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Concert review: Reverence Festival has feel of family reunion (with photos)

Katjusa Cisar  —  8/25/2008 7:31 am

The sixth annual Reverence Festival ended its three-day run on Saturday night at the Inferno Nightclub with a drunken, sweaty and ecstatic set of industrial techno from Soman, a one-man act out of Dresden, Germany.

Soman, aka Kolja Trelle, made just two stops in the United States on his current tour, Los Angeles and Madison. Apparently his plane from L.A. was delayed, and he didn't arrive in Madison until about 7:30 p.m., after the Reverence Festival's extra-long third night of electronic music had already begun. (The first night of the festival was last Wednesday, also at the Inferno, and the second was on Friday at the High Noon Saloon.)

Since Saturday's lineup of bands started at 6 p.m., the partied-out crowd had thinned a bit by the time Soman hit the stage after midnight. Those who stuck with it were rewarded.

Jetlag had not flagged Soman's energy. He jumped on stage grinning and wearing sunglasses and proceeded to jog the Running Man dance in front of his computer for at least an hour. He frequently warbled "Wah-hoo!" gleefully as he twisted the knobs and slid bars up and down on his sound board. He rocked a subdued and classy Euro-Trash look, straight off the streets of Berlin during Love Parade.

One man standing behind a computer might not seem like much of a show, but Soman threw himself into it with such enthusiasm that it worked. The assault rifle rhythms pounded the dance floor and got the crowd jumping up and down. Soman occasionally shouted into the microphone between songs, but he never sang. He blended beats into a hypnotic mix with hooks and repetitive prerecorded vocals in German and English.

Unfortunately, I caught only two other bands Saturday night: Boole, a Washington, D.C.-based synthtrance industrial act, and the Gothsicles, local goth/industrial favorites.

Boole made its first appearance at Reverence in 2004, and I had been looking forward to their return. They're fun to watch: not only do they sing songs with doggedly catchy hooks, they break out some of the dorkiest dance moves to probably ever grace the Inferno's stage. Refreshingly, the trio of men also eschews hard-core goth gear in favor of outfits that make them look like they're taking a coffee break from their IT jobs to do the show.

They played mostly songs off their latest album, The Vital Few, along with older favorites like "Everyday is Halloween." Most of the slower songs didn't work very well, mainly because they seem to be written for the wrong vocal range (and one of the members admitted so much after struggling to hit all the notes in a song).

The Gothsicles are the kind of band that can rhyme "Hot Topic" with "Hot Pocket" and get away with it. Their set was short and attracted a big crowd. The band ran a great lineup of footage behind them on a screen: video games, movie clips and sections of the Rick Astley music video that turned into a "Rick Roll" phenomenon.

But their set soon devolved into a drunken singalong with various people jumping up on stage to join in. One mock-rapped "Straight Outta Compton" while a member of Boole blew into a pan pipe. Others joined in for a quasi-reunion of Stromkern, a Chicago band and Reverence Festival favorite that couldn't play this year. The singalong stuff got tedious after a while, but everyone on stage and in the core crowd in front of the stage was having a blast.

The Reverence Festival has the feel of a family reunion. Here's hoping it happens again next year (and hopefully with the real Stromkern).

Katjusa Cisar  —  8/25/2008 7:31 am