2000/08/19, Doomsday festival, Ostragehege, Dresden, Germany

Written by Jan Piatkowski ( jan@never-land.de) for Dominion mailing list

Hm... "Vision Thing" is in for "Flood I", which surprises me a bit. "Flood I" was amazing in Hildesheim. Although I missed VT that night, too.

Maybe the band is not quite sure about the "final" name for "Snub Nose", that'd be an explanation for "..or whatever".

Written by Marc Hoffman (mh@elitedev.com) for Dominion mailing list

Jan Piatkowski:
> Maybe the band is not quite sure about the "final" name for "Snub Nose",
> that'd be an explanation for "..or whatever".

fwiw, my brother swears that "Snub Nose" (or whatever ;-) is not an original piece but sounds familiar to him. maybe this isn't a new song, but just some jamming around...

apart from that:

the Doomsday gig was Awesome (and well worth the 6 hour drive, both ways).

First of all, they "introed" with three (or was it four?) different and pretty cool Doktor solos during the soundcheck (opposed to only one of them playing constantly in Hildesheim. The Setlist itself was similar, but slightly rearranged since M'era Luna. Since it's up on the tour site already, i won't go into details. Vision Thing was (for me) a welcome replacement for Flood I, altough i _really_ missed Bei Mir, which i've grown to like quite a bit.

Crash and Burn seemed to take of even better than last week, but this could be due to the fact that the sound of the guitars and the Doktor seemed a lot louder and harder (and unfortunately did swallow Eldritch's voice, far too often), during the entire gig.

Eldritch did a nice teaser on Flood before playing War on Drugs ("Her hallway... Moves... Like the forrest..."), talked a lot less than in Hildesheim but did an (unusual) lot of audience play (like having the only the audience sing key lines, here and there, or threatening/promising to shoot with a fire extinguisher).

Written by Robin Colman (sisters@pandora.be) for Dominion mailing list

don't forget to tell the show was great and they almost played 'summer' twice... think it was 'summer' ... just been driving 9 hours and close to dead.... so my memory fails a bit (no, it wasn't the beer)

Written by Frank Spieker (Spiek@gmx.de) for Dominion mailing list

Alice was on the Hildesheim setlist, but they threw it out during the performance, perhaps they were running out of time?

Yes you are right, they played Summer twice. The show was great, and Eldritch talked to the audience several times.Before the concert, around seven o`clock Adam and Chris went through the audience and made a visit to the festival area. We've met them several times,but we haven't talked to them, it seemed like they enjoyed the festival athmosphere.

"Eleven goals in two games is not bad" Eldritch commented the results of F.C.ST.Pauli`s first two games.

I think during "Romeo Down" Eldritch went offstage and came back with a fire-extinguisher. Does anybody know why?

There were a lot of more comments of Eldritch but i couldn`t remember the words.

Written by Christian (CWojtysiak@aol.com) for Dominion mailing list

Frank Spieker:
> I think during "Romeo Down" Eldritch went offstage and came back with a
> fire-extinguisher. Does anybody know why?

Didn't you feel the heat in the audience? Guess Eldritch was afraid people would start burning... Just kidding ;-)

Did someone already mention the fireworks?

There was a big celebration in the city of Dresden on Saturday either and there was a firework in the sky (left side of the stage) during "summer". Nice addition to the perfect light show.

"With the fire from the fireworks up above me..."

"Crash and Burn" was phantastic. Romeo Down amazing, Giving Ground, Flood II... well...

Great show, great gig, great weekend.

Greetings to everybody from Dominion I have met: Christian, Posy, Robin (greetings to Marijke!) Smola, special greetings to Jochen ;-) and you-know-what to Anja :-) new fan since last Saturday...

tired as hell but happy :-)

Written by Pete French (pete@toybox.twisted.org.uk) for Dominion mailing list

Christian:
> Greetings to everybody from Dominion I have met: Christian, Posy,
> Robin (greetings to Marijke!) Smola, special greetings to Jochen ;-)
> and you-know-what to Anja :-) new fan since last Saturday...

How come nobody ever meets me at these gigs eh ? Obviously far too non-descript for my own good.

An O.K. Sisters gig - not as good as Mera Luna in some ways (crowd was crap for starters) and it dragged at points. On the other hand it had some excellent up moments as well. Von seeming in a very good mood throughout as well.

Written by Andy (heartland@home.se) for The Sisters of Mercy Tours site

First Part: Road Madness with the road filth
Me and my friend started to hitchhike to Dresden on Thursday from Sweden. We made it to Dresden within 31 Hours( Beat that Andrius ;) ). But we thought many times that we wouldn't make it there, specially when we got a ride with a High Speed crazy German guy from outside Magdenburg to Berlin, because he drove from magdenburg to Berlin non stop in 200-220 Km/h, so we were really scared sometimes and thought that "we are now going to die".

Second Part: Dresden and Gestapo Security
After going around in circles in Dresden we made it to Ostrahege. There were no signs in which direction we should go to get to the festival on the Friday, but luckily for the most people who made it there on Saturday it was signs all over the place. So outside the festival we met a really nice guy from Ireland who told us that the security hadn't even open the camping area, but maybe they open it on Saturday. But lucky for us they opened the gates to the camping area a few hours later.

Third Part: Saturday, trying to get tickets.
After a night sleeping in the smallest tent in the world we awakened at 9.00. They said that they would start to sell the one day tickets at 10.00 so we stood outside the festival area waiting for them to start to sell tickets when we heard The Sisters start to soundcheck, really nice for us who where waiting in vain. after some hours finally we got our tickets, but then we found out that one day tickets don't give you a wristband, so you can go in and outside how much you want. The Doomsday festival organization really sucked, no place to take a shower to. So this is the worst organized festival I ever been to.

Back at the camping area we started to party with our friend from Ireland, who turned ot to live above the chemist. After some hours with him and heavy drinking we went of for the festival area.

Inside we met some really nice persons. A big Yowsa to Robin, Marijke, Sven, Annika, Posy and the rest of the really nice Dominion mob. C ya over in UK later on.

Fourth Part: The Sisters Of Mercy:
After a really weird intro they kicked of the show with Anaconda, in my opinion not the best opener song. I have preferred either Train/Detonation Boulevard, Vision Thing or First And Last And Always as a opener. Anaconda was followed by a really powerful Train/detonation Boulevard, one of the best live renditions I have heard. Ribbons was somehow a disappointment, sounded quite weak. Giving Ground was Awesome, I almost known that Giving Ground should be rally good after the soundcheck. The new Song Crash and Burn was even greater than I had imagined. but I think the song will be better when they have played it some more times. I still think Crash and Burn is just a raw version that can be much better in the future. Vision Thing was bloody good. haven't heard such a energy version since 91.

Over all I had a great time in Dresden with the sisters as the cream of the top of a really good and nice evening.

Written by Hiro Protagonista (hiro_protagonista@poczta.onet.pl) for Dominion mailing list

First came intros, sounded like refined ssv pieces with a little help from the Doctor. And then - the lights and Anaconda, fast and storming, when you compare to all that boring doomsday stuff - especially to Wolfshheim (I can`t understand why do Germans love it so much, the guy is completely out off distance to himself, his eine kleine theater is just a mere bullshit)

We are standing far from the scene, in the middle - the sound is bad, my friend seems to merely recognize a song line. During Train I started worried, but fortunately on Will I dream they are already tuned on, Ribbons are excellent. And Summer again made me out of breath, yellows and blues.

Crash and Burn - have anybody noticed that some of the audience sang it together with AE? if yes so it`s going to be a hit, that`s al I remember from this song for now.

The real gig starts for me when we move towards the scene, to the fifth or sixth row, unbelivable how much loose those of us who always stand quite far from the scene! Von is the real showman, I suppoosed he was in his best (The best gig for me was Wroclaw`91), though he preffered to sing at the lower, normal level while finnishing On The Wire and Giving Ground.

His contact with the audience year after year is getting more open - hearted, he was playful breezy and warm! And we realy had fun, no doom, no darkness, just a good fun, and even loughed sometimes while seeing them loughing with themselves.

Did anybody saw a moth attacking him? The reaction was on place - he tried to swallow it! And playing with the fire - extinguisher!, but you already know it!

Romeo Down - fabulous version, a long one, with lots of good job from Chris. Far away from the version we know from "Visions at the Forum".

Or whatever - excellent piece good for motorway, and with some free space for future (I hope so) vocals in it

Vision Thing -oh, how we shouted - "...motherfucker" with the drunk guy at our left hand, so even Discorossion at the end was for me like water to a fish.

Bei Mir was kicked out from the playlist - it`s a pity!

Excellent gig! Much better than the last one I saw in Prague, Jaunuary`98.

If that rather stiff audience was replaced with the better one it would be heaven on earth! Just joking my doomsday friends!

Written by Marcus Andersson (antec@home.se) for Dominion mailing list

So at last I got the time to write a little review, some thoughts about the gig... My and Andys trip to Dresden I won't even cover -it's a too long story :).

The festival itself was really poor organised, not what I am used to anyway; Swedish festivals... The organisers really ruined my mood the first night, we arrived there on Friday afternoon and they had not even opened the camping site, well...

Ah, and the gig... Anaconda as an opener is not really in my taste, put this one as an encore! Train and Ribbons is probably a bit weaker than at the last gig I saw, Arvika '98, but the response from the audience is better. The set is 80% new songs, people not used to the new songs probably found the concert pretty bad but to my surprise many even sang to Summer and Suzanne... Summer is the absolute highlight of the evening, the lights turning to sunset yellow... Oh yes! During Romeo Down there was some technical problems, Eldritch's microphone stopped working so he went offstage to get a new one. While he was at it he brought a fire extinguisher with him as well, pointing it at the audience ;) Also the bass was turned up a bit too much during R.D. (could be at the spot I was standing only).

Crash and burn was a great surprise, it was not as fast as I expected though. The sound reminds you of a slower Vision Thing. War on drugs was better then usual, in the end it's _really_ fast! The original set ended with Temple as usual... Well, that was what I thought it would! At the same moment Temple was over a storming version of Vision Thing kicked in, the best version I've ever heard live... Awesome! By this point the audience was really into it...

I missed a few songs in the setlist, Come Together and CN/SKOS... All in all a great gig though with The Sisters at their best.

Cheers to everyone I met there, Sven, Hekate, Robin, Elisabeth and all I've forgot the names on! See you soon in London.