Track 1. Intro

In general, this day was one of the busiest for me this year. Morning at work. In the early evening a test for the psychometry course. The test was 30-40 minutes. At 8 pm I was already free. The event was supposed to start at 11 pm (with all the postpones actually at midnight), so in this "window" I decided to go to the football match between Maccabi Haifa against Partizan Belgrade. After all this, in quite a good mood, I moved to the club for Agonoize show.

Track 2. The Club & The Audience

As I expected, we entered the club only at midnight. There were as many people as there are at a standard ordinary event, despite the arrival of a band from Europe. The club itself was quite comfortable. On the second floor there was a small room with a small bar and a tiny dancefloor. Mostly guitar music played there and there was a small feud of those who did not want to listen to the bands. There was good lighting in the main dancefloor, a quite comfortable construction of the stage, so the audience could see it from different angles of the club and a kind of good sound during DJ sets. But there were also disadvantages, which are not immediately noticeable. In the toilet the doors were not able to be locked, very high ceilings, which could later affect the sound of the performing bands and, as it turned out later during the event, absolutely exorbitant prices in the bar. The whole action began with the opening speech of the organizers, which consisted of inconvenient statements that the board control did not want to let the musicians into Israel, because they look like terrorists (99% - cheap children's PR), and about future shows of Icon of Coil, Combichrist and Grendel in Israel in January (Given that Andy was on tour in America with Panzer AG, and then recorded the Icon of Coil album, I was not sure about this; it's a common thing in Israel to tell everyone how everything will be fine and to change the mind in the end). From the beginning of the event the organizers went around and scattered sticklights around the hall. Like, "we're all true cybers here”. Okay, this can be accepted and even be liked, but the champagne was too pretentious and showy. And then IWR. came on stage...

Track 3. IWR (Israel)

For those who don't know: IWR is an Israeli project of famous local musician Maor Appelbaum, who took part in many local projects and was a session musician in mostly metal acts. IWR recently signed a contract with the famous German label Black Mark Productions, where they released their new album. I have already been to their performance few years ago at the Accessory show. Then there were three of them: Maor and two girls on the keys, one of whom sang. It was good, but somehow dry and boring. Now one more keyboard player has been added, so the vocalist now only sings and a guitarist. And then the high ceilings made the difference. The sound was terrible. At first, I thought, that this bad sound happened due to guitars, which overlapped electronic sounds, because it really drowned out everything else, except for the beautiful female vocals (the only thing that was remarkable in their performance). In general, from it was difficult to understand the show, what genre the band plays. Everything was mixed up. Conclusion: IWR is better to listen to on a CD than live. Although studio material was not gorgeous as well.

Track 4. Agonoize (Germany)

There were two Germans, contrary to expectations and the photo on the flyer (there are usually three of them). And they did not look particularly impressive in terms of appearance. The first two compositions of their performance sounded very powerful and very driving. The vocalist fired up both the audience and himself. Then I understood, that the IWR guitar had nothing to do regarding the band sound. Either the equipment could not withstand such a hard beat or the sound engineer got tired of quality sound, but after the third composition the beat made terrible overloads, so all the other sounds merged with the distorted vocals into one continuous mess, from which nothing could be distinguished. Well, AgoNOIZE justified part of their band’s name with that messy sound. Over time, either I got used to it, or the sound engineer made it quieter, but it became possible to more or less distinguish sounds. Music from song to song became more and more boring and the vocalist more and more poured fake blood on himself. The only thing, that impressed me personally, was the very effective lighting at the back of the stage, actually the wall was used as a screen for light projectors. The rest of the show turned to be boring literally in 15-20 minutes after the start.

Track 5. DJs

Separately, it is worth mentioning the DJs, whose names were not even mentioned in any announcement or even on the flyer. Starting the evening with dark electro, continuing with The Prodigy and electronics from MTV of 90s, followed by rhythmic noise (!!!) and finishing with futurepop and synth-goth is a bit weird... Well, it could be nice that variety of genres in general, but why on the event of Agonoize? Rhetorical question… That kind of DJ set is good for local home party with friends, but not for the show of known German act.

Track 6. Outro

From the whole day, I took out only two positive aspects: the indescribable atmosphere of a football match and meeting with friends whom I had not seen for a long time. The live shows slipped by without leaving a mark.