HOLY SHIT
well let me start with the trip because that was not cool. I left my house at 6:30 in the morning, took a coach to prague (2,5h), waited for a bit ALONE because not even there anyone could spare an hour for a coffee and left on another coach to Berlin.
That trip was supposed to take 5 hours. First cops stop the bus on the borders for a random customs checkup or whatever, end up pulling one person out. Okay... then we got stuck in Dresden due to some closed roads or something, going around the city like idiots. We took up some delay because of that AND because of THAT delay we had to make a mandatory safety stop on a gas station for the driver. Half an hour, everyone supposed to be back, counted, all good, we get back on the autobahn... only BARELY because we realize there are two people missing. Couldn't have reversed there, so the stewardess had to run back half a kilometer on an autobahn in scorching sun to find the two drunk idiots and bring them back.
We arrived to Berlin TWO HOURS LATE. I wanted to buy coffee and donuts, had a couple ciders with me, wanted to chill in a park and read Zappa's biography and make it for the doors. WRONG. Came so that I had to leave for the doors right that moment.
I was supposed to take a train there on the Berlin ring... WRONG. Works on the track, the train was not going. So I had to quickly orient myself in the Berlin public transportation (if you've ever been to berlin you're probably laughing right now, it's a pretty good joke...), took two underground trains, had to change somewhere, made it in time for the supporting band. Cool. STRESSED THE FUCK OUT. I hate this.
support was some drone/electro/noise project called Hildur Gudnadottir. Started with a pretty gnarly bowed SG droned into an Orange halfstack, proceeded to loop that shit and play some electronic noise with contraptions on the table and some hard subby beats... while a dude in a witch hat did some grimm and frostbitten distorted vocals in a harmonica mic. Sometimes a chick joined them on squeeks and crazy noise-flute. Not bad, but a bit... I don't know, silly? I wish they had Pharmakon supporting them, saw her supporting Swans and she was the fucking BEST.
The venue is pretty cool, it's a small theater, lets say a really small ballroom, pretty nice actually... the stage was a bit smaller than should have been, so the wall of amps was a bit weirdly arranged, but nevermind. Lights and fog were on point even for the supporting band.
(did you know Sunn were actually a shoegaze band? check the colours...)
And man, for Sunn O)))... the legends are true. Shittons of fog. And then they came. Opened with Aghartha, one of my favourites and it was just full on right from the beginning. It's no use to talk about the whole show, but man... It was easily the second most intense experience I've had - right there with Swans. Very similar, very different. I experienced severe time-sense distortion, but actually absolutely the opposite from swans - Swans played about 160 minutes and it didn't seem like that at all, I got in a trance and minutes and hours just flew by. Sunn took an eternity, it was like eternity spent in hell... NOT IN A BAD WAY MIND YOU. It was sort of like a long dream, one of those where you live a whole life and then wake up and feel disoriented. In the second half when Attila came in his mirror armor, I also had a sense of imminent death and had to crouch for a bit and hold the ground, I just couldn't cope.
Played about an hour and a half of total madness. Everything was spot on... Crazy loud, but not piercing, just a hulking mass of sound that took a hold of me and sucked all the air out of the room. When they stopped, it was the most sudden feeling of emptiness I ever felt. Hats off to Tos and his fucking scariest static statue-like presence at the Moog stand in the back... Hats off to Attila as well, he made noises I didn't know were humanly possible and scared the shit out of me.
met Greg and SOMA after the show. I almost couldn't talk... I'm still trying to compose myself now, 12 hours later. But this happened
it's the sticker I got with The Black One vinyl I just bought. Probably going to replace my Straight Pedge sticker that's in pretty horrible shape on my power supply. To channel the power straight from the mono)))lith
Can't say I want to see them again. It was a mind-blowing experience and I really liked it and consider the 26-hour-long return trip totally worth it but it was really heavy on me. Bordering "too much". I think it can be perfect to see them just once in a lifetime
but damn was I tempted!