Amduscia

Live at Club Respekt in Tijuana

Mexico 9/11/2005

Review by Travis Baumann

Amduscia is a super awesome Dark Electro band that would fall into what some call TerrorEBM.

They are similar to Hoccico in that they sing in a mixture of Spanish and English and that they both favor harsh vocals, melodic melancholy keyboards, and beautifully brutal beats.

Amduscia take a slightly more cybertronic look at industrial dance music but they follow a silmilar vein in terms of their outlook on religous dominance in their part of the world.

Having never performed in the United States, when the opporunity came to see them right over the border in Tijuana, we decided to make our first ever venture over the border into Mexico and as an added bonus they were opening for a favorite of ours - Grendel at a special event put on by Club Respekt .

The evening began with a Tijuana local band called Paranormal. One of our Los Angeles local talents, Dawn of Ashes went on next and played an awesome set. Then Amduscia went on right before Grendel.

Amduscia appeared as a trio of black-clad, futuristic warriors of the bio-mechanical apocalypse. They were donned in protective leather or in the case of the lead singer, harboring a cyber-doll entrapped in mesh wire around the abdomen.

Two men manned keyboards on each half of the rear of the stage while the lead singer moved from one side to the other. He bore unique tubular glowing coils that were lined into a mowhawk along his skull.

He wore a huge lens over one eye that emitted a laser targeting beam, visible as he movted his head in time with the intense beat. His vocals were synthesized and distorted, a technically disposed voice of evil, but ever so enticing.

We had been a fan of theirs for some time now, accumulating every release available Stateside, the EP "Impulso Biomecanico" being the newest CD. It was awesome to see the songs live for the first time.

The Tijuana Industrial Goth scene was really happening and it was a great turnout at an unusual venue above the wax museum in the tourist part of town, right across the border, it was literally walking distance from the footpath across the border.

Their first major release, and predominant full-length that built up the set-list for this show was "Melodies for the Devil". While a dark ambiance of evil surrounded their performance, the truth they were exposing was becoming prevailent in that there was an obvious dark and irresistable beauty woven in betweem the harsh sounds unleashed.

The lead singer was extremely dynamic and engaging, his costume alone in the club-lighting created a character of the future through which musical prediction of our end-times, some would argue current times, was easily projected into our psyche.

If your an Electro-head and you have never experienced the awesome stuff coming from south of the border or you only know of Hoccico and Cenobita, then you have to check these guys out.

I don't speak Spanish, despite it being arguably the second language of Los Angeles, I still love all of the songs and for the ones I can't make out the meaning, the music is so good my mind fills in the subject matter itself.

I saw they were playing the Kinetic Festival in May of 2009 and they are worth the line-up in themselves. If I can get away next year I would love to see them again and hear their new material live. They are definitely worth traveling for and really awesome on CD.

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