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After a manageable wait, WIZO's guitarist and bassist announced the first band, SCHMUTZKI, as the best band from Stuttgart. As I later learned, this assessment comes from a band contest they won, so it’s official. Contrary to some rather critical voices around me, I found the trio quite solid. Opening for WIZO and not completely flopping is no small feat. There was a colorful mix of pop-punk, a reworked MISFITS cover, and at times I thought I recognized TURBONEGRO riffs. There was even an NDW piece included, which was enhanced by the bassist with a sung pseudo-synth hook. Very funny. Overall, this bassist threw himself into poses as if it were the last time. Good for him! One can certainly attribute exaggerated self-confidence to the band, and I found the constant call-and-response games a bit daring. But better to create atmosphere than nothing at all, as the music itself didn’t offer enough substance to deliver more than a warm-up exercise. Another plus point was the good sound, where one could understand the unfortunately silly lyrics. Minus point for too many requests to buy T-shirts, watch the new video online, etc. Anyone interested in the band will figure it out on their own; for everyone else, it’s unnecessary promotional blabber. It wasn’t to my taste, but I would say SCHMUTZKI held their own bravely. If they would just stop making their career attitude so obvious, I would like them even more.
Then WIZO. Awesome! Pathetic intro, mega stage decor in the background with motifs from various band releases. The first piece, "Raum der Zeit," was rapped by singer Axel Kurth over a groovy beat through a megaphone before transitioning into a much more fitting punk tempo. A jolt went through the crowd, everyone sang and jumped along, and the girl in front of me spilled my beer on my clothes with her enthusiastic hopping. Yes, with Straight Edge, that wouldn’t have happened! Too bad about the nice beer, but ultimately it didn’t matter – the music was playing up front!
And how it played. Anyone who masters their instruments as well as WIZO can really play anything they want. Especially what the singer created on his guitar alone was a whirlwind that wouldn’t have had this effect without mechanical precision and tight interplay. And to sing nuanced and flawlessly on top of that, hats off! It became clear: The pieces are well-written, catchy, cleverly arranged so that one can create enough pressure for a thrash metal spectacle with just one guitar, and these three people on stage were professionals at their instruments. Dreamy sound, every element of the music audible and voluminous. The transitions between different styles were also smooth, leading one well through an extensive best-of program of the band. By the way, I noted the sequence in the chaos and tried to decipher it later. Futile. Champollion, please report! In any case, I missed neither a hit nor were the new songs too short, and more would probably have been too much of a good thing. It was also noticeable that the band did not treat the recordings of their pieces like a holy scripture from which one must not deviate, but made extensive variations that usually involved audience participation, improvisations, or tension pauses. That’s how you make music lively. However, I found it a bit exaggerated that seemingly every third piece was stretched by about a minute in this way, which slowed down the flow. And please, to encourage the audience to a rock stadium-like "Hey! Hey!" during "Quadrat im Kreis" at the beginning could hardly have been a worse moment.
Awkward transition to what bothered me: It became apparent even before the concert when WIZO sent out the request to do an interview and concert review, only to later limit the interview to eight questions via email. WIZO so convoluted? During my research, I noticed that Axel, the only original member who is also the creative mind and big chairman of the band, seems unsure of what image he conveys of himself and his band outwardly. He constantly justifies something that someone might have misunderstood, as WIZO's lyrics are indeed varied in seriousness, humor, or depth. And he switches between his image as a laid-back punk who speaks to the kids in their language (quote from the concert: "That would be nice.") and the professional musician in middle age who runs his band as a business. Maybe it’s also a bit of disappointed love on my part, but I simply wished for fewer explanatory introductions for the concert. If one cannot grasp the meaning of the lyrics while listening to the records, it won’t get better at the concert, and when Axel then digresses again during the announcement of "Gute Freunde" to clarify that as an enlightened person he knows that there is also turmoil in same-sex relationships, or when he states before the song "Ganz klar gegen Nazis" that he is clearly against Nazis, one wonders if he thinks the audience is too dumb to figure it out themselves. Maybe the guy has always been like this; after all, this was my first live encounter. I found it came off as tense. WIZO! You have a catalog full of brilliant songs that other bands would kill for, you can play like Cherubini on Prozac, there’s no need for talk, just action!
In the end, there was an encore with three acoustic guitars, and the special "Fert-Gitarre" was a great gimmick. Around me, sweaty, drunk faces, mischievous grins during the last piece, which, to my knowledge, is still marked as a threat to the state. Interior Ministry, please withdraw a few undercover agents from Salafism and the neo-Nazis for this tour before it’s too late!
It remains a very nice concert, from whose memory I have been living off for a week now. The small blemishes ultimately cannot tarnish the overall picture. Perhaps these musicians could grow together through the tour so that the next album becomes a product of the current band instead of a de facto solo project made from the colorful song remnants of Kurth? That could still be interesting.
Happy fans streamed into the Monday night life of Friedrichshain, WIZO got into their tricked-out Kadett B and drove into the apocalypse.