Band – Dope Stars Inc.
Support – Richard Christ
Venue – Cyber underground layer of Electrowerkz
Price – £10
Beer – Cans or nothing!
It has almost been a year since I have been to Electrowerkz, which is far too long, as I still remember the energy that was buzzing through that small venue when cyberpunks Angelspit hit the stage.
Dressed up to the eyeballs we arrived to the thumping sound of Italian glam rocker Richard Christ. Eagerly going up the stairs I could not wait to see the electrified crowd and…. Well I was only half impressed. Everyone was looking fantastic, but were as stiff as planks in a desert. But of course everybody could be storing all their shape-throwing strength for the main event?
This unfortunately seemed to be putting a downer on the band, and it sounded like they were just slugging through to get to the end. To make matters worse the singer then abruptly walked off the stage leaving the rest of the band just standing there. I felt uncomfortable watching, so I would hate to feel what they were going through.
Then something happened: Mr Christ came back in a long red glamorous dress to kick the shit out of the static crowd with a cover of Blondie’s classic ‘Call Me’. This got a handful moving in the half-filled venue, and this set the band into top gear to perform a extra head thumping version of ‘Fashion God’, for which guitarist Mark seemed to of plugged a high voltage cable into his rock socket. His head went into full headbanging rotations at a speed that most humans could only dream of… Very Impressive!
There was actually a little more of a hum from the crowd once they left the stage as they knew there was a certain band up next.
A few tracks on the deck and already the DJ was shouting ‘who wants Dope Stars INC?’. This of course got everybody’s attention even though the band were nowhere to be seen. The DJ tried to keep it up for about 15 minutes until everybody was replacing the word ‘YES’ with ‘You are a TWAT‘.
They did hit the stage, and injected the addictive ‘Infection 13’ into everybody’s eardrums. Seems that everybody had already had their jabs, as there was hardly a reaction from anyone. However before the track had died down they mixed it into a early ace in the pack, ‘Bang your Head’. This actually cracked the crowds frosted front and everybody was jerking their heads to the beat.
Extra kudos to the masked man next to me, he actually looked the nuts and he seemed to be one of the only other members of the crowd that was loving it as much as myself.
One thing is for certain, front man Victor Love can give off a grand shout. As they charged into Saw 4 soundtrack highlight ‘Beatcrusher’ he ripped into the mic without any effort… Everybody ‘BEAT, BEAT, BEATCRUSHER‘. The backbeat thumped smoothly on, with the guitar tightly rounding off another Industrial hit.
When I thought they couldn’t sound any better the highlight came on in the form of Theta Titanium. The perfect mixture of chunky *chunk chunk* head thumping guitar sliced with trance style keys midway, and glowsticks were fired up by the best of the crowd. As for Victor, he gave out some venue belting screams that put a satisfying grin onto everyone’s faces.
After a small break they came back to play some of their slower hits including the crowd favourite ‘Make a Star’. They then flicked back into upbeat mode for a cover of Motorhead’s ‘Ace of Spades’ which even though it sounded good, didn’t seem to make for a good polished finish.
However after 10 minutes passed and a large amount of the crowd had left, they came on again!
To the those that remained, they said that they would play any track on request. Somehow the requested track was ‘Bang Your Head’ again. This didn’t matter as the remaining people including myself were in full dancing mode, and I am sure it actually sounded better the second time around!
Other repeated tracks included Beatcrusher, Vyverpunk and Fast & Beautiful. However I didn’t care as it really did sound good.
Photos:
Taken from thier myspace page as I was do busy dancing!
Links:
Richard Christ myspace
Dope Stars Inc mypsace
