Heavy Riffs & Heavy Drums…
DOOM OVER LEIPZIG 2013
Review + Photo Essay

All photos & text by Jan Zeleny

Reportedly, this has been the darkest winter since the beginning of weather statistics in Germany – and as if that wasn’t enough, while the Japanese are already posting fucking pictures of cherry blossoms, over here we’re still in the grip of winter’s third coming. Which, thanks to a slashing east wind, has been even more brutal than before. Good for Germans that the end of March saw the third Doom over Leipzig festival take place, which offered the opportunity to huddle together in the cozy bowels of the beautiful UT Connewitz with a few hundred fellow misanthropes once again and simply embrace the gloom & frostbite while getting bludgeoned by an excellent line-up of some of the most crushing artists around!

Before the doom would truly be upon us, Thursday started off with a film screening (the UT Connewitz is not only a concert venue, but also one of Germany’s oldest cinemas still in existence): a tourist’s look at the black metal scene and its pivotal formative/destructive events, “Until The Light Takes Us”. I had already forgotten how godawful the film really is, and was glad to find out that the subsequent lecture by Sascha Poehlmann of Metal Matters was also meant to shed a bit of light upon the film’s various problems (most notably the filmmakers’ apparent infatuation with Vikernes). However, it quickly became much more than that, as Poehlmann went on to explore black metal’s aesthetic & anthropologic roots in Romanticism with lots of competence and humor – most intriguing food for thought. Afterwards, there was an open mic giving the audience the opportunity for further discussion, but I figure I wasn’t the only one in attendance that was simply overwhelmed by all the input since no one took it (although a bit of talk developed among the audience with Poehlmann later).

A great performance by French one-man-shoegaze-drone-visual artist Zéro Absolu concluded Thursday’s schedule, and after my 4-hour trip to Leipzig, sitting through “Until The Light Takes Us” for the second time and listening to a great and thought-provoking lecture, I embraced the possibility to finally zone out and let the sonic scapes & images just wash over me.

Friday was started off by Guts & Guns, a local band from Leipzig that had to fill in for Adrift from Spain and did quite a decent job at it. And then, the mighty Nightslug slithered upon stage and poured out some blistering sludge (“slugdge”?) that set the mood for the evening most appropriately. Grab their free demo and imagine having the life slowly crushed out of you by an iridiscent, black two-ton slug. At night, I guess.

Tzadik artist Mario Diaz de Leon aka Oneirogen proceeded to dish out about an hour of continuous drone so heavy that bottles on stage would fucking topple. This was rather hypnotic and physical stuff, which a big part of the audience decided to take in seated on the floor while the venue was so thick with fog you could barely see. Next to take the stage, “from the riot-torn streets of Austin, Texas”, were the wonderful My Education, who played an equally immersive set while weaving a more varied tapestry of sound, utilizing keyboards and a violin.

Lastly, the mighty Witchsorrow from the Isle of England emerged from the mist. These folks wear their influences proudly on their sleeves (or backs, for obvious lack of sleeves) and indeed “proudly held aloft the flag for super heavy true doom metal”, as they claim themselves. No bullshit, just doom – a most appropriate finale to Friday’s line-up.

Because the festival actually started on time on Saturday, I unfortunately missed Copenhagen’s Hexis apart from the last two minutes, but was nonetheless impressed by the band’s stage presence and sheer intensity. Up next were Zatokrev, hailing from Basel, Switzerland – I guess most people reading this should be familiar with last year’s album “The Bat, The Wheel and a Long Road to Nowhere” on Candlelight. What can I say, these guys were banging their heads hard with barely a break and delivered an extremely energetic and punishing performance.

One of my personal highlights was doubtlessly Italian instrumental math-doom (yes, that is now officially a thing) outfit Lento, though. You may have already noticed that I suck at writing about music and live performances and in this case especially I couldn’t do much but gush, so I’m going to leave it at urgently recommending checking out everything they’ve ever done. Because they rule.

As the festival was slowly nearing its end, Heirs from Australia layed down another drone-heavy and trance-inducing performance, accompanied by a continuous visual loop of a spider building its net and catching a fly. Highly captivating stage presence, too – if these guys were a movie, they’d be somewhere between Lynch and Noé. See, I told you I suck at this…

The festival was ended thunderously by Bossk’s first show on German soil. They came on like a 1000 mammoths and delivered a minimalist, but great & atmospheric performance, their singer only storming on and off stage through the fog and maniacally clutching the mic when he needed to do a part. And if you were still craving more doom after that, you could always head down to the “Doom Till Dawn” after party at Conne Island…

So thanks a lot to everybody involved for yet another great (and incredibly fucking loud) DOL – besides all the great artists, the film screening, Poehlmann’s excellent lecture and of course extensive merch and record buying opportunities, there was even a screenprinting operation in the UT’s cellar set up by Deviant Industries from Leipzig where you could have exclusive DOL merch printed. Fun times – enjoy the pictures & swing by next year if you happen to be in the vicinity!