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The Crüxshadows at Technoir
The Crüxshadows
Juli 10th 2004
Technoir, Kolingsborg, Stockholm
For quite some time people have been telling me that The Crüxshadows is a real kick ass live experience. Oh well. At Tech Noir, at about 01:00 a.m., hundreds of people have gathered in front of the stage. The curtain falls and there is no sign of the band. Instead two guys who are not in the band are doing their best to get the audience excited by standing on the stage screaming. After almost ten minutes the band finally enters the stage and starts playing, but not the whole band. The vocalist is not actually ON stage when he starts singing, but in the middle of the audience equipped with a wire-less headset microphone. He climbs the stage and starts flashing with two flashlights while the two cheerleaders on his sides are totally out of sync waving pieces of fabric.
At this time someone should have walked cross the stage with a sign saying, "Go home, the fun ends here". In that way a lot of people would have been much less disappointed, and would still have their hearing intact. The show is really boring. Nothing further than the already mentioned happens, and it happens all the time. On almost every song the vocalist jumps off the stage and run around the audience instead. This was quite a cool way of starting the show, but doing it all the time really kills the effect of it. The cheerleader girls manage somehow to be totally unsynchronised the whole concert through, except for at some points when it looks as they might have caught a glimpse of what the partner is doing. To be fair I should say that one of them seems to know her moves quite well, but the problem is that the other one does not. The violinist is probably very talented but I never really get a chance to find out since all the time she's playing there are another five pre-recorded violins screaming from the backtracks, and screaming is the right word. I have very rarely heard such a crappy concert sound. The bass is shaking the ribs out of my chest and the treble is absolutely unendurable. Between the low and the high frequencies there is nothing. The sound engineer looks like all he wants is to get home as soon as possible. There is no chance in the world to hear one single word the vocalist says between the songs. There is furthermore no chance in the world to hear one single note the guitarist is playing either. But I don't blame only the engineer for that. There is no reason using guitars in this kind of music at all, it just looks cool on stage. That is probably another reason for the guitar not to be heard.
Maybe the vocalist of The Crüxshadows should re-think he's project, kick out the people whose presence is not needed and go on a solo tour with his gothic cheerleader chicks instead.
It's nice that Tech Noir are booking a band like The Crüxshadows that so many people wants to see, but it's sad that The Crüxshadows themselves haven't got a better sound crew. The biggest problem though, is that The Crüxshadows after so much touring can't do better.
/Andreas Nilsson
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