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.
Day II / Saturday
This weekend was not made for sleeping so we started our day early at the Medieval Village where you should definitely experience some great authentic German food and wine (Gärung stand with its sweet elixirs for sure is worth a visit). Then we finally reached the main venue of the festival, the big Agra Park, for a deep dive into some good industrial rock: it all started off with an intense performance by Zeromancer (which ended with a very enjoyable cover of Depeche Modes’s Photographic!). Then the loud 3Teeth‘s machineries from USA, to the German homeowners Oomph! and finally to industrial legends Front Line Assembly, our readers already know how much we love them. At the same time we’ve been informed about a sublime performance by Swedish ethereal band Arcana that we’d have loved to be able to see. But we guess it’s also part of the beauty of it, residual pleasures make you nurture the desire to return back each year. If you are into fetishism, on Saturday night, you have to properly dress yourself up and head to the ObsessionBizarr party at Volkspalast, one of the biggest in the World in its genre, to celebrate intensely together with all the other free spirits freedom, tolerance and respect. At rush hour expect a long queue to enter but trust us, it’s worth the wait!
Day III / Sunday
Sunday is all about the midnight special with the headliners of the festival: The Jesus and Mary Chain. But before it, enough time to go body-to-body and enjoy some old-school EBM – a niche sub-genre of electronic music quite hard to experience outside Germany- with Spark!, Sturm Cafè and Vomito Negro and their minimal, vigorous and harsh vibes. Then a quick pass by Moritzbastei for the German synthesizers ES23. It was the best warm-up for the most intense night of the festival, as The Jesus and Mary Chain simply blew our minds and swept us off our feet with their melancholic guitar feedbacks wall, guiding us all in a journey through their darklands. Still in awe, having goosebumps while re-listening to them now while back home; such an emotional performance, full of noise meant to disguise frail feelings, with a magnitude that cannot be truly understood unless experienced live. Our Sunday then ended as it began, time did not matter and overjoyed we headed to Taubchenthal for a dark/gothic party and spent the entire night dancing like “when we were young” on a dj-set that mixed precious gems and classics of the genre.
Day IV / Monday
Overwhelmed by the sadness of the thought as it was already the last day, we fully immersed ourselves into an authentic EBM/industrial blast that started at Agra with Faderhead, Grendel and God Module and continued until early morning at the famous closing party at Moritzbastei. We felt our blood, our heads were dripping into our leather boots and all we wanted was to never end. Time to say goodbye to this great experience that makes you feel that there is light somewhere near enough and we’ll now leave you with our visual diary of memories, people and the atmospheres of those intense four days.
And don’t forget to save the dates for next year!
7th / 10th of June 2019, Leipzig, Germany.
THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN
3TEETH
ZEROMANCER
SPARK! + STURM CAFE
AUGUSTUSPLATZ, LEIPZIGCredits:
Photography: Marco Giuliano / @marcogiulianoph
Report: Anca Macavei / @ancamacavei
Official website: www.wave-gotik-treffen.de
Thanks to WGT-Press staff.
Fresh faced