Darklands

A diary from Wave-Gotik-Treffen 2018.

In the following notes you can find our complete report from the World’s biggest festival of dark/goth music and subcultures, one of the very few situations that reunites over 20.000 people across all the most varied alternative subcultures. This year an endless Sun kissed the darkest Leipzig, giving a glimpse of summer to all of us, with the perfect weather to explore the city and enjoy thousands of events going on during those 4 days of bliss in the most diverse contexts from open air, parks, to huge industrial spaces, regular clubs, museums, theatres or churches. Describing the journey day by day, we’ll try to bring you to that unique atmosphere that makes every attendant already think forward to the next edition.

“And I broke my face, and my head grows too much
God spits on my soul
There’s something dead inside my hole.”


Day I / Friday

Even though Thursday holds already some warm-up events, the festival officially kicks off on Friday early in the afternoon, with the Victorian pic-nic in Clara Zetkin Park. This is the perfect outdoor spot to start enjoying the city, lighten up before the concerts, have a chat with old and new friends and, of course, have a taste of the most extravagant, outrageous and well-curated outfits of the festival. Just the time to pick up the WGT-ribbons from Agra venue and we had to choose already our next destinations and it’s nothing but easy considering such great proposals for each music genre. For the EBM, Nitzer Ebb fans, there was Douglas McCarthy with his Black Line project, while at the Volkspalast for the post-punk devotees there were Crisis ready to delight us. There was also going on an ethereal performance of the experimental neofolk band Rome so dear to our hearts and Skeletal Family playing for our positive punk/deathrock selves. We decided to follow two very interesting electro acts that never crossed our paths so far, E-Craft and Project Pitchfork’s Scheuber, but mostly to say ‘Hi’ to one of our favorite venues in Europe, Moritzbastei, in the heart of the city. Then you can choose between having some time to rest or going to one of the many tematic parties.

Darklands / WGT2018

Credits:

Photography: Marco Giuliano / @marcogiulianoph
Report: Anca Macavei / @ancamacavei
Official website: www.wave-gotik-treffen.de
Thanks to WGT-Press staff.

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