KMFDM
August 27, Sugar Nightclub, Victoria, BC
It’d been over five years since KMFDM was in Victoria supporting their album HAU RUCK (“heave-ho” in German), but the audience hadn’t changed: a ravenous mix of gothic, punk, and metal fanatics awaiting an audio apocalypse from their industrial masters.
Victoria is the last stop of a tour of 23 shows in 24 days, and although the roadies all sported 1,000-yard stares from exhaustion, that didn’t stop Sascha Konietzko and company from assaulting the house with ultra-heavy beats.
KMFDM opened their set with “Krank,” the opening track from the recently released WTF?!, and as the pulsing industrial beat began so did the mosh pit. But this mosh pit was in great spirits—anyone getting knocked down would immediately get picked back up again.
The set was predominantly comprised of recent material from WTF?! and BLITZ, but older fans were treated to classics from the ‘mid-90s era, like “Megalomaniac” and “Drug Against War.” The encore of “WWIII,” “DIY,” “Day of Light,” and “Godlike” would have made any fan of any of KMFDM’s eras happy.
William Wilson from Seattle goth rockers Legion Within took the stage for a couple songs, giving Konietzko’s aging gravelly voice a bit of a break. And Lucia Cifarelli’s banshee vocals pierced the night like a siren’s call, seducing the audience into a lustful frenzy.
As the show ended, Cifarelli’s less-than-modest costume was raffled off to end the tour, and as the enthusiastic fan that won it approached the stage, Cifarelli quipped, “You’ve got a lot of fuckin’ tickets, buddy.”
For fans of industrial, KMFDM was a treat for the freaks.