KMFDM

Live at the Cloak & Dagger Festival

Los Angeles, CA

October 21st, 2017

Review and photos by Travis Baumann

KMFDM, doing it again. For thirty three years now, Sascha Konietzko has been bringing "The Ultra-Heavy Beat" to fans around the world and as with all things KMFDM, it is a relentless machine that keeps on giving.

2017 saw the release of their latest album, "Hell Yeah" which is appropriately titled as it shines a light on the current times, global circumstances, and sums it with what we need is some "Good old fashioned Hell Yeah" motivating our hearts and minds to bring about better times.

In KMFDM's current incarnation, the band is based around the dynamic duo of Sascha and his lovely wife, Lucia Cifarelli. Their combined musical and vocal assault juxtapose KMFDM's signature gritty male vocals with soaring female verses overlaying pounding industrial rhythms, headbanging guitar riffs, filthy synth layers and bombastic samples and sounds. Joining them on stage are Andy Selway on drums and relative new-comer, Andee Blacksugar on guitar.

They opened the set with the powerful "D.I.Y." from 1999's "Adios" album. This is a stalwart anthem that epitomizes the KMFDM sound and mentality. They followed that up with "Freak Flag" from the new album.

KMFDM has a loyal and rabid fanbase, whether it is someone like myself who got into their earliest material in the '80's or someone who just found out about the band and are seeing them for the first time. The entire crowd was singing along to both the old favorites and the brand new songs.

For the rest of the set they moved between the new material and through the back catalog to fan favorites through out their history. Due to being a part of this festival (and somehow not the headlining spot despite being top-billed), they had a truncated running time and no encore which forced a number of awesome songs to be dropped from their normal set list.

From the new album we got the hugely dance-able "Murder My Heart", the bombastic and scathing, "Glam Glitz, Guts & Gore" as well as my favorite song from the album as well as my favorite of the night, "Total State Machine".

As politically charged as any song I could name by any band, this song should be required listening for every politician in the world. The refrain of "Your Government Hates You!  Hate Your Government" in itself is a rally cry but it is the more subtle verse of the lyrics where the message lies. This song alone makes the new album a must have but honestly, this is just where it starts.

From the mid to late era KMFDM, we got "Rebels In Kontrol", the mosh pit inducing "WWIII", and another one of my all time favorites of theirs, "Hau Ruck" which translates to the equivalent of "Heave-Hoe!"

In addition to all of these awesome songs, we also got some of the golden oldies and biggest hits from two or more decades ago. Crowd pleasers like "Light" and "A Drug Against War" culminated in the classic "Godlike" which closed out their set.

All in all, KMFDM kicked ass as they always do.  I do have some complaints to level against the festival itself. For starters the aforementioned top-billed act actually getting an odd early time slot, no encore, and maybe most importantly, the crappier of the two venues with a much weaker sound system and lighting capabilities.

Due to major audio technical difficulties at the Tower Theatre earlier in the night, this stage's acts all got pushed back which destroyed the ability to move between venues and see the different acts on different stages as they were no longer in sync.

Poptone went on almost at the same time as KMFDM instead of properly staggered. KMFDM should have been on the Globe main stage after Poptone and given a full set time with encore.

What I didn't realize at the time was that the Cloak & Dagger festival was actually set up and promoted by "Dusk Till Dawn" a local goth club that I have never heard of despite being part of the goth/industrial scene here in Los Angeles for over 25 years.

It turns out that the main guy behind that club is in the band She Wants Revenge who ended up actually taking the prime stage for the festival despite being second billed after KMFDM so I feel it was a bit dubious to basically use KMFDM as a marketing tool to sell more tickets to put your own band in the top spot but it worked as it got me to the show (I never heard of She Wants Revenge before tonight).

Anyways, enough grumbling, I am really glad I got to see KMFDM on this tour and highly encourage everyone to catch them as they finish up this leg of the North American tour - especially as the rest of the dates are headliner shows and they will be doing their full set list which includes a number of great songs that they couldn't fit in for this occasion including the amazing new title track, "Hell Yeah"!

Click the banner above to return the navigation page of the

Virtual Night Angel

website