The time has come to assess what was witnessed last evening. Now that everything has settled and organized itself in my thoughts, namely: the fetish-BDSM gothic party — "Victims of Masters." It's hard to start with anything specific, as the event itself was rather chaotic. Gathering together all the positive and negative aspects of what was seen, unfortunately, we must conclude: the latter hold a significant advantage. Who's to blame, who isn't — I'd rather not investigate, I'd rather not dig through other people's dirty laundry, but I would certainly like to know what caused the mass dissatisfaction with this gothic party. Because it wasn't just me — many, possibly even the absolute majority, were displeased.
But briefly: as promised and advertised on the posters, two bands were expected onstage that evening — one being the already well-established Kyiv gothic-metal formation GRIMFAITH, and the second (at least unknown to me previously), the moscow gothic-rock/heavy act THE GUEST. Also featured were four DJs: TYRANT, EUGEN, GARRGAROTH and DJ KLIFF, plus a vivid performance by the Gladiator Show Theatre "Odyssey" with swords and pyrotechnics.
The event was scheduled for 6:00 PM. Result: around 9:00 PM things started, minus the DJ party — essentially the very thing that drew the small but nonetheless certain number of people there, who by all outward signs belonged to the goth community. Now, I suppose, the reason for such changes in plans is already irrelevant. I didn't want to talk about all this, but there's no escaping it — the world is as cruel as the people who made it so. Alas, that's reality.
Of course, practically nobody doubted that things wouldn't start on time, but a three-hour delay is a cruel trial even for the most patient goths and other people who came. During that time, the rather warm sunny weather managed to change significantly with a light rain that at least somewhat cheered everyone up and brought variety to the unpleasant wait. Understanding this, the organizers decided to let people into the hall as soon as it became possible in principle. So we had to listen to GRIMFAITH's soundcheck for a while longer. Interesting as that might be for fans of the band, you simply shouldn't do that! The reason is simple: the listener came only to enjoy harmony of sound, not its chaotic testing. But again — alas. Due to this disorder, the actual moment the event began was missed entirely. It started with recordings of RAMMSTEIN, FRONTLINE ASSEMBLY, THE 69 EYES, and a few other bands that were somewhat familiar, but your humble servant couldn't identify them on the fly. But that's beside the point...
And finally, after nearly four hours of waiting for something to actually happen, the members of GRIMFAITH picked up their instruments, and it kicked off. Their already quite familiar repertoire began to somewhat smooth over all the negative emotions that had gradually accumulated during the wait. Clean and correct playing — you can feel the band is building their potential, clearly preparing for something serious. But it wasn't just their already well-known songs that sounded today. Another new track from the band: "Gutiera." May the song's author and band guitarist Igor Cherepanov forgive me if the spelling is wrong. And this only confirms that the band is developing, full of creativity and ready for new and greater achievements. But here too, "a fly in the ointment": the generally decent sound was marred by microphone feedback (the cause of this phenomenon apparently being that the poor thing couldn't handle the vocals... just kidding — it's perfectly simple: resonance of sound waves exiting the speaker and those same waves hitting the microphone input, resulting in their interference and amplitude increase to an indecent degree — and that's no joke). Let's thank the band for their efforts and for the drive and energy they gave us, and wish them success at their upcoming performance in Chisinau with OFFERTORIUM on May 27th.
Next, lightning-fast, two young men in medieval clothing with shields and swords in hand burst onto the dance floor. They rather quickly scared off everyone nearby, as the show they put on was quite spectacular. Aggressive combat, sparks flying left and right from clashing swords — further proof of the actors' professionalism. But it didn't fit into the evening's overall picture at all...
After this brief show, guests from moscow greeted us — THE GUEST (pardon the cross-linguistic tautology). Quite quickly, practically as soon as they plugged in their instruments, they started! And from the very first chords, the musical picture became clear — gothic-rock with some heavy motifs. We can only evaluate the music, because unfortunately, the vocalist's delivery style made it impossible to grasp the meaning of the lyrics. But the music itself was top-notch — it wasn't a pathetic rip-off, you could feel independent work and a certain subtle touch that made the band's sound even more appealing. The musicians were rather relaxed onstage (something many Ukrainian performers probably lack). In general, you could feel the capital-city level! Despite the fact that not a single song title was spoken aloud, it seemed like they played a song from the THE 69 EYES repertoire (though I won't insist on that). The bass-drums-vocals parts stood out strongly against the overall sound. The most memorable song was their closer — a cover of KINO's "Mama, We've All Gone Crazy."
As DJ Tyrant said after the performance — this band could definitely have commercial success. And he was right. The guys sincerely promised to come back to Kyiv more than once. Well then — we'll be waiting! It would be nice to see them here.
As for what happened next — forgive me, but history remains silent on that...