non-emo M'era Luna update - 1370°C

06:26 pm - non-emo M'era Luna update

i can't believe i was considering not going to M'era Luna. i wouldn't have known what i was missing out on, of course, but it was well worth it. we popped up in Dusseldorf and fetched the rental car without incident, drove the 2.5 hours (at about 160 km/hour at times...gotta love the autobahn) and did a bit of running about trying to figure out where to get tickets, going to fetch cash so we could actually afford tickets, and finally getting into the show exhausted but excited.

i knew German festival shows were big. but i wasn't really imagining *how* big. not only that, but nearly everyone there was actually German. how such a small country can have so many goths that can actually be arsed to go out to a festival in the middle of nowhere...just overwhelming.


Saturday:

-sadly, was too late for Qntal, which i figured would happen, so i wasn't too cracked up over it.

-saw the last half of NFD. wasn't particularly impressed. they didn't sound like much, but luckily, they were nearly over by the time we were in and settled, so we attempted to browse the merch booths while they finished up.

-Cruxshadows were on next. now, i've seen them...3 times before i believe, and really their shows are suited to small venues. Rogue likes to run about in the audience, dance about with people during Deception, hang from rafters, and generally do nutty things that i figured wouldn't work at a huge festival show. however, it turned out to be quite impressive. M'era Luna easily had the best sound setup of anywhere i've ever seen them play, and Rogue made up for the lack of audience interaction by scaling a scaffolding on the side of the stage that must have been 2 or 3 stories high. i can live without the scantily-clad, new, annoying dancers that seem to have only 2 or 3 dance moves though. Rogue talked in German a lot between the songs, and of course did a chorus or two of Deception in German.

-wandered about again during 69 Eyes, because they didn't seem all that brilliant. finally replaced the two spiky things that i'd lost off of my spiky-thing bracelet.

-Schandmaul were quite good. they put on a good and energetic show and sounded really good, but wanted to make sure to get inside the hangar before Mesh started there, so didn't catch the end of their set.

-Mesh were brilliant. not a lot to look at, but their songs sounded live (i enjoy shows quite a lot more when you can tell they're playing live rather than having them sound indistinguishable from a CD). i cried through about half of their set. live songs get to me even more than recorded ones, and gothicfurby and i were randomly depressed about the concept of me leaving Dublin.

-back outside, where i skipped VNV (seen them before, and don't really feel the need to again) and (i know, i know) Skinny Puppy in favour of chatting with random German goths partially in English and partiallly in pidgeon German.

-was totally beat, so didn't go to any of the dance club bits (actually, i spaced and thought they'd have more on Sunday, or i probably would have stayed awake despite having been up for more than 48 hours at that point).

Sunday:

-woke up to the sound of Scream Silence's set starting at 11am. you could hear them perfectly from the tent which was easily a kilometer or two from the actual stage. i wish i could live somewhere that i could wake up to a live band playing every morning.

-listened to The Vision Bleak while dressing, staring out at the rain, wondering exactly how wet we were gonig to get going out there.

-got into the festival in time to see the German folk band Faun, and the Norwegian band Gate. who both sound so much like Hedningarna and Garmarna it's scary. If you're not familiar with the latter two bands either, they get filed under Swedish/Finnish folk, and evidently, in that part of the world "folk" means "dancy ambient goth with lots of cool instruments." Faun had a bit of a Dead Can Dance vibe going on as well. these two bands were definitely the discovery of the evening.

-i've been hearing about The Birthday Massacre from several people, and was in the process of downloading one of their albums when i left for the show, even though i am always a little suspicious of any band whose name is of the format "The Birthday Foo" or "The Foo Party." but they're clearly the band Evanesence wants to be. if you have any inclinations toward them, switch to Birthday Massacre instead. there are 6 of them, and they were all dressed in cute, mid 80s mod style. loud, rocky, catchy choruses and meaningful verses. and a live show that had even the snottiest of goths dancing.

-ran out to the store during Zeraphine (who i probably should have stayed for) and all but the last bit of Lacuna Coil (who i don't like).

-the only travesty of the festival came next. i *really* wanted to see Melotron. however, they were playing in the Hangar (why, oh why?) and since it was absolutely pissing down rain, everyone and their brother were stuffed in there and it was impossible to get in. so we hung out and chatted, which was nice in its own right.

-Subway to Sally next. definitely worth having seen, though i really only know one or two of their songs well, i'd heard most of them by osmosis because _goodmanbrown_ is very fond of them.

-for the same reason as Melotron, didn't see Diary of Dreams. :( did however, at this point, buy a signed copy of Deine Lakaien's April Skies. strangely, we checked just about every CD vendor there and the folk with the signed one were the only ones who had it. technically, it was some sort of bonus prize when you subscribed to their magazine, but seeing as i was a foreigner (and probably because i gave a bit of a pouty lip and a "but you're the only ones who even had it at all,") i was allowed to buy it outright.

-Deine Lakaien stole the show completely. Ernst had crazy mad scientist hair and largely played a real piano rather than his synth, and Veljanov had the bit between his strange hairdo dyed blue. their set should have been *much* longer. i was sad that they neither played The Kiss nor the acoustic version of Vivre, but they did play a lot of great stuff, were fun to look at, and were generally worth having travelled for so long and spent so very much money to see. another show i cried through a great deal of, and also sang at the top of my lungs along with some German girls behind us.

-went for a wander with gothicfurby which ended in me feeling like i should run across the mud with her (mostly to get away from strange German boy who was clearly working up to chatting up one or the both of us), and, as she was pulling me along, i fell sideways into the muck, which was quite funny.

-back to the tent listening to the Sisters from a distance, because we were drenched to the bone, and it was still pouring. there actually were no club nights on Sunday, so we stayed about and chatted until the wee hours and then crashed.



Monday morning were up early to discover a slug (no clue how it got in there) and several spiders in the tent (i'm starting to believe Germany is in fact made up entirely of spiders, we kept finding these tiny little orb weavers *everywhere.* packed everything up in the mud (nephster13 i hope you have a hose...the inside of the tent escaped muddiness, but the outside is probably a right mess), and headed for Dusseldorf.

though we had a great wander in Dusseldorf, if there's something to do or see there (other than a smallish German city), we didn't manage to find it despite scouring the city center pretty well. did manage to pick up some strange German liquor, some chocolate, bratwurst, and a few books.

gains for the weekend: discovering new bands, seeing some bands i really wanted to see, getting to know gothicfurby better (damn you! someone else to miss), learning about the wonders of DoppelKorn, getting to see a lot of goths standing peevishly about under umbrellas or having fun looking like drowned rats, mud, mud, and more mud.

losses for the weekend: not getting to do more shopping, missing 2 bands, not finding clove cigarettes, and my mobile phone.


general query: why, o, why would anyone go to an outdoor festival completely dressed up in lace and velvet goth regalia? and moreover, still be committed to that look when it's pouring and muddy?

query for _goodmanbrown_: Wikipedia claims that M'era Luna is being held in the same place as "the now defunct Zillo festival." i don't think that this is true. first, because Zillo only went defunct this year, and second, because i can't imagine that you took a train from Schwabish Haal to Hildesheim. it would have taken hours and hours. so...where was Zillo when you went?

interesting tidbit: people hitchhike in Germany. normal people, girls by themselves...just...people. that's sort of neat.