Dear friends,
all went well and I am just heading off to Leipzig now. Stay tuned for some more photos in the SCENE section. Will see you there!
Best,
Cy Ghul
Archive for the ‘Scene’ Category
Off to the Wave Gotik Treffen 2009
Friday, May 29th, 2009Wave Gotik Treffen 2009 – Pre-Views and Facts
Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009We are writing the year 2009 and its the 18th time when Leipzig will expierence latex miniskirts, incredible long haircuts, billions of skullsymbols, pentagrams and other scary badges put on leatherjackets. The smell of Leipzig will hide behind a mix of patchoullie, incense and – fried sausage. It will happen on the 29th of May 2009. From this date on till the first of June dark folks will rule the city. And this happening has a name: its called the WAVE GOTIK TREFFEN. 
Its an hospitable enviroment at the WAVE GOTIK TREFFEN. And besides that, you can watch more than 150 Bands on 20 different locations! Additionally people can listen to the loud messages of club DJs or enjoy the sun in the city park after attending incredible concerts. 
The others – I mean the Leipzig natives – are glad about the festival too. One enjoys to trainspot the insane guys with the strange haircuts. Others enjoy the cash: tons of hair gel will be sold again. Or – as I allready told you – fried sausages, fried directly in the gardens of several house owners. I am sure, it will happen as usual: everybody will feel good in Leipzig. Everybody.
Lets speak about facts. 20.000 visitors are expected. Just 66 Euro is the charge of the ticket if you preorder. Its a magic number I daresay 
You’ll be lucky if add 60 cent tip 4 Days, 20 Locations, 150 Bands – its not expensive, I am sure. For the additional fee of 25 Eur you get an Obsorgeticket. This way you get rid of searching a hotel and can build up your tent on the campground. Additonally you get the Silberscheibe and the Pfingstbote, the official WAVE GOTIK TREFFEN manifesto. 
For me the Heidnische Dorf (Pagan Village) is of interest mostly cause of the great food. But as every year I will recon that other visitors come to this place out of more reasons. Thousands of other beeings in full plate, archaic musicians and much more turns the biggest fan of modern art into a pagan worshipper. Besides the Pagan Village you can enjoy Readings, Theatre, Exhibitions and much more. Of course the fetish night is on the bill. And last but not least you can have a great shopping experience at the Agra, where I usually loose the money of a years work.
Well. Speak about the music. And this year I am fascinated beginning with the first newsletter. The SCARY BITCHES are back! The band i missed so hardly, since they even do not own a website. A recommendation and a must have for everybody who likes scary shock rock music. 
MY DYING BRIDE is playing. They have new, very promising album in their back catalogue and I am sure they will perform songs out of it. Great stuff, cause they have so much influence in todays doom scene. My friends of ATARGATIS may perform some new songs (hopefully). And BLITZKID is another band I missed somewhere else and I can now enjoy. Last WAVE GOTIK TREFFEN i missed the FLIEHENDEN STÜRME, a great Wave/Punk band with cool atmosphere – definitly a newcomer who has to be checked out. QNTAL, INKUBUS SUKKUBUS and SAMAEL and SPECIMEN (if you are older than 30, you should cry out loudly now) are also booked in my scheduler. NOSFERATU allready have played in the past, a very great Goth Rock band. And of course there are lots of smaller acts I always wanted to see, but never managed it.
I was shocked that the first Info about the WGT booked me out completly. This may be the best billing ever – I will enjoy it for sure, thats allready a fact. Who isn’t to deep into that oldschool rock acts like me will enjoy the festival too, since the WGT is also well booked in the EBM/Elektro section: Bands like DIE FORM, FEINDFLUG, VNV NATIONI or WINTERKÄLTE are wellknown for their great music and performances.
There are more styles and genres. Bands out of all genres will play in Leipzig. You should probably subscribe to the Wave Gotik Newsletter for more information.
A perfect music mix! I recommend you not to wait for my photos in the future. Just take your money and order your card. Such a billing should lead to an immediate sell out.
O.68 is looking for a new label.
Wednesday, February 25th, 20090.68 is a great and obscure doom band from south germany. You know that guys from the TODESKVLT CD-R of my shop. Great, destructive stuff. Now they are looking for a label for their brandnew stuff and uploaded two new tracks to the internet. And yes guys, this new stuff is really great! You can listen to that shit at their MySpace site.
The sound is extraordinary cool and it feels very strange to my ears in the todays metal scene. However, I like it very much. You better watch this band too, since they have made a big step forward in their musical development. The two promotional songs with which they are looking for the new label are very groovy and are rocking like hell. I like this new o.68. Give them a sping an let me know what you think.
Chaosgoat – The pitchfork demos
Monday, February 16th, 2009Dear friends,
these days a very unique band introduced themself with a brandnew demo. The band is CHAOSGOAT (Esp) and the demo is named “The pitchfork demos”. You can also check them out at MySpace and risk an ear yourself. You should know that CHAOSGOAT is a project of the guy behind mighty REDIMONI, a great thrash band.
Not much of you will remember the great australian band LEVIATHAN which brought us the great release ILLUSIONS OF A LIFE IN A WOMB. I have not found any bands out there which could give me the same destructive, cold feeling like LEVIATHAN could give to me. CHAOSGOAT is the only band so far which can reach this. The sound of the drum machine is like metal hitting on metal. The very strange sound of the guitars make you feel like you are on a party of satanists, dancing round the fire, driving motorcycles and having some fun with doing perverse rituals. There was a film back then… was it the crow were that satanists party has been shown? However, I have waited long for such a band!
Think on Impaled Nazarene with Leviathans sound. Mix some punk and more industrial into it and shorten all songs to 2 minutes. This is CHAOSGOAT. I asked the CHAOSGOATs for selling me some demos for the shop. If you like the music and live near to germany, you may want to order it from the GHUL SHOP. I’ll give a shout when its available. Whatever you do, if you like strange and destructive feeling outside todays metal standards, risk an ear to CHAOSGOAT. I would daresay: this is a punk/industrial band, more than a metal band. So guys please listen to it and let me know what you think.
Yours,
Cy Ghul
Chaosgoat - The Pitchfork Demos
GumoManiacs with Blaze Bailey in Ingolstadt
Thursday, February 12th, 2009Well, after Gumo decided to quit with THARGOS and continue with GumoManiacs we all knew why that happened: my lack of time for playing concerts and several murder threats made it impossible for him to perform a professional thrash band.
Well, his music was always very cool and professional. But now he was astonishing us! Gumo Maniacs play live as a support act together with Blaze Bailey in Ingolstadt in a few month. Holy mother! This is pushing the band forwards a lot!
I will try to contact the organizator of the tour and hopefully I can take some photos. We’ll see. Usually I am sick like hell with flu when some cool concerts happen.
However – lets hope Gumo puts a good website online soon. The old one is horrible!!
Just another standard life.
Monday, November 24th, 2008This early I was working again on the first CD-R of NIGHTGAUNTS. I allready told you about that music. I had lot of ideas lately and was up very early, I think at 5am or so. While drinking coffee and working on something called BURIED ALIVE, I figured out, that this song will need a bit more time to envolve. I have lots of ideas, but first time in my life I really have a chance to work on harmonies and arrangments. Not that I couldn’t have it done before, but meanwhile I understand what I am doing. Great feeling, though.
While figuring this out, it came to my mind that my studies on the norwegian and the french language are delayed again. I am realist and more time for my song means less time for studies. A glance on my clock told me, that it is time to leave to the real world soon. Real world, this means no time for dreams and music. Suddenly I was aware how much hectic I will get the next hours and that I have no chance to do any music stuff after work. I am off till I drop to bed, half dead (50% dead is ok, that’s normal. I mean 75% dead in fact).
I also remembered that I have to practice my newly bought instruments, not only to compose. And at least I want to write on my short story again and so on and so on.
But there is no time left.
I don’t have a chance to do all the things I want to. I cannot do the half of it. I can just do one piece out of ten. And even for that one, I have not the time. It’s really annoying, but I guess, the rest of the world feels the same about it.
Art is dying. This is cause the world is moving forward to fast.
Lately I bought a very cool vinyl: NAVE – II. I own it for several days now, but I could only listen with one ear to it, while cooking some of the freshly buried humans of my tomb. I am filled up with e-mails, calls, conferences and of course the rest of my work. I cannot efford to listen 45 minutes (!!) to an album these days. I have CD to which I can listen to in my car. Fits perfectly, right? I nearly cannot speak with other guys about music. I guess this is the reason to write to this blog or to www.ghul.org. The other hectic guys of you can then read about it when you have a timeframe for relaxing.
Really, am I a machine? Every minute (except the two hours each morning) is filled up with boring, annonying, depressing or destroying stuff. I have no time anymore to enjoy Lisa Gerrads wonderful soprano in the evening, while drinking wine and staring at the stars. There is nothing left for a deep breath, while wandering through snowcovered pines.
We are such poor humans. We have left the natural path. Soon one can compare us better with machines than with other living creatures. Enjoying and creating Art is one of the keys which makes us to spiritual beeings.
It’s a war against a new fast life. I try now to slow down career, work or whatever. There are more important things in life. Music. Watching horses when they are playing at the snow fields. Listening to extraordinary poems.
I didn’t ever think, that staying at the beautiful side of life is hardest of all. Let me invite you to come with me to the path of arts again. If you aren’t allready there waiting for an old fellow like me, we will enjoy some good discussions on our way.
Online Zines – The result
Tuesday, November 18th, 2008Yes, even when I usually say that webzines are overrated these days, I sent out a couple of promos from THE HOUSE AT THE WATER before more than 6 weeks. Now it is time to see what has been done by this zines and which zine is worth sending a promo too and which one is not. Spoken personally, none of those zines count to my favourite ones nor do I have any kind of relationship to it.
I have chosen those zines by clicking at the site and guessing which could fit to my music. I allready knew, that is no good. Today it seems that webzines believe that they are important. For me they are just people who get free promos and should do at least a bit work for that present. I don’t think that I am getting famous or anything else if somebody writes some good review. Having said that, I really think that if some guys get free promos, they should notify me when they have received the CD. Then they should write the review in lets say 2 weeks. This should be possible. Some of the webzine teams are huge! After writing the review, one should notify the musician/label what those guys have done. Here is what happened.
After two days I received my CD back from www.feindesland.de. Unopened – the recipient didn’t accept my promo. I wrote that guy and he told me that things are going wrong at his mag and he will not accept any promotional stuff anymore.
These are the mags I got responses after more than 5 weeks:
http://www.Metal.de – Metal.de wrote quite a fair review. They mentioned that production isn’t that good and that songwriting is a bit boring. Well, it’s not metal. My own fault, I shouldn’t sent my music to metal mags.
http://www.Heavyhardes.de This one was the most incompetent review I ever read. He even seem not to be able to open the booklet. This mag is totally shitty and not recommended.
http://www.Powermetal.de Same here. Well, a bit better. It’s totally non underground and it looks like people don’t care about underground. At least, underground CANNOT HAVE a good production.
http://www.nationofmetal.de/ These guys were first and spoke so much good words about my music that I still can’t believe. However, that review is about 2 din a4 pages long and describes each song individually.
http://obliveon.de/ My favourite mag here. That guy told me that songwriting must be more exciting (ok, you asked for it guy!!) but also said that everything is very promising. Definitly a magazine where I will send my new CD when it’s out. Interesting sight of my music.
However, actually I don’t feel very much about those reviews. People who blog about my music would feel more important.
So, those lads didn’t respond to me till now. Some of them are printed mags. They never respond I guess.
http://www.amboss-mag.de/ – Normally Amboss Mag is very underground and helpful. I guess this is an exception and expect the response quite soon.
http://bloodchamber.de/
http://www.nocturnalhall.de/
Sonic Seducer
Mathew Kirshner (Metal Archives und Tartarean Desire) – This lad
http://www.archaic-magazine.com/
http://www.deathrockmagazine.com/
http://www.necroweb.de/
http://www.medienkonverter.de/
http://www.gothicparadise.de
Ablaze
http://www.gothic-magazine.de/
http://metal-inside.de
Finally I am very dissapointed. Most mags don’t respond within 6 weeks. Some mags seem to use templates like: sound shit, cd-r shit, band shit. Really looks like people always write about CRADLE OF FILTH or the new METALLICA instead of listening to underground music. And hey, back in 1995 I bought fanzines to get in touch with bands round the globe. This is no more. Mags don’t recommend underground bands at all and this is why I use some of my email comrades, message boards or simply read blogs from my friends. This is better than most music mags.
The winner of the list above is the Obliveon mag. Fair and competent, even when I didn’t get 10 points out of 10. I simply can respect this opinion.
The latest Mortiis rumours
Wednesday, November 12th, 2008Lately I had a chat with my friends of MORTIIS. I can’t tell too much at the moment, but it really looks like these guys allready did some studio work. All of you MORTIIS fans out there, I guess you can expect some extraordinary and cool new album soon. At least I am expecting a call from the MORTIIS management with new ideas for improving the website www.mortiis.com.
There are also big changes in the streetteam structures and everything feels like the big mortiis ball is rolling again. So stay tuned and watch out for news about MORTIIS on my blog or at mortiis.com.
CULTES DES GOULES – Shit in the eyes of Heavyhardes.de
Monday, October 27th, 2008Well, can’t say that nobody has told me that magazines these days are not very open for the underground. I wrote a blog article about that this months. What happens, if a guy, who thinks BARATHRUM is boring crap, reviews CULTES DES GOULES? Not even the same, since BARATHRUM usually got a very good production.
In the opinion of Ray, who is writing for heavyhardes.de, SLAYER, METALLICA and IMMORTAL are 3 of the best metal bands ever. These bands had their good times actually. The list continues and everybody who reads the ROCK HARD magazine knows everything about tha bands. No underground here.
Fact is, everything which is not depending on taste, is wrong. Actually it seems that he was to lazy to open the booklet. With sarcastic letters he told me that:
- CULTES DES GOULES was a gothic band before (it NEVER was)
- the the closing song ALICE is named “ABOUT ALICE” (what a crap, why does this guy think the song is called like this? Open the booklet!)
- that ALICE is one of my songs (it’s a cover song unfortunatly – you can read this in the booklet too)
- GHUL Productions is newly found (actually its POSSESSED RECORDS as you can read everywhere, it’s just renamed since I am only doing CD-Rs)
Well, thanks guy. Don’t believe how to gt 4 errors in just 3 paragraphs? Read it here.
Of course Ray doesn’t like the use of basses instead of guitars. It sounded like he was doing something in the kitchen while the boring shit was playing. Of course he didn’t mention the Beethoven arrangement. Of course there was not a single tune he liked, since there was no atmosphere in the whole composition. And yes, the bad production (which I actually made on my own studios and IS not perfect or even good) is destroying everything else. And I forgot, the keyboard sounds are cheap. I have no keyboards and the sounds are not really cheap, but I forgive him that, he really cannot know.
OK thats it. My article about how badly rechecked this review is, is actually longer than the actual review. Well, now I know that innovation is evil. Ray doesn’t want innovation. And I have to pay 10.000 euro at a minimum for the coolest production I can have. Ray need a clear production. And Ray needs a german booklet, since it seems that he isn’t able to read the english one.
Heavyhardes.de of course will not get any promo cd again. Otherwise I am afraid to bore them to death. In fact I really worry about sending out promos in general. I guess the other reviews will stay the same. And why should you guys read those reviews when you can listen to CULTES DES GOULES ON LAST.FM for free?
Reviews of MONDBLUT
Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008
Dear Friends,
I added two reviews of MONDBLUT:
MONDBLUT – Angsterfülltes Morgen
It’s weird. Even on a sunny day you start to shut out the sun from your room. Everything what has meant fun to you fades out and you suddenly are in the world of MONDBLUT. But first things first.
I really thought long time this one is a Black Metal CD, but it isn’t. MONDBLUT plays some kind of electronic music with extraordinary sounds and very excellent compositions. When a song starts a flow of music begins and you cannot stop or skip the song. It’s like a river of darkness. MORE…
MONDBLUT – Scorn
Nothing has changed at first glance. Several very weird sound introduce the CD and the same dark feeling comes back. Slow rythms start and dark melodies lead you to another world. However, the compositions are as nearly as good as on ANGSTERFUELLTES MORGEN. SCORN brings everything back, but the suicidal atmosphere could not reach the one on the debut CD. This is nothing bad. It just means that SCORN is another CD than the debut is.
MORE…
Enjoy!
Cy Ghul