Boom. First time I’ll actually post about a concert here. Don’t take the „concert review“ too seriously, I guess it’s just a bit of rambling.
So last night we went to Oberhausen to see Smash Into Pieces. To be fair, yesterday wasn’t exactly my day. I was super tired after work and I wasn’t really too excited about the show either. I like Smash Into Pieces, but it’s not a band I listen to excessively. They were one of my Spotify discoveries that kept popping up in Mixtapes and such and somehow stayed. I was convinced that they would deliver and that the show would be great and I didn’t want my exhaustion to ruin it for me (after all, I’ve been just as tired at other shows and I still managed to enjoy them to the fullest). I told myself „This is probably going to turn me into a hardcore Smash Into Pieces fan and I’ll end up with another band I’ll start running after and waste all my money on for concert tickets and merch.“
I guess the introduction already gives it away that … it wasn’t too successful.
But first, let’s start with the first bummer of the night, in connection to the concert at least: the venue. We’d never been to a concert at the Resonanzwerk in Oberhausen before. From the outside, it looked quite nice. It also looked quite nice from the inside. But that was about it. It very quickly ended on my venue blacklist (that so far only includes one other venue – the Swiss Life Hall in Hanover) because of their intransparent payment system. The venue required you to buy a paper card that worked like … a token? If I got it right, you had to pay in 5€ steps, they (at first) wouldn’t accept cash to „charge“ your payment card (later they did because their EC card reader didn’t work properly?) and they would not pay you back any leftover money. You could bring the card again to the next event and combine them with other cards to maybe somehow just use the entire amount of money you spent on it, but no payback. Well, thanks, but no, I don’t plan to come again. At least you got the Pfand money back in cash and we managed to get some candy for the remaining money on our card, but at first it pretty much seemed like a fucked up system to keep people’s money when they had put too much money on their cards (which was practically unavoidable).
That is so „Germany 2023“ to be honest because well, why can’t we just have venues that accept contactless electronic payment? … Ah, right, because we’re digital wasteland. The best damn thing is: none of it is communicated on their website and a sign outside the venue at the security check said they accepted their payment card AS WELL AS cash. What a damn joke.
So much for the venue. Let’s move on to the music. The support was Cyan Kicks and well, I once again have to admit that I wasn’t too excited when they were announced. I’m not into Cyan Kicks at all, although they keep popping up in my Spotify mixtapes all the time. I still really wanted to give them a chance, though. My expectations were low.
I am seriously sorry but Cyan Kicks dug a hole in the ground to walk upright underneath the bar of my expectations.
I don’t know if it was because of the sound at the venue or if it’s supposed to be like that, but their music sounded like a full playback. The impression was worsened by a) the singer’s voice being obviously audible but her microphone lingering somewhere around her hip area several times and b) the fact that sometimes she looked like she was passionately singing into the microphone, but absolutely nothing came across. For the biggest part of the show I was convinced that at least the singer was doing a full playback performance. Sometimes in between it sounded like she was actually singing live, but the sound was so distorted that I couldn’t tell for sure.
And although their stage performance looked energetic, it didn’t catch me at all. Also there wasn’t much interaction with the crowd – and I personally am not the type of person who enjoys such kind of performance. I don’t want to feel like watching a DVD, I wanna feel involved somehow. And I didn’t feel too involved during the Cyan Kicks performance. Maybe they’re much better when you see them in Finland because I personally had the impression that there was also a huge language barrier – only their guitarist (?) was talking. And I couldn’t even understand what he said most of the time and I am not sure if he just had a very heavy Finnish accent (which I normally understand, I listen to Finnish people talking English all the time) or if it was because of the poor sound that was also very distorted when they spoke.
Cyan Kicks played for about 30 minutes (the only song I recognised was Hurricane, which I identified as „the song they participated in UMK with“) and afterwards my mood was somewhere deep deep down at the bottom. And I sincerely hoped that Smash Into Pieces would make up for it.
It started quite well when they entered the stage about ten minutes past 9. Their first song was Flow, which is definitely one of my favourites, and they continued with quite a few songs that I liked. Once again, I’m not listening to their music that much, so there were also quite a few songs that I didn’t know … but normally this isn’t a problem. I’ve seen some bands this year that I didn’t know a single song of and they got me. Unfortunately, Smash Into Pieces couldn’t even convince me with the songs that I liked and I ended up checking my watch after about half an hour to see how much was still ahead. (The fact that the air got thicker and thicker and that we didn’t want to spend any more money on the dubious payment cards than for just one single coke didn’t quite help with my mood because I was exhausted, it was hot and I was dizzy).
I found myself watching the people around and most of them had a really good time, but I didn’t catch the mood at all. I’ve been to about 25 concerts this year, as I said I’ve seen bands that I hadn’t known before and ended up listening to afterwards because their performances were so good. I feel like last night’s concert makes the lower end of this year’s concert list.
While on the one hand, the set kinda dragged on a little for me, it also felt like they rushed through it. Last time I’ve experienced something like that was …I think Awake The Dreamer as support for Dead By April (and Dead By April felt similar – thankfully there were Self Deception in between to save the reputation of Swedish bands because their live performance just blew me away). I felt like there was some kind of back track playing that the band needed to stick to and there was no time calculated in to interact too much with the crowd. There was interaction, of course. But it felt kinda half-hearted and once again, just like with Cyan Kicks, I didn’t feel very involved.
And when they left the stage for the first time after about 50 minutes, I felt disappointment creeping in. Because that was a clear sign that their set would take only about an hour. We were right. They returned for two more songs and ultimately left after a one hour set that had felt a bit like a marathon – rushed through, but also somehow lifeless.
I also wasn’t a big fan of the sound and I still wonder if it was the venue or just their overall … sound. The vocals were fine. I guess Apoc used e-drums and the moment I realised that, I had my explanation as to why the sound sounded so much like it was coming from tape as well. I was a little more irritated because even the guitars sounded as if they weren’t played live. And that’s just not what I expect when I go to a rock concert.
At the end of the day, I left with a bit of a dull, disappointed feeling. On the way out, we met some people who must’ve been further in the front because they had caught a towel and a shirt that had been thrown into the crowd. And they were super excited. I almost didn’t dare to say anything about the concert because what I felt was anything but excitement. Instead, my thoughts were more like „I will not spend the money again if they don’t bring along an amazing support – like Self Deception“. I’d probably go see them at a festival, but without a convincing support act I don’t feel like going to a Smash Into Pieces headline show again.
And that makes me incredibly sad because I truly thought they would be damn great and I would be blown away.