KMFDM & Porcupine Tree

Last night I saw Porcupine Tree in concert at the Ram’s Head Live in Baltimore, and two days before, I saw KMFDM at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC.  Both are bands I’ve never seen before – and which are VERY different even from each other.

 KMFDM.  This is a German techno band led by Sascha Konietzko.  The name stands for KEIN MITLEID FUR DIE MEHRHEIT, German for “no pity for the majority”.  They’ve been around since 1984, adding in heavy guitar to make it somewhat heavy metal with the album UAIOE, continuing to the latest album, Blitz, which came out this year.  They seem to prefer 5-letter album titles, e.g. Money, Angst, [Symbols], WWIII, etc.  The current lineup consists of Konietzko on vocals & electronics, Lucia Cifarelli (more vocals & electronics) (pretty damn hot!), Jules Hodgson on lead guitar, Andy Selway on drums (yes, a LIVE drummer, unlike Sisters of Mercy), and Steve White on rhythm guitar.  Most of the songs are in English, some are in German, and one, “Davai”, is in Russian.  The lyrics vary from tongue-in-cheek (“KMFDM sucks!”) to political or cynical, but it’s all high octane and fun.  Like Iron Maiden with Derek Riggs, KMFDM have an illustrator, “Brute”, who does their album artwork and some of their videos, of which “Drug Against War” sticks in my mind the most. 

            Sascha and Lucia have their “podiums” set up center stage, with Jules outboard on Sascha’s side, Steve outboard on Lucia’s side, and the drummer center back stage.  I say “podiums” because the small platforms from which each of them sing and control their electronic boxes look exactly like that, and with two of them it’s like they’re involved in some techno trance metal debate – though they do leave the podium quite often.  I recognized about half the material, including my favorites, “Light” and “Drug Against War”.  The whole thing has more of a party atmosphere than anything overly serious.  The crowd was 2/3 ordinary concert fans and 1/3 goth scene people (aka “Food Court Druids”).  I had a great time.

 Porcupine Tree.  PT could best be described as “Opeth WITHOUT Cookie Monster Vocals”.  It’s heavy prog music, but Steve Wilson sings normally.  It’s more overtly Floyd-like than Opeth, though.  The Dream Theater resemblance is also there.  What “prog” tends to mean these days is some parts very heavy, some parts very light, lots of keyboards and spacey stuff, and overall somewhat pretentious.  The lineup is Steve Wilson (guitars & vocals), Richard Barbieri (keyboards), Colin Edwin (bass), and Gavin Harrison (drums).  They started off with “The Incident”, the 55 minute title track from the new album which takes up an entire CD, then took a 10 minute break, and came back for more, playing roughly 2 hours.

            Like Tool, they have a large viewscreen which they use to stunning effect, partly abstract, psychedelic imagery and partly various images – similar to the imagery Opeth use.  I got the impression of being in the midst of a prog hurricane of influences: Opeth, Tool, Pink Floyd, but varying in strength, never too much of one before slipping into another.  It’s certainly an “experience”, up there with Tool.  Both bands give you far more than simply “Ok, we came here and we’ll play our songs and go”.  You get pulled into it, surrounded by it, embraced by it – it’s almost too much.  Almost, but not quite.  I’ll delve into their earlier material to pick up on the songs I didn’t know, as I only have the new album and the one before it, Fear of a Blank Planet.  They have been around since 1987.