VNV Nation, Ayria and the Shouty German Blokes at the Corporation, Sheffield

I got off the train in Sheffield yesterday to a grey autumn day. It was bitterly cold and quite quiet for a bustling city. My tram ride up to my hotel took me past streets of closed shops and people huddled up in various winter accoutrements. This sounds like the start of a horror story, but it really isn’t, it was just the less than hospitable climate that greeted me. Usually I'm a big fan of Sheffield, but it was pretty chilly yesterday.

When I got to my hotel the staff were nice and the place was warm. I ate some weird sandwich concoction on pinky red bread and went upstairs to make my hair go into cyber style Princess Leia bunches with fake dreads, ribbons and goggles. It took as long as it sounds.

Now onto the interesting bit; the gig itself. Aside from getting lost for about five minutes on the way down to the venue (I'd only been there once before, and it was coming from the other side of the city centre, alright?) I made it in good time to collect my ticket and stake out a place with both a good view and away from all routes to the bar. I failed at both. Oh well.

Ayria, the first support act, started early, so I was still trying to buy a copy of their excellent album Hearts for Bullets (shameless plug no. 1) when they came on stage. It’s difficult for a band with only two members to have a stage presence, even more so when supporting someone as big as VNV Nation, but I thought they rose to the challenge admirably. After a few PA issues made Ayria herself’s voice a bit hard to hear for the first two songs or so they picked up and delivered well with their interesting and unusual combination of slamming industrial dance beats and sugary sweet female vocals. Fans of Octolab and Angelspit take note (shameless plug no.2). I also had the pleasure of meeting Ayria afterwards. She was very nice and seemed genuinely touched by my compliments. I can’t wait to see her again when she supports the Cruxshadows next month (shameless plug no. 3. I really, really like these guys, although still not sure if the other bloke was there just for the live set and it’s an ‘official’ part of the band....)

Then the second support act came on. They weren’t terrible exactly, just a bit generic. There’s a lot of shouty EBM songs in German doing the rounds and although there’s a few stonkers out there, these guys didn’t have any of them. I don’t remember their name and I spent most of their set smoking outside, so I don’t really feel like commenting on them.

VNV Nation themselves were absolutely fantastic. They came armed with quite a long set (I was too busy watching the funky light shows to check my watch, but they played for at least ninety minutes) but never lost momentum. Ronan had a real connection with the audience and although I'd heard some complaints that he talks too much I found him really amusing. I think my favourite bit was when they took the glow sticks that had been chucked onto the stage and hung them in a pretty little pattern on the ‘drum module.’ The crowd didn’t seem to get tired either. If anything the longer the band played the more hyper and into it everyone got. They stomped through my favourite song (‘Chrome’) quite early in the set but I didn’t really mind. Even the songs I didn’t know very well I was singing along with by the end. At the encore the band seemed genuinely overwhelmed to hear the crowd chanting VNV! VNV! at them and the finale of ‘Perpetual’ (another firm favourite of mine) with officially the longest sing song end ever was incredible. It sounds cheesy to say but there seemed a real connection both between band and audience and the individual audience members. Although the Corporation is a relatively large venue the gig felt wonderfully intimate.

Afterwards it was a few drinks at the after party followed by an intrepid expedition to see what Sheffield has to offer on a Sunday night. Not much apparently. We convinced on bar to give us a drink despite it being two minutes before closing time and bumped into some incredibly drunk students, one of which wanted to lick my goggles. There was so much dancing going on in the Corp that there was sweat dripping from the ceiling, so the poor lad probably picked up a dose of something nasty, that is if he can feel it through the hangover. I surfaced in the morning rather easily. Probably something to do with the world famour Harley Hotel full English breakfasts.

All in all a wonderful night! I'd never seen any of the bands before but, aside from the Shouty German Blokes, everyone put on a fantastic show and I urge anyone who gets the chance to go see.

Peace and love x

P.S. No blog next week. I'm on my jollies. They're might be a double blog the week after though. I'll see what state I'm in after WGW.