While Riot Fest marks the end of summer, one week later every year Cold Waves ushers in the fall every year with a weekend spectacle of Industrial/Dark Wave/Goth. This is the the lucky 13th year for the festival, which was started to honor the late Jamie Duffy and to promote suicide awareness, and hopefully let people know that no matter how bad things may feel, they are never alone. It’s a wonderful festival every year in the confines of the most iconic venue in Chicago, the Metro, and every year it has a good mix of legendary bands and all kinds of newer ones.
Void Palace made their first appearance in Chicago to start the fest off and you couldn’t have asked for a better way to debut your band in this city than this. This Los Angeles duo played in near darkness, which I suppose is quite appropriate for their dark electronic music. Great industrial dance beats and synths along with heavily processed vocals checked all the right boxes for an enjoyable thirty minute set. They’d be welcomed back for sure and are well worth checking out.
Lead Into Gold was the first veteran act of the night. This is the current project (and past side project) of the legendary Paul Barker of Ministry, Revolting Cocks, Blackouts, fame. For the past few years, Paul has been touring and releasing new Lead Into Gold records and they’ve all been really great. This evening he focused heavily on his latest material, forgoing playing “Hatred” yet again and even omitted “Faster Than Light”, which has been a closing staple of his sets the past few years. The new material was really great and quite heavy, and it was so good that it didn’t even matter than he didn’t play any old favorites. I highly suggest picking up his latest album, it may be his finest work yet! For this tour, Paul was a solo act, he didn’t have another musician with him like when Lead Into Gold toured with Skinny Puppy two years ago. This set was one of the true highlights of the fest.
Mentallo And The Fixer were up next. This brotherly duo has been around since the late 1980s but this is the first time they’ve toured in 20 years. Mentallo (the singer) was dressed in robes like some sort of monk and paced back and forth constantly while delivering his extremely processed vocals (reminiscent at times of Cat Rapes Dog without the heavy accent), which The Fixer stood statuesque behind his rack of gear unleashing their heavy industrial sounds. They were beyond excellent and what a treat to get to see this long time band finally play here after so many years away. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come and these two brothers will stick together and continue performing.
Industrial music veterans, Clock DVA were up next. This band has been around for well over four decades now, only taking roughly ten years off in the late 1990s. They were one of the pioneers of this style of music and have been at it longer than possibly anybody. The band played a good mix of material, including “The Hacker” which was from their Wax Trax era. All the music was reworked for their live performance, and they had really cool images being projected behind them as they played. It was one of their best live performances yet, and they’ve only gotten better as a live act as time marches on. What a wonderful addition to this year’s fest!
Front Line Assembly has played more Cold Waves fests than I can keep track of and they’ve always been a highlight of each one of them, but this year they did something really special. For this appearance, they did a set full of their Wax Trax era material! As this was my era of Front Line Assembly, this was such a wonderful and special treat. The material sounded amazing, and the band always overdelivers in their energy and the crowd was loving every minute of it. Highlights included “Digital Tension Dementia”, “Iceolate”, “No Limit”, “Big Money” and even better than all that was their closing with “Nothing Stays” (a song from Cyberaktif which was a side project of Skinny Puppy’s Cevin Key and FLA’s Bill Leeb)! This was so great!
Nitzer Ebb was up next. This one was a little bittersweet as the band lost lead singer, Douglas McCarthy earlier this year. Nitzer Ebb had been touring without him for a year or so as his declining health made it impossible for him to perform and he gave his full blessing to the band to continue without him. NE co-founder Bon Harris has been performing vocal duties ever since, and he does a great job at it. He had always done some vocals for the band, but now he is doing them full time while the other band members handle all the musical duties. Bon is an excellent frontman in his own right and is full of energy and excitement. He rarely stood still and was dancing the entire set while singing, which only inspired the audience to dance even more. They opened with “Control I’m Here” which got the crowd moving immediately, and then played a great set of many longtime favorites that kept the crowd moving the whole set. Of the many great songs, standouts are “Lightning Man”, “Come Alive” “Join in the Chant” and “Murderous”. The band took a brief break and did a really touching tribute to Douglas in the form of a slideshow as Bon sang “How Time Flies”. It was incredibly touching and I don’t know if it was from all the fog in the air that night from fog machines or what but suddenly my eyes were watering up during this moment. The band then completed their set with “I Give To You” and give to us they did! It’s incredibly hard for a band to lose their lead singer and continue on, but I’m happy to report that Nitzer Ebb is doing it better than most, and are still absolutely worth going to see.
The first night of Cold Waves XIII was a huge success. The sold out crowd loved every minute of this heavily stacked opening night and there was still two more days of great music to come!
