August 2, 2021

Concert Review: Lichtbeuger Tenth Anniversary Show, Thirsty Dog, 31 July 2021

Lichtbeuger are Industrial Art Noise duo of singer Adam Colegrove and metal machine music Maestro Drew Lyon. They blast, pound and ravage the Thirsty Dog tonight and set the lovely Goth maidens dancing. Maybe graced by the presence of Fairy Goth-Mother and some enchanting Eastern cobra-dancing.

They’re off with Drop the Bullet. A smooth driving drone of electronic sound combined with a moderate paced oonst-oonst beat. Gravel-shredded vocals. Can’t help but compare them to Suicide in appearance at least.

Welcome to the Dark Ages. Great rhythms, fast and multi-layered but may not be as complex as they sound on first exposure. The music is busy and keeps firing off like fireworks. Colegrove stalks the stage and prowls with a deliberate heavy menace.

He has the air of a Shakespearean arch-villain and is great value as a dramatic theatrical performer. With the scares and menace comes black humour to counterpoint the macho posturing. Maybe Marilyn Manson, but also Johnny Rotten channeling nasty hunchback Richard the Third.

They perform all songs on their 2015 EP Piezoelectric save one, for this ten-year anniversary bash. More accurately, outgoing ordnance and fire-power.

He Came Up is introduced as unabating shit. Artillery set to rhythm. Trance music materialises as a dreamscape of Mad Max Armageddon with a malevolent big-bearded biker.

It’s not all cross-fire hurricane.

Human Waste is their first ever song. A tasty synthesiser melody. Kraut Prog Rock and the rhythms of space and Techno. Some of those hard shuddering bass beats as from Grandmaster Melle Mel’s White Lines (Don’t Do It). Music oozes out and looks around like a giant lizard king.

Similar Teutonic noise on Praise Be, also off the featured EP. Dedicated to Rev Brian Tamaki. Colegrove in full theatrical mode. Growl, rumble, Fuck! Bellow and bawl, Fuck! He must love the guy.

Leather Ropes is from a forthcoming EP. A desert storm of sound whips around the automatic artillery barrage. A nice counter melody is laid out. A catharsis of vomited vocals. Take me by the hand so I can feel you/ Watch you/ Let me take you down with me. Get together with Rob Zombie for some over-the-top horrorcore.

Cobalt was released as a single, I think, as well as on the EP. Incoming rhythmic assault straight up the middle. Feels like you’re taking body shots. If you’re not dancing with the Goths then you are on the ropes letting it vibrate through.

Nebula closes this set and overflows with energy. Complex hits and sparks and repeated machine riffs. Human machine riffs. The bellowing is kept up heroically. Swirling keyboard melody emanates out. Fucking raw! yells someone and it may be the singer.

If I may indulge in some music obsessive’s observation. Check out Bo Diddley’s Beach Party album from 1963. A live version of Roadrunner. One origin of Industrial Dance music.

Creassault

Drew Lyon has been producing soundscapes on this particular project since the mid-Nineties.

Six connected synthesisers and likely other gadgets patched in. Partnered by Ben Parker tonight.

A twenty-minute piece of ambient music. A soundtrack to a suspense thriller to begin. But then disembodied voices sounding like ghosts in the machine. Skulls appear on the back-drop screen. We are in the ominously creepy world of David Lynch’s Inland Empire.

Some overlays of sound like light summer rain. Slowly you feel the presence of a throb, from the floor and up through your body.

After a while you sense that this is organic sound from Bio-machines. There is no beat but there is a rhythm. How it gets there I’m not sure.

This is dream music from inside the dream. It makes sense while you are in it but just as easily disappears when you wake up.

Stars and the Underground

This quartet launch the anniversary bash tonight. Industrial music with lots of Goth and theatricality to their sound.

The driving force is John Mason voice and guitar, who has been making this music since the late Nineties. Ari Kimber bass, has a similar background. The younger members who operate the keyboard/synths are Cat Louis Vuitton and Sean O’Kane.

O’Kane, who is wearing a black t-shirt with Fuck the Law on the back, says they are a Noise band primarily.

Their first few songs are moody, atmospheric textured landscapes of sound which wash out like smooth rolling waves.

There is some Eighties Dance Synth. Prog Rock combined with metronomic electronic beats.

I Am Why is dedicated to Susan who died at the Bataclan tragedy in Paris. The bass plays a simple pattern which the guitar accents. All bottom and no riffs. The singer blends into the overall atmosphere.

Fade From Sight bounces up a little with a New Order sound. From somewhere inside the machines, you catch what may be post-Surf melody riffs before they fade out.

Streamers is slow, cold as ice, and the sound of northern European cathedrals with glassy keyboard reverb.

Those textures and melodies are a winning combination and they finish their set with a good one, Nosferatu upon Tyne. The minimalist electronic textures hook. A swirling fairground organ appears to add some dark comedy.

A night of Industrial and Dance. You may think this atmosphere is heavy but in a curious way it is free and unrestrained. In its own way can swing furiously. Its White Tribal and there is no Funk or R’n’B. But then Bo Diddley is embedded in the genes somehow.

Rev Orange Peel

Click any icon to view a full size gallery of each artists. All photos copyright Leonie Moreland