Upon arrival to the Warfield, I was overjoyed by the sign on the door, "Sister Machine Gun will not be playing tonight", unfortunately that meant KMFDM was already on! I found out later that PIG played at 8:00 so either way it would've sucked.
The stage was set up with a banner of the new logo in the center with 2 long banners with the symbols from the album "title" running lengthwise on each side. Nothing fancy. They had the usual set-up with Sasha's drum podium thingie along with a keyboard or two along side. The rest of the stage was normal, drums, microphone stands, etc. En Esch was wearing a little, tight, 60's style dress. (for those interested)
They opened with Megalomaniac, (some friends informed me since I missed it), and followed that with Mein Leid, Dein Elend (when we showed up). I believe the next song was a Skold song. A pair of Skold members were on stage most of the time, mainly during their songs. Tim Skold was on stage all night. The next song was an awesome version of Friede. This was when I came to understand that KMFDM had seen the light. Sasha must have bought a Nord Lead or other similar analog toy because it was present in every song and I loved it. I won't say they jumped on the "electronica" bandwagon by finally dumping their awful guitar heavy sound, since they've been using lots of synths from the start. Playing Friede made that clear. It was, again, an anolog-heavy version, very danceable.
The song order gets a little foggy, but the highlight was around this time. The beginning of Torture began bleebing and clanking along when !OGRE! made a somewhat dramatic enterance. The older folks who knew who he was went nuts. He sang his song but stayed on stage and played along for the rest of the show! except for maybe one of the encores. He looked like he was just having a good time, harassing Ogre every once in a while, grabbing his crotch, wrestling, etc.
Another Skold song, that sounded like old NIN, songs about breaking up, lost love, etc. O.K. The rest was great, (except for one, but I'll get to that later). They played a great new version of Liebeslied. It was so saturated with analog power, beautiful. It was great to see Ogre sing along too. They stuck in Stray Bullet, Anarchy, and either Unfit or Mercy (I'm not exactly sure which).
Here comes the depressing part that made their forgettable last few records painfully apart. The sample "people will be killing each other" started playing. Every teenager in the joint was running to the floor to "mosh". This gave me painful memories of the last tour with the wretched Korn. The mall goths and metalheads were out for blood. Marilyn Manson would've been proud. After Drug Against War (for those who didn't figure it out by now) they left the stage for the first time, 45 minutes into the show!?! This is the really lame part.
This long-haired, sweaty teen came back to his green-haired, Marilyn Manson T-shirt clad friend and described his amazing experience in the "pit". "Dude, I started gettin' in there and like this dude was punchin' so I started punchin' and like, and the lead singer (is there one?) looked right at me, really!" exclaimed the sweaty one. "Dude, holy shit" gasped the swooning beautiful person. "Yeah, but it was cool, I like got out of there. I'm gonna be like singing that song all night!".... ugh.....
They came back on played, yet again, a thickly analog-laden version of Light. They may have played another song (it's late). I remember the final encore song though. It was an incredible new rendition of Godlike. Not only was it Godlike, it was Godlike with Ogre, and Raymond Watts didn't ruin my night by bringing his lame, Bono-ass out on stage with KMFDM once! Excellent!
Other than feeling ripped off for a 1 hour show, I was quite impressed. Gunter cut his hair, Ogre, a good playlist (not great), no Watts, no SMG, not bad. From the 11 KMFDM shows I've seen, I put it at 5th best. Worth $20? maybe, not. We did save money on parking though, 1.5 hours isn't too expensive. ;)
pannkaiser