Yet another concert I visited to see the support act. This tour was Conquer Divide’s first tour ever in Europe. I’m a big fan of their music since their feature in Electric Callboy’s Fuckboi, so I was super excited to hear that they would finally play shows in Germany. Only that those shows were sold out before they were even announced and I can tell that this was the most painful struggle for tickets ever, worse than Bad Omens or BMTH, because while in the latter cases, most resale tickets were just ridiculously overpriced, there were almost no resale tickets for this Cologne show at all.
In the end we somehow managed to get one ticket and one spot on the guestlist, so here we are with a little concert review. Little because I honestly can’t say much about The Warning.
The Venue
Whenever I read that a concert I’d like to attend is at the Live Music Hall in Cologne, my guts clench. Not because the venue is so bad, but because parking in Cologne is a disaster and parking around the Live Music Hall is an even worse disaster. I’ve cried so many tears about finding a place to park somewhere in the surroundings. This time, we were so desperate that we wanted to use a parking garage, only to see at the entrance that they don’t accept card payment. Welcome to 21st century Germany. We ended up parking in the same street we parked in when we saw Future Palace at Helios 37, but that wasn’t very convenient. I’d love to tell you „make sure to find out where to park before you get there“ but the thing is: There’s not many options. So … maybe the advice is bring cash for parking.
The venue itself is not that bad though, I kinda like it. It’s for about 1.4k people, so actually a bit larger, but the fact that there’s a small yard between the concert hall and the toilets and all that makes it feel kinda clubby. I think there might be even some kind of club room / bar next to the toilets, but I can’t tell for sure. Anyway, the toilets look like club toilets and are more or less clean.
There are two coat rooms, one right next to the entrance and one next to the toilets. It’s 2€ per item, but if you’re two people and share a coat hanger it’s 3€ altogether. After the show, the coat room next to the toilet was closed already, but they had brought all items to the other one to pick them up there.
Prices for softdrinks are okay, and they offer a good selection of Fritz lemonades. There’s Pfand on the cups though and there was this super big asshole move after the show when we waited for Conquer Divide’s drummer Sam to arrive at the merch and at the same time for the queues at the bars to get a bit shorter so we could bring back our cup. During the waiting time, BOTH BARS were closed, the security refused to let anyone through and expected people to take their empty cups home with them (and I don’t know, bring back next time?). There were more people than just us affected by that issue, because some people just hung out with their friends or waited in the super long merch queue of The Warning. So make sure to get rid of your cups asap after the show. We were lucky though – someone who seemingly worked at the venue heard us complain in the yard, was anything but pleased and took care of the issue for us.
I do understand that security and bar want to close down at some point, BUT you should have seen The Warning’s goddamn merch queue. And for people who were somewhere in the front row it’s basically natural that they’ll probably go buy merch after the show and might end up somewhere at the end of the queue. And it wouldn’t have been a big issue at all to just ANNOUNCE that the bar would be closed soon and that people should please bring their empty cups there. So … yeah, that was annoying.
I can’t say much about accessibility. There was a wheelchair area next to the stage, on the left side. I think everything there is on floor level, but that’s about it.
Conquer Divide
I got a photo pass for this show, so I got inside the photo pit next to the stage about 15 minutes before the show began and the moment I saw Izzy standing next to the stage, it more or less hit me like a train that I was about to see this band for real, after all the struggle we went through (for example the extra panic when Conquer Divide’s guest list was not at the entrance, so the dude had to make a call again before they let us in… Flashback to Oceans in Essen…). Their pre-show opener was We Got The Moves by Electric Callboy and I somehow feel like that might’ve hit a nerve with some parts of the crowd because there were A LOT of EC shirts in the crowd (I suppose a lot of people knew about Conquer Divide through EC, if they knew them at all).
They started at 7:45 pm (if I remember correctly) and opened their set with Atonement, which made a perfect start for me personally because it’s one of my favourite songs. Unfortunately, their set was fairly short, only 30 minutes if I recall correctly. Except for Chemicals and Eyes Wide Shut, all songs on their setlist were from their latest album Slow Burn, which was released last year. Here’s a photo of the setlist („WTP“ stands for Welcome2Paradise).
Shortly before their tour, they announced that their bassist and shouter Janel would leave the band, so they played this tour without a bassist and with Madison Moon and a) she did a solid job with the vocals and b) matched the energy and vibe of the band so damn much as if she’d been part of them for ages. It was great fun to watch her, her stage outfit looked amazing and all in all she’s a great entertainer.
So is Kia, whose live vocals were absolutely stunning. Her voice is as powerful as in the studio recordings and she has such a great personality on stage, it’s amazing. Actually all of them were amazing. I loved the little handshake dance Kia and Izzy did towards the end of their set and all in all, it was probably one of my concert highlights this year. I’m super excited to see them again in September when they return to Cologne as support for New Years Day.
To be fair, I am not sure if the rest of the audience responded to them that well. As I said, there were a few people in EC shirts who I more or less expected to know them, but the majority seemed to be unfamiliar with their music and I had a lot of people around me who didn’t really move that much. There also wasn’t really a mosh/circle pit when they announced that this was a good time to start one, but I guess that was because the audience was mainly there for The Warning and their music is not so much … mosh-music. But based on what happened at the merch after the show, they might’ve found a few new supporters nonetheless.
Also extra big plus for them being such amazing sweethearts. After the show we had a little chat with Kia and Sam at their merch and they’re just the kindest, cutest human beings.
The Warning
After Conquer Divide we left the front of stage area because I was in desperate need for something to drink and also we wanted to buy Conquer Divide merch and since the room was so packed (sold out show) I decided not to fight my way back to the front to make full use of my photo pass. I kinda regret it, because from a photographer’s perspective, it would’ve been good training and I guess the photos of The Warning would’ve turned out quite cool, but really, this venue was so stuffed that I didn’t want to squeeze through with all my equipment.
I don’t remember when The Warning started, but they played a set of an hour plus encores, so maybe 1h15min, roughly. I didn’t know The Warning before, so I had no idea what was ahead of us. Someone in the queue had said they played some solid rock music and I think that’s quite a good definition. I liked the beginning of their set, but also have to say that in my opinion, it got a little weaker later on (and then there were a few bangers at the end). I personally think that was a) because once again I’d been there mainly for the support act, so the show was somehow over for me, b) because I didn’t know any of the songs and c) their music wasn’t as heavy as I usually like my music. Don’t get me wrong, I like some solid rock music, but in between I missed the party-hard-factor, somehow.
The crowd though totally had them and I absolutely believe that their show was great altogether. I also have to say that I personally preferred some of their Spanish songs over the English ones, but that might be the case because I generally like the sound of Spanish a lot. Also the singer’s voice! Woah! I think I might’ve fallen in love with both her singing and her speaking voice. There’s so much power in it, I’m generally a big fan of strong, rather low female voices, so yeah – definitely great.
I’m not sure if I would go see them again, or if I would start listening to them. But it wasn’t bad either. It’s just that this show has once again shown me that main acts have a very hard time to convince me if I went to a concert only because of the support act. I think this has worked only once, which was when Blind Channel were support for Electric Callboy. All the other times, the main acts didn’t really catch me, except if I had known and liked them before (like Amorphis after Lost Society). So … yeah, I’m sorry for all the main acts I didn’t quite like because their support was one of my favourite bands.