Written by:	Bas
Published:	October 29, 2006
Event:	Schandmaul

On this night I was one of the many pilgrims to the z7 to see Schandmaul live. From all of Switzerland they came to see the popular German folk-rock band on stage. First, however, it was DeepTrip's turn. Who are DeepTrip? Well, before the concert began almost no one knew,, actually. The Swiss quartet doesn't have an album out yet so must of us hadn't heard of them before. As the normal lights went out and were replaced by an orange light on stage I was very curious at how they would be.

After the noise from the crowd died a violin intro became audible, and shortly after the violinist entered the stage, followed by a person with a contrabass, a person with a cello, one with an acoustic guitar and someone without an instrument who took place behind the drum kit. I was a bit suspicious at first, seen that there were no electric guitars or basses, but there was no reason to be; after their show I was deeply impressed. The main part of the music came from the violinist and the acoustic guitarist who doubled as vocalist. The latter's voice reminded me greatly of that of Nickelback's vocalist, but sounded better to me. The cello and contrabass seemed to only provide atmosphere and were mainly kept in the background audio-wise. I was particularly fascinated and impressed by the stage acting of the violinist. Before this night I wouldn't have believed anyone telling me that it's possible to headbang while playing violin. But hey, apparently it's not only possible to headbang while doing it but also possible to jump around while playing violin! His stage acting wasn't everything though. Musically he was also excellent, especially the fast parts after which you could always see more loose strings hanging from the violin stick. The music was a mix of some slow poppy ballads, very beautiful, and some very fast and rocky tracks. The lighting was, unfortunately, the same throughout the whole show, but the music definitely made up for it. The audience was very quiet throughout the whole show, except for the band and a handful of people from the audience no one was headbanging but after every single song the band was given thunderous applause.

This music was definitely not for everyone. While talking about the concert with some friends afterwards I found quite a few of them were rather bored by DeepTrip, for some too poppy, for others too much violin. But most people, including me, were extremely impressed by the great music. I greatly recommend this band to any fan of classical and acoustic instruments, or any fan of folk music, who is also able to enjoy slower and softer music. Their first album will most probably come out around March and I am looking extremely forward to it.

Next was Schandmaul. While DeepTrip gave us mainly music Schandmaul mainly gave us a show. The light setting was different for every single song, but it was always good. The band was dancing on stage and seemed to have a nice time.

The whole hall was overfull which was rather a pity but everyone was having a great time anyway. Most people were jumping up and down half of the concert which was rather annoying to me though because there was no space to just stand and it was rather hard to see the band as I was standing somewhere in the middle of the hall. The audience was firmly held in Schandmaul's grip, when they wanted us to sing along everyone sang along, when they wanted us to jump, everyone jumped. During the show the band also did some promotion for various projects of the band members. For example the band Weto of which four of the Schandmaul members are members as well, before the concert there were also a few people giving away free promo CDs of the band. The flutist also made some promotion about a book she is writing at the moment.

Now to the music; already at the very beginning of the concert Schandmaul's vocalist told us that the band would play a lot of stuff from the new album as well as some old tracks and some very old tracks. To be totally honest, for me all of their stuff sounds almost exactly the same. But that's ok since all of their stuff sounds good. Yet there were a few songs that I wanted to hear but was disappointed when they were not played. I was also very disappointed to not hear a bagpipe solo, or any solo at all for that matter. There was a lot of singing along from the crowd since the band has mainly very easy lyrics and all lyrics are in the native language of most people who visited the concert. Something that disturbed me a lot was that the drums overpowered most of the other music at the beginning. They were much too loud. Luckily the problem was fixed after the third song or so and there weren't any such problems anymore for the rest of the show. The atmosphere was great during both the beautiful ballads and the faster songs.

After the concert the whole band joined the audience to talk to the fans, give autographs and let people shoot photos.

Although I was already extremely tired before the concert it was definitely worth going. I saw an amazing show with good music by the popular German band as well as discovering a new very talented and original promising band from Switzerland. In any case I sincerely advise you to go and see these bands if they come anywhere near your place.