Finale of September's live, indie-rock music marathon of Athens with an unofficial Matador Records' fest. After the Parquet Courts and Beach Fossils well-attended gigs that kicked off this month's unusually busy live schedule, two very different bands that both belong to the current Matador roster paid us a visit and played their first ever gigs in Greece.
The beginning was on Wednesday night at An Club, where Danish hardcore punks Iceage made their Athens' live debut with support from like-minded locals Ruined Families, and the ending, a couple of days later, at Six D.O.G.S with the gothic shoegaze of Esben And The Witch (more on that in our next post).
The sparsely attended Wednesday gig, perhaps the result of the fact that the true punk happenings of the day were happening in the streets of Athens where a huge antifascist demonstration was going on, meant that the atmosphere inside of An Club never got really heated up. Iceage might sound formidable on this year's excellent album "You're Nothing", but on Wednesday night they didn't seem able to reach the same levels of intensity on stage.
"Awake", one of the album's best tracks, is in theory a great choice as a gig opener, but the take-off we were expecting never came and the lack of reaction from the crowd (except for a few at the front) didn't help things either. Forty minutes later, it was all over with "Ecstasy", another "You're Nothing" highlight, but I doubt that anyone was feeling anywhere close to ecstatic at the end of it.
No encore followed, but, thankfully, Wednesday's anticlimax was followed by a very rewarding Friday gig by Esben And The Witch to end this unofficial Matador fest on a high note.
Here's "Awake", the start of Iceage's performance at An Club, as captured by C.M.C.'s camera:
Iceage - Awake, live @ An Club
