Written by:	corrupt
Published:	November 24, 2024
Event:	War Against War III (Website)
Location:	ORWOhaus, Berlin, Germany
Organizer:	Asgaardian events

It is 1 am on a Sunday morning. I’m sitting in my car on the way from Berlin to my hometown of Hamburg, Germany, trying to make a 2:50 hour trip according to Google in as close to two hours as I can (after all, there are no speed limits on most of Germany’s interstates). The weather is miserable. Temperatures are just above freezing, the night is overcast, it’s foggy, and there’s a light drizzle. Visibility is terrible; no stars or moon in sight. The weather matches my mood. I’m on the phone with my partner, trying to stay awake, and trying to explain why the weekend I just had was more of a disappointment than the amazing time it should have been.

I’m returning from a two-day black metal festival in Berlin. The kind of event that should be right up my alley. Organized under an anti-war slogan, featuring mostly bands from the wider RABM spectrum (I’m using that term generously here, put the gun down!), held in a self-organized concert venue owned by a collective dedicated to the local music scene, called ORWOHaus (their website is unfortunately only in German).
Almost everything fits. The worst bands some people had on a patch were Burzum and Taake. Not a Rammstein shirt or patch in sight, no one showing their edginess by wearing shirts with sexist or borderline racist statements or imagery, as you see at so many other events. Just friendly people trying to have a good time and great bands like Uada, Non Est Deus, Kanonenfieber, Sear Bliss, Ghost Bath, and Vulture Industries. Harakiri For The Sky unfortunately had to cancel, but they would have fit in very well. You can tell someone put some thought into this lineup.

What should have been an amazing two-day event, turned into a huge disappointment for a reason I’ve been frustrated with for a good 20 years now: really, really bad sound. Specifically the kind of live sound where all instruments are completely drowned in the drums to the point that the whole soundscape is only drums.

Flashback to 2010/2011. A much younger and more handsome version of myself is hanging out at shows and festivals all over Europe, trying to find the best sound, spending time with other Metal Storm members active at the time. A lot of my time at live events is spent walking around trying to find a spot where I can clearly distinguish all the instruments in the live sound. Most bands play with two guitars, a bass, have a dedicated vocalist (who sometimes is the guitarist or bassist at the same time) and a drum kit in the background. So why is it that most of what I hear is the bottom end of the bass drum sound and the snare, both with added bass that completely drowns out the full soundscape?

I have really good hearing protection. A custom fit, molded to my ear canals to completely seal them off with a receiver for 15 dB linear attenuators. I had them made when I was about 18, and they have been the best investment in my concert-going experience I could have made. I replace the attenuators about once every 12-18 months or so, as they get clogged with dust from festivals over time, which changes their attenuation curves. Because they are linear, they dampen the sound evenly without modifying its characteristic too much. I’ve tested them extensively over the decades I’ve owned them, both at parties, while listening to music at home (to test their characteristics), and – of course – at concerts and festivals. I know what to expect from live sound, and I can tell when something is off.

Something was very off this weekend.

As I’m contemplating the day I had while speeding toward my own bed to get some well-deserved sleep, I realize, that I’ve been doing this for over 20 years now. There’s a recurring problem with the sound at metal shows where the FoH places the drums right in the very center of the mix, altering their sound with what feels like an artificial low end boost, and drowning out every other instrument. It’s become almost second nature for me to walk around a venue or festival grounds looking for that one spot where I can hopefully hear guitars and bass as part of the mix. And for over 20 years I’ve had more bad luck than good.

I get it, live sound is hard. Even without any training in live production, I can say that with confidence. Many bigger events feature bands with vastly different studio sounds and I’ve seen bands like Sunn O))), Bloodbath, and Arcturus play on the very same stage within a few hours of each other. Getting the mix just right in the little time festival crews have for a soundcheck between shows must take some serious skill and experience. It’s probably impossible, given the limitations of the equipment they sometimes have to work with. People who are good at this job have my utmost admiration.

But skill and dedication are both on a spectrum. And the other end of that spectrum, apparently, is terrible, bass-heavy live sound that has nothing to do with the artistic vision of the bands on stage and, frankly, can be an insult to both the audience and the string instrumentalists on stage.

I have about as many memories of walking away disappointed from a show I was really looking forward to as I do of being happy. One of the worst among them was a Dimmu Borgir show at Wacken Open Air 2012, after the band’s disastrous implosion, which I had hoped would be my last chance to enjoy some of their classics performed live before the band would fade into obscurity. I was spot-on with my prediction of the latter, but couldn’t have been more wrong about the former.
I’m pretty sure they did perform said classics. There are setlists out there that tell me so. But all I could make out for the roughly 90 minutes or so they played was a constant pounding of double bass. Hardly any vocals, zero guitars, and definitely no keyboards. Just a never-ending punch in the gut while the FoH people did their best to drown out the whole soundscape with nothing but drums.

Until that night in my car, contemplating what I had just experienced, I had thought that this Dimmu show would remain the worst I would ever experience at a live concert. For a while, I even felt like things were getting better across the board. I saw venues investing in better equipment, setting themselves up to be better live venues in addition to being clubs, bands bringing their own sound roadies, even Wacken Open Air re-plowing their entire infield to even it out for - among other things - more balanced live sound.

Metal has over 50 years of history as a live music culture. Presenting and enjoying music live has always been an important aspect of it, and it is what gives our scene its much-lauded social cohesion. In his 2019 book Rockonomics, author Alan Krueger writes: “[...] half of every dollar spent in the music industry goes to recorded music, and about half goes to purchases related to live performances”. He notes that this is mainly data for the US market and that he had to do some guesswork to compile it, but it serves to prove my point that live music is an important aspect of metal - nay, music in general. If not for the sheer love of it, then for its economic value to artists.

What I experienced at ORWOHaus this weekend, however, took me back to my worst concert experiences of the early 2000s, and didn’t feel like doing justice to either the culture, or the economic value.

I went to this event with Liafev, who I met through this very site. We’d been friends for a couple of years at this point, mostly going to shows in Berlin together, whenever I could make the trip. We introduced each other to new music, even went to bigger open air festivals together. At this point, I know I always have a place to stay at Liafev’s place, and that makes going to these events very convenient and fun. You could say that we are the embodiment of what Metal Storm is all about. Meeting like-minded people in a progressive, inclusive community who share a common passion for music, both on record and live.

Liafev is a drummer himself, and a more educated listener than I am. He is constantly on the lookout for the latest and greatest material, and his metal spectrum is broader than mine. He also goes to a lot more shows than I do at this point in my life. However, we both look for the same thing at a show, something we discovered pretty early on when we first met: a good live representation of a band’s studio sound. Not at all a 1:1 reproduction of a studio recording, but a good live interpretation of it.

We were both looking forward to spending two days listening to cool bands, meeting new people, and just having a good time. I left work early on that Friday, jumped in the car and drove as fast as I could, just to make it to the second half of Inferno’s set. The first day was great. I even recorded a video of Non Est Deus’ set to send to some friends because I was really impressed with the sound mix. Antrisch were on stage that day with an 8-string, a 6-string, and a miked acoustic guitar used for effect in some songs. Everything was perfectly audible, clear and well-placed in the overall mix. The drums were a bit bassy, but not obnoxious. We drank a lot of beer that day and walked away at night really happy, excitedly telling our taxi driver about the day, and looking forward to the next one.

When we arrived the next day, however, it immediately felt like we were at a completely different event. Arriving just in time for Horn, we were greeted with that dreadful drum-forward sound that I didn’t think was possible anymore. A sound that would unfortunately set the trend for the rest of the day.

As we left after an absolutely horrible sounding Kanonenfieber show at around midnight, I was as disappointed as I could be. We tried to approach the staff, and ask them to talk to the FoH, but they just shrugged it off and ignored our pleas. We skipped Vulture Industries because at that point it seemed like my time was better spent driving home than suffering through another show that would be the equivalent of listening to a Rock Band drum track with vocals on top. Liafev felt the same way and went home as well.

It’s honestly baffling to me how a venue whose main reason for existence is to promote music can be okay with such a terrible live experience. But more than that, I’m wondering why. What’s the point of mixing the drums so far into the foreground that they drown out everything else on stage. I can only assume that the monitor sound that the bands receive is to their liking, so why not treat the audience to the same mix? Or, to be more polemical, why do live sound operators hate guitars?

I’m sure there’s an explanation for this. But unlike the loudness war, this doesn't seem to have anything to do with modernizing listening habits, or trying to get more streams or sales. It does the opposite, albeit at a time when tickets are already sold and punched, so returns are impossible. We both paid over 100€ for this event (not counting gas costs, which are about the same), and I’m happy for ORWOHaus and the promoter that the event fully sold out (apparently for the third time in a row). Events like this are important for the scene and I want them to succeed and keep happening. But I don’t think I’ll be going to another edition of this one in particular, or any other regular show at ORWOHaus. Not unless I know the situation with their live sound has improved considerably.

The crux of the matter, though, is that we can never know in advance. I used to write to venues 20 years ago when I came home disappointed from a show, and I was usually met with sympathy and promises of improvement. But at the end of the day, I have only two choices: keep trying and possibly ending up disappointed (not to mention feeling robbed of my money), or stop going to shows altogether. Both feel like poor solutions to what should be an easy problem to solve. The first day of this event proves that.

I spent several days trying to figure out how to finish this text. It’s not like I can tell anyone what to do better. I’m a consumer in this landscape, I come to be entertained - and a lot of the magic of live music for me is not knowing how things are done. My friends sometimes accuse me of being too analytical about music, but I'm really just looking for that special feeling. That feeling you get when the sound is just right and all the pieces come together to form something greater than the sum of its parts - something magical. I know myself well enough to know that I will keep looking for that magic. I will continue to hope that sound engineers of the next show pay attention to the entire soundscape and create a well-balanced mix that includes all the instruments and reproduces a band's sound as faithfully as possible.

But I do wish that this conversation would become more central to our live scene, that venues would understand that we care about good sound, and that promoters would not stop caring about this side of the live experience once the tickets are sold. And if anyone reading this has the training and knowledge to explain to me why this is even an issue, I will be happy to listen.