I know I keep saying this, but that was one of the best gigs yet, and no less than six (count 'em!) encores!
The official set (same as at Whitby) had two encore tracks, "Jaegermeister" and then "Lucifer Rising", but in the event we also got a completely unexpected blast through "Maude Bowen", "Song To Pan", "Leveller", and as a final final extra, a second all-out thrash through "Wytches 2002". I suspect parts of Croydon are still resounding to "Isis! Astarte! Diana! Hecate! Demeter! Kali! Inana!".
They played to an absolutely packed house, in a really nice and quite classy theatre, complete with balcony. The lighting was quite good too, and thanks to some last-minute negotiation by Tony I had permission to photograph the band while they were on-stage.
I met several people from the IS forum and mailing list, plus other bands and events [fx: waves at Tom, Cauda Pavonis, the Soultakers, and the "Camera Fodder" female punk couple from the Devonshire :-) ], and made some new friends too. Saturday afternoon included a fascinating talk on various ways of raising power from a Scottish witch with over 30 years craft experience, a lively, entertaining, and very informative lesson.
The selection of merchandise available from the various stalls and craftspeople was impressive too, you had to queue for ages to actually get near any of the traders! The IS stall completely sold out of Wytches, Vampyre Erotica and Beltaine, and ran low on almost everything else. Seemingly the local Christian fundies turned up at opening time, but faced with several thousand practising witches laughing at them they soon fled.
After the gig the band joined the crowd in the late bar, where we all danced ourselves silly (in my case, very silly!) to an impressive mixture of trad goth and classic rock - including things like Motorhead followed by the Sisters of Mercy followed by Iron Maiden followed by the Mission! Zodiac Mindwarp (who has for some bizarre reason been adopted by the Goth scene!) was in there somewhere too.
The event finally closed at 2am, we were supposed to be able to witness the Lunar Eclipse, however while we did catch glimpses of the moon through the clouds from outside the venue, she hadn't turned red, and quickly vanished from sight again.
The band and friends retired to their hotel, I drove one of the new people I'd met home to Southend in exchange for a bed for the night, we sat up talking pagan stuff till 6am and finally emerged at midday! The afternoon was spent exploring a stunningly beautiful autumn woodland, all golden yellows, rich browns, deep reds and the occasional dark green of ivy, visiting various sacred trees and groves, before an insane three and a half hour dash to Leeds in order to deliver a chocolate cake to Black Sheep - at which both "Wytches" and "Vampyre Erotica" got played, just to round things off!
Oh yes, and in the middle of the set, and completely without warning, Candia dedicated "We Belong With The Dead" to me. Not sure if this was in honour of our "UberGoth" antics at Whitby or if she's trying to tell me something! Once I'd recovered from the shock I did manage to get some rather good pics of her singing the track solo. Many many thanks!
Many thanks also to the organisers of an absolutely superb event. First one I'd been to, I will most definitely be back! If anyone didn't go but thought about it, I'd strongly recommend it.
And now I think I need to sleep...
PS: The band also won one of the Wytchfest Awards for music, in the form of a very lovely silver chalice.
- Pyromancer Stormshadow, Sheffield, December 2003. The text of this review was originally posted to the Usenet newsgroup uk.religion.pagan.
For good reasons, photography is banned at Wytchfest, however Tony managed to arrange for me to be allowed to photograph the band performing, the images which follow are result. It really was a cracking gig, sorry it's taken so long to get the review on the website.
- Pyromancer, Leeds, January 2005.
Tom, "Prince Of Shadows" from the Supernature forum
A friend of Adam's from Cheltenham
Outside the venue