The compare
beyond compare!
The compare
beyond compare!
The band were welcomed onto the stage with a roar from the audience, the familiar strains of "Wytches 2002" floating from the speakers... and at that point the Imp of the Perverse made his scheduled appearance, for as Tony broke into the main guitar opening, the entire sound rig died.
A very swift check of the connections followed, the backing was reset, and exactly the same thing happened again! Bearing in mind that everything had worked perfectly during the soundcheck earlier in the day, the sound crew worked franticaly to trace the fault, while Candia swapped jokes with the somewhat amused audience, including an ad-lib of the theme music from Gremlins!
Eventually Tony solved the problem by disconnecting the transformer powering his effects controller, and so running on batteries, the gig was on!
This was the first UK outing for the band's new live setlist, including material from the just released "Beast With Two Backs" album.
The full set was:
Wytches
Smile Of Torment
The Beast With Two Backs
Paint It Black
Samhain
Take My Hunger
We Belong With The Dead
Catherine
Away With The Faeries
Heart Of Lilith
I Just Can't Get You Outta My Head
Belladonna and Aconite
Vampyre Erotica
'Father Dean' on the Bodhran.
A slight case of
preaching to the converted?
All hail the Inkies! All hail Whitby!
The most controversial track of the gig was undoubtedly the band's darkside cover version of Kylie Minogue's "I Just Can't Get You Outta My Head". It seems people either love or loathe this one, when the intro started I was almost deafened by an enthusiastic lad right behind me who started yelling "Kylie! Kylie! Kylie!", on the other hand after the event someone posted to uk.people.gothic that they'd stormed out of the hall in horror at that point!
As the WGW 1am curfew was rapidly approaching, the band decided to "dispense with the usual pretentious rock star nonsense of going off and coming back out again" (as Tony put it!), and careered straight on into the encores, the first of which was the truly incredible "Jägermeister".
While Inkubus Sukkubus aren't usually a band to give promoters nightmares by demanding ever stranger
riders with each performance, they had insisted that a bottle of the sacred liquer be provided for this
one, and the WGW had managed to find one, which Candia duly distributed to the fans in the front row.
And in your hand, the promised land, the universe at your command...
To ecstasy, and dispair...
Jägermeister
Will take you there, oh Yeah!
As Jägermeister finished, we were less than a minute from 1am, nevertheless the band, cheered on by the crowd, stormed onwards into the second encore, "Lucifer Rising", and as a result most of the song was played with the main house lights on, not that that dimmed the enthusiasm of the gyrating mass of revellers in front of the stage.
All good things must end however, and as the last notes of "Lucifer Rising" gave way to thunderous applause, the band thanked the audience and retired from the stage, with this WGW 10th aniversary well and truly under way in spectacular style.
Credits: All the pictures you see on this page were taken by my good friend Princess Linzi, to whom I owe many thanks and hugs. I'd also like to formally thank Mervin, her boyfriend, who allowed me to commandeer his partner as assistant photograpgher for most of this WGW. Cheers guys!