin who has been already part of AESTHETIC PERFECTION and just recently completed the live line-up for COMBICHRIST. In 2013 the single ‘A Thousand’ was released. The album ‘Cecilie’ is available via https://telemark.bandcamp.com/album/cecilie

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Music & Performance
TELEMARK offered the audience a downsized electronic line-up. I saw TELEMARK in May 2018 at Out Of Line Festival in Berlin with some more guitars and instruments, so the gig this time was different. Unfortunately the technics seemed to make a lot of problems that night, not just during the TELEMARK gig. First something seemed not too work, also the vocals were not as loud as they should have been and during one song the mic totally dropped out. I still enjoyed the music itself, but without all the technical problems it would have been a lot more intense. The “light” at MS Stubnitz was very dark, sometimes almost not existing at all. It made for some dark and special mood, but sometimes I wished for some more highlights and change.

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Anyway the concept was quite cool and was fitting well to the event and the ship with its impressive industrial charm. Elliott tried to motivate the crowd, unfortunately as already mentioned his mic was to quiet, so even for me, standing almost next to him, and it was a bit hard to understand what he is saying.

Setlist
01. "Synthwave intro Berlin"
02. Blood red shoes
03. A thousand
04. Handling a rope
05. Knives
06. Hjärta Av salt
07. Through the looking glass

Rating
Music: 8
Performance: 7
Light: 6
Sound: 6
Total: 6.8 / 10

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Icon Of Coil

ICON OF COIL was founded in 1997 as Electro / Future Pop project by Andy LaPlegua. Since COMBICHRIST became Andy’s main project in 2003, it became very calm around ICON OF COIL. Some festival or revival gigs every now and then and a few releases coming up. ICON OF COIL played along with Andy’s two other projects COMBICHRIST and PANZER AG in 2018 at the Out Of Line Festival in Berlin and probably it was here when the idea for the surprising mini tour in Germany with stops in Hamburg, Oberhausen, Hanover, Berlin and finally Dresden on New Year’s Eve was born. Who knows... https://www.facebook.com/IconOfCoilOfficial/

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Music & Performance
Andy LaPlegua entered the stage on that first night of the tour with a lot of enthusiasm and fun. It is still a little bit unusual for me to see him on stage performing other songs than the well-known COMBICHRIST smashers. MS Stubnitz is an epic location for scene gigs and has a very unique and almost morbid industrial atmosphere. The stage is not that big, just 5 people fit in the front row, but you can see the stage perfectly from all the other levels. The gig itself was cool, Andy partying on stage and giving his best to perform the old gems. The crowd enjoyed the night-out after all the Christmas celebrations a lot and danced of all the candy.

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The sound got way better compared to TELEMARK, but nevertheless at some point also ICON OF COIL were forced to have a break. Andy took the situation with lots of humour “We are making electronic music, right? So there is no music without the electronic”, presenting how the mentioned electronic stuff just didn’t work. Anyway he just kept laughing and so tried to fix the situation with his co-musician. Fortunately it didn’t took too long, so we could continue to party with the old ICON OF COIL hits.

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Of course the crowd wanted to see more after Andy left the stage, and so he came back to perform one of the greatest hits of ICON OF COIL and still a dance floor hit ‘Dead Enough For Life’. After that one and a fun evening the musicians left the stage. The audience tried really hard to bring them back for another encore, but that unfortunately didn’t work. So after 1h 10min - 1h 20min this revival gig was over. We all still had a great night and this one was a nice gig to end my personal concert year.

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Setlist
01. Floorkiller
02. Thrillcapsule
03. Situations Like These
04. Shallow Nation
05. Mono:Overload?
06. You Just Died
07. Regret
08. Simulated
09. Shelter
10. Existence in Progress
11. Pursuit
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12. Dead Enough For Life

Rating
Music: 9
Performance: 8
Light: 6
Sound: 7
Total: 7.5 / 10

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All Pictures by Nastja Iz

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