Messed!Up
This was the night when The Flatliners returned to Hamburg to celebrate the European leg of their 20th Anniversary tour, and it was kind of fitting since it was ten years ago I was at my latest Flatliners gig at Reading Festival. You tend to pick the anniversaries, ey? And that’s the thing, somehow, someway, the Flatliners are already celebrating 20 years as a band. You kind of start to think about age, don’t age?
But let’s spend this first whole paragraph about the co-headliner A Wilhelm Scream. Sure, you would think “yeah, two headliners, of course you’ll watch both” but it wasn’t the intention because I haven’t really listened to their music before, save for a few songs like the awesome “The Rip” and “I Wipe My Ass With Show Biz”. But you know the feeling when you turn up at a gig and don’t know what to expect because you’re waiting for another band to play and then the first act is just awesome and you realize “No band tonight or tomorrow, or the rest of the month, can do it better”; that’s how it was at the A Wilhelm Scream gig.
Hailing from New Bedford, Massachusetts, the 5-piece launched straight into their set, instantly conjuring a mosh of crowdsurfers. It was a complete tornado of riffs and screams, in-your-face loud, and the whole place erupted. Unquestionably one of the best gigs I’ve been to this year. I would’ve loved to be among the hardcore fans in the mosh, especially the dedicated fan in the red t-shirt who got “The Rip” dedicated to him halfway through the set, but a failing Achilles tendon made my right leg handicapped (while the left was half-way into the mosh, dancing on its own). This is one of the top most energetic bands I’ve ever seen and they have the best hardcore bassist I’ve ever seen.
How would any band triumph that? Well, it’s not possible but you also need to understand that while A Wilhelm Scream have the intense energy, The Flatliners have the songs. They’re simply amazing songwriters.
They wasted no time as they took the stage, launching into “Performative Hours” from the latest album New Ruin and continued with “Hang On My Head” from the 2017 album Inviting Light. The rest of the set burst through a strong mix of tracks both old and new, with the older stuff – naturally – getting some of the best reception. The band was in great spirits, joking and talking between songs, extremely grateful to the audience that allowed them to get where they are today. Let’s say it was a tight show but made with time to deliver pleasantries and joke around with the audience between songs.
As a fan of the older stuff – I haven’t really listened much to New Ruin – I was thrilled when the band visited the classics “Monumental”, “Eulogy”, and, already as the third song, “Resuscitation of the Year”. Something missing? “Fred’s Got Slacks”! But to be fair, I had to leave before the end of “Eulogy” due to being (temporarily) crippled and may have missed it.
Overall, The Flatliners put on another excellent performance at Knust, and this wild and gritty good show serves as proof that after 20 years, The Flatliners have nowhere to go but higher up still.
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Photos: Sophie Dobschall
