Show Pics: Front 242 @ The Mohawk (4/17)

We have a little bonus show coverage today…

Wanting to run light, I grabbed the camera and mounted the smallest and lightest lens I have to go be amongst the EBM family the filled The Mohawk on a Tuesday night. That crowd was there to see Front 242, legends in the dark electro game, credited among the founders of the EBM scene. If you do not know of Front 242, shame on you.

I’ve had a good run of nostalgia lately. Perhaps I could keep the streak alive? Maybe not, but it wasn’t the band’s fault. Click through for a couple comments about the openers and the legends with pics from the crowd.

Openers consisted of Curse Mackey and Azar Swan. Curse Mackey has had several projects over the years, with Pigface and Evil Mothers most notable, so songs meandered through his catalog. Goth, industrial, emotional – A man, some keyboards and a laptop (NOT A MACBOOK). Oozes mood, segments of songs that allow him to step away from the controls bring out the inner alpha front man to compensate for times when anchored. Azar Swan’s Zohra Atash provides an ethereal vocal, using two mics in a very subtle layered approach to her vocal while Joshua Strawn is head down plugging away at synths and sequencers. I don’t know if I ever engaged fully, but I’ll give them an honest listen soon.

Front 242 had the projector on full, but allowed other lighting for colorful fills and strobes to strongly punctuate the harder-edged waveforms that set the songs in motion. Performance was strong, the band’s team up front seemingly ageless, solid vocals, marching and dancing as though time-travel from the clubs of Belgium was possible. Unfortunately, the sound couldn’t match the performance. For whatever reason, the audio through the mids including those fantastic synth sequences the band’s fans revel in were just too low. Bummer, I was hoping to really capture that wide-eyed fascination I had when I last saw the band in the early 90’s.

As for pics, I milled about a bit for the openers, but nestled into the middle of the crowd to just take it all in. Fan perspective at 35mm…