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| The
Cruxshadows
Elysium,
September 11, 2003
Few
bands outside of arena rock put as much effort, as much preparation,
and as much care into a performance as The Cruxshadows. Despite
issues with their tour van they put on one of the best shows
I've seen in a long time. Some could easily pigeonhole this
band as just another Goth band but their intelligent lyrics
(which draw heavily from Greek mythology, Egyptian symbolism
and mutated personal experience), their use of violin alongside
electronics and other instrumentation and their near-destruction
of the boundary between audience and performer belie much
more than another hand-stapled-to-forehead band.
Rogue
delivered each song powerfully. His well-known stage-climbing
antics weren't easily accomplished given Elysium's layout,
but he was wandering through the crowd during many songs.
At one point he even pulled a tall chair from the bar area,
planted it in the middle of the dance floor, and climbed on
top of it. The tightly choreographed dance routines were impeccable;
the beautiful, scantily clad dancers provided a different
but still visceral interpretation of the songs. The also beautiful
Rachel provided evocative and melancholy accompaniment on
violin.
I
didn't go into the show expecting much, but I left a fan.
It's extremely rare to find a band in most alternative of
underground scenes that put so much effort and care into creating
an entire performance. Most these days stand on stage and
play some songs live; The Cruxshadows bring together a complete
visual, aural, and visceral experience.
- Brian Clarkson |
Scorpio
Rising
Elysium, September 16, 2003
Tuesday nights at Elysium – one of their
standard live music nights. I don't know who decided to give
these South Austin folks some stage time. Their self-proclaimed
"South Austin Dance Music" brought back painful
memories of junior high school, Aqua Net-filled vertical bangs
and bad disco music.
The three-piece band (and I use the term loosely
here) tried their best to pump up the ten or so people left
in attendance. (Most, it seemed, were there to see one of
the opening bands, Jasmine Reign.) Try as they might this
band just could not get anyone going. Perhaps it was the bad,
squealing "Oooie oooie" so popular among 'disco
biscuits' from the early 80s. Perhaps it was the fact that
the whole show was more like a practice session on a stage
than a performance. Perhaps it was just that "South Austin
Dance Music" is horrible. Who's to decide? Unfortunately,
anyone who was in attendance that night can make the call.
-Brian Clarkson
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Mistress
Tinkerhell's Fetish Show
Elysium Nightclub, September 18, 2003
Elysium tries to put on events that have
a variety of underground appeal. This fetish show was supposed
to draw out the crowds of local fetish and BDSM enthusiasts
but the crowd in attendance was composed of gamer dorks, random
drunk guys too cheap to pay for a strip joint and a very small
goth contingent. I think horny guys outnumbered anyne else
by at least a two-to-one ratio. I saw one middle-aged guy
videotaping the performance; I know he wasn't there with the
performance troupe.
The night actually consisted of two shows.
The first was roughly themed 'the corruption of an angel'.
A male and a female dark angel had their evil way with the
good angel. All in all, the performance was rather hot –
until I overheard some of the drunk honry patrons. Most of
the BDSM mainstays were used: the good angel girl was tossed
around, flogged and candle-waxed. The second show was a battle
of good angels against bad angels with, of course, the bad
angels winning. The whole angel theme has been used in fetish
shows over and over again; this wasn't a groundbreaking, novel
performance. It was a chance to see attractive, scantily clad
chicks prancing around onstage.
-Brian Clarkson
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