Never Forget!
The Setting
Of course the band have long been interested in, and involved with, the green movement, quite apart from their current status as the world's No1 pagan band, and have played numerous benefit gigs for green and pagan organisations over the years. This one was special, though. In a world gone mad for oil, where western financial interests abuse and exploit indigenous peoples and natural resources across the globe, and with the fundamentalist right screaming for war, raising awareness and funds for two of the worlds most respected environmental and human rights campaigning organisations was the very least any of us could do, and Inkubus Sukkubus, Freefall, and The Pony Club rose magnificently to the challenge.
The venue was magnificent - a huge Victorian theatre building, now modernised with new facilities facing the street but still with the original large auditorium and high stage in the rear hall, meaning everyone had an excellent view of the bands.
The SupportGloucester's Goths, Sk8rs, Punks and other varied folk had turned out in force to support the event, giving rise to one of the most varied crowds we'd ever seen at an Inkies' gig. The anticipation was electric, and the support bands were getting stuck into the main business with everything they had.
Everyone was getting in on the act, with protest and support posters and banners festoning every available surface. No-one was going home tonight with any doubts about what they'd been part of - from the sound engineers to the bands and backstage crew, everyone was promoting the twin causes of human rights and environmental protection.
And if this lot look like they've just escaped from one of the many ghastly reincarnations of long-burried school discos, well they learned a lot about protest and entertainment tonight!
View From The Bar
The Causes
The Performance!
"Smile" was followed in turn one of my all-time favourite Inkies track, the true story song "The Rape Of Maude Bowen", again delivered with power and finesse. By the end of it the front rows of the audience were already overheating and we were only three tracks into the fifteen song set!
After three tracks of non-stop power, the band eased up a little for the fourth, "I Am The One".
"Heart Of Lilith" was next up, brooding, swirling, seductive, dark... ...and as it faded, the lights dimmed, Tony, Bob and Adam vanished like wraiths in the night, and once again, as at Camden half a year before, Candia held us spellbound for a solo performance of the utterly beautiful "We Belong With The Dead".
The lights dimmed as the song faded away, and then thunderous applause burst out, with people screaming and yelling in awe of what was a stunning performance. Then the lights came back up, Tony, Adam and Bob returned, and it was time to slam the pace back up to "maximum" with Catherine... The rage of unloved wives would seal this beauty's fate, Many years of fading looks brought bitterness and hate... and then on into "Lucifer Rising" before an all-out no-holds-barred thrash through "Belladonna & Aconite". Now that is one of my all time favourite Inkies' tracks, and I do have a tendency to pogo up and down to it's all-engulfing tripple-beat, so I'm really sorry to whoever it was who's toes I landed on at one point, but I really couldn't help myself! Sorry!
Of course, we didn't have long to wait...
The Video StillsRob Sherlock from the IS Yahoo! group videoed parts of this gig, and has made some video stills available. Video cameras tend respond differently to ambient lighting conditions than still cameras (even digital ones), so these give a slightly different view of the evening.
"In All Our Names", Amnesty/Greenpeace benefit gig, Gloucester, reviewed by Pyromancer, February 2003 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
On the 10th January, 2003, just as the new year was dawning, for the first time in
ten years, Inkubus Sukkubus were playing in Gloucester. The venue was the Gloucester Guildhall Arts Centre, and the occasion was a combined Amnesty / Greenpeace benefit gig.
Once the support acts had finished, before the Inkies came on, two speakers, one from
Greenpeace (right) and one from Amnesty (left), took to the stage, thanked us all for coming and supporting the two causes, and told us a little about each organisation's current campaigns.
As this was early January, the enormous "stop the war" protests of the following month weren't yet high on the agenda, though fears for global peace were mentioned.
Locally, Greenpeace were highlighting the dangers of radioactive contamination, while globally they were focussing on the fate of the tens of thousands of people maimed and killed by the Union Carbide disaster, and it's on-going environmental aftermath in Bophal, India. Amnesty, as ever, were campaigning for the human rights of prisoners of conciencse across the globe, probably the longest running, hardest, and frequently unpopular campaign of modern times, yet one that is vitally needed.
Then the lights dimmed, the oh-so-evocative bell rang out, and we were away and into
"Wytches 2002". Always one of the band's classic tracks, the 2002 remix, built on a real
steam-hammer driven version of the goddess chant, with traces of the original 'Beltaine'
instrumentatuion, plus an all-new second-layer chant that none of us have managed to
decypher yet, and added bat effects, is a stunning update - and the live version is even
wilder than the MP3.com version! Not an opening track for the faint hearted, and they
stormed through it in an absolute frenzy that grabbed you by the throat and simply did
not let go!
Could they top that? You bet, as soon as the final crechendo of chanting died away, while the audience were still applauding, it was full pelt into "Smile of Torment", another live classic, again delivered non-stop and flat out.
