On Saturday the 18th of May two German industrial metal bands performed in the venue of De Peppel in Zeist. The headliner of this evening is Ost+Front, while Schlagwetter got the task to warm up the crowd. Once inside the venue it is visible that the stage is quite packed, of course with the usual stuff, but also with some platforms to stand on, smoking machines and a lot of lights, something that seems like it will result in the bands not having very much space to move in. The music that is playing in the venue before the start of Schlagwetter’s set and in between the two bands, is almost only Rammstein. Of course, they released their new album one day earlier and there probably will be quite a few fans of Rammstein in tonight’s audience. However, to me it seems a bit of an easy choice to almost only play the new Rammstein album. I also wonder what tonight’s bands think about that. As German, and also singing in German, industrial metal bands they probably get compared with Rammstein regularly.
Unfortunately that is something I am going to do with Schlagwetter, especially with their vocalist Kevin Spiegel. In a lot of ways he strongly reminded me of Rammstein’s Till Lindemann, because of his clothes and his make-up, but also while looking at his way of moving, which also is quite a bit related to sex, the way he glances and his way of headbanging. Unfortunately his vocals can’t be compared to those of Till that much. Stylistically it could maybe be compared a little bit, but absolutely not when it comes to the execution of the vocals. To be honest, Kevin’s vocals sound pretty bad, he regularly sings too close to his microphone or too far away from it. This all gets even more clear and distracting because his vocals are way too much up front in the mix. Schlagwetter’s show pounds quite much, such as during Buckstuck, but the vocals remain very distracting during the entire show. Their show also contains quite some show aspects: they brought some extra lights on stage with a nice lightshow, there is a lot of smoke and Kevin as well as guitarist Valeria Ereth try to get the audience a bit more enthusiastic. At first it doesn’t look like they are succeeding in this, but later on during their set the audience gets a bit more enthusiastic. However, they didn’t convince everyone, including me.
Headliner Ost+Front however does convince me, for as far as needed. Most people in the venue, which in the meantime got a bit busier, were waiting for this headliner. The immediate moment the face-painted, dressed up and masked members of Ost+Front walk through the venue towards the stage to enter that stage that becomes clear. Something that also becomes clear very soon is that Ost+Front delivers a much better show compared to Schlagwetter. During the beginning of their show the mix is a little bit pale, but luckily that gets better during the show. The only exception on this is that the bass is a bit too loud, especially during the intro of Freundschaft. That song also is a good example in which Eva Edelweiß puts in a bit more depth with her keyboards. She also sometimes comes to the front of the stage, with backing vocals that unfortunately aren’t audible that well, while giving some of her “urine” to the audience to drink, and with some submissive positions towards vocalist Herrmann Ostfront. However, she doesn’t sing all backing vocals, sometimes those unfortunately come from a tape. Ost+Front pounds quite heavily during this show in a very well executed way that makes up for Schlagwetter’s show a lot. However, they do not only pound very heavily, they also got some more melodic parts in their music and show. The audience, that clearly came to see these headliners, now is very enthusiastic and going crazy, for example during Bruderherz.
Tonight we’ve seen a very nice show from Ost+Front, unfortunately preceded by a much lesser show from support act Schlagwetter.
Ost+Front Official Website
Ost+Front Facebook
Schlagwetter Official Website
Schlagwetter Facebook
Hi!
I’m Tim van Velthuysen and I started DutchMetalManiac back in 2014. I’m 29 years old and I live in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Of course, I like metal, but I can also appreciate other musical styles.
In addition to DutchMetalManiac I also have a personal website on which I’ll post various things that won’t fit on DutchMetalManiac, but might be interesting for you as well. It’s in Dutch though.
