Effenaar, Eindhoven (NL) / 13 November 2003

Three bands from Germany played live in Eindhoven on a Thursday night…The evening began strict on time with the concert of Novalis. This band consists of three members: a singer/guitarist, a keyboard-player and a drummer. Last year in December the band already convinced me when they played in Nijmegen, this time it sounded even better. Highlights were ‘Bloody’ and a wonderful version of ‘Golden Future Time’. A pity that the concert lasted no more than half an hour.

The second band to play live was Chamber. I have very fond memories of their performance at the Wave Gotik Treffen earlier this year. Their singer Max Testory is absolutely someone with charisma en humour. He was accompanied by female musicians on cello, double bass and violin. Also present was guest musician Ralf H�bner, who could handle the violin and guitar very well. Chamber really did a great performance. Highlights were ‘Pleasure and pain’, ‘A strange kind of love’ and ‘A Dead Man’s Song’. The surprising cover ‘Where the wild roses grow’ from Nick Cave & Kylie also sounded well. The most comic song was the ‘The truth about snow-white’. The singer did a funny little dance during the instrumental parts. Chamber finished with the convincing song ‘Hometown’, about Vienna, where Marcus was born. In short: a fine concert.

Last but not least Qntal came to the stage. The popular neo-medieval band consist of singer Syrah, keyboard-player Fil and Michael Popp, who manages to get beautiful music out of virtually every instrument. It was a very good performance with various highlights. After the first song Syrah welcomed the audience in Dutch, for which she was of course rewarded with a big applause. She also gave short explanations of the subject matter of various songs, which was very nice. Naturally many songs of the last album “Qntal III” were played, like ‘Am morgen fruo’, Entre moi et mon amin’ and ‘Die Name der Rose’. But the older material was also not forgotten. ‘Unter der Linden’ (with Michael Popp playing glasses of water) was played, followed by the immortal hit ‘Ad mortem festinamus’, which sounded very good because of the drums.

Qntal recently released a new mini cd called “Nihil”, from which ‘Nihil’ and ‘Stella Splendens’ were played. They sounded very convincing live. The song about ‘Tristan and Isolde’ had a nice visual effect, with lights shining on water coming out of a big barrel. Qntal returned to the stage for one encore, the lovely ‘Palestinalied’. This was the last song which the band played for us. Really a wonderful performance. After quite some years Qntal is still a top act, which is worthwhile to see live.

After the concerts an afterparty followed. I wasn’t surprised that dj XXX started directly with ‘Omnis munda creatura’ by Helium Vola. More hits followed, from bands like Wolfsheim and Deine Lakaien. Clips from these songs were projected on a big screen, which was a nice special feature. When after a while the likes of VNV Nation and Suicide Commando were played, it was time to go home.
A very successful evening!

Author: HD. Published on: Wednesday, November 26th, 2003.
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