Wave Gotik Treffen 2025
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Friday and Saturday I spent partly at Agra, partly at Moritzbastei - two very different worlds, each offering something essential. The weather wasn’t exactly cooperating; skies brooding, rain sometimes whispering, sometimes shouting. But none of it mattered. The atmosphere was nothing short of electrifying. I had the chance not only to see some truly unforgettable performances but also to witness absolutely stunning crowds - people strolling through the streets of Leipzig like characters from a dreamscape. Every few steps, another glimpse of velvet, vinyl, lace, neon, spikes, or feathers. Every moment alive with individuality, with presence.
I also had some beautiful reunions. Old friends I hadn’t seen in years, since the early 2000s maybe, suddenly appearing in the crowd as if summoned by memory itself. We hugged, we laughed, we caught up. These weren’t just concerts - they were moments threaded into the larger tapestry of life.
And now, to the music…
Then Comes Silence at WGT - Vastness in Every Note
I’ve been following Then Comes Silence for years now. From small, intimate club stages to bigger festival slots - every time I see them live, I’m struck by the same thing: how naturally they command the space. Whether it's a smoky venue in the shadows or a towering hall like Agra, they don’t just perform - they inhabit the stage. And this year’s show at WGT was no exception.
What makes their performance so magnetic is the way they balance emotional weight with minimalistic means. There’s no overproduction, no excess. Just pure guitar textures that shimmer and cut, basslines that pulse like a second heartbeat, and drums that stay vibrant, alive, and insistent. Every element is placed with care - never crowding the others, never straining for attention. The music is given space to breathe, and in doing so, it runs freely: dark, melodic, unbound.
And then there’s Alex Svenson’s voice.
His vocal delivery is effortless but not passive. It reaches out, clear and resonant, cutting through the layers with a kind of haunted grace. There’s something magnetic in the way he sings: part lament, part incantation. It doesn’t force itself upon you; it draws you in. It wraps around you, not like a wave, but like fog - soft, persistent, impossible to ignore.
The entire set felt like a slow-burning invocation, emotionally charged yet sonically restrained. The kind of performance that reminds you: you don’t need theatrics when the music itself holds all the depth, drama, and sincerity you could ask for.
Then Comes Silence once again proved that you don’t need to shout to be heard. You just need to mean every note. And they do.
SKYND - The Theatre of the Unspoken
"If you can't be a good example, be a horrible warning."
If one word could capture SKYND’s performance, it would be confrontation — not aggressive, but intimate, ritualistic, and deeply unsettling in its precision. Minimal in form, maximal in impact, SKYND creates a space where true crime becomes both the subject and the stage, and the listener is never merely a spectator, but a witness.
The contrast is striking: the set is visually stripped down, the aesthetic cold and deliberate — yet what unfolds is anything but empty. SKYND’s voice is the center of gravity. Piercing, elastic, theatrical, and eerily childlike at times, it twists and climbs with feral elegance. There’s an echo here of Yolandi Vi$$er — not just in vocal technique, but in that uncanny ability to embody discomfort and power simultaneously. It’s both playful and merciless, exaggerated and controlled. A voice that doesn’t imitate trauma, but channels it.
Behind her, Father weaves a tightly wound tapestry of sound — industrial edges, nu-metal throb, electronic fracture, and cinematic dissonance all converging. Every track felt like a file pulled from an evidence locker and reanimated on stage. And yet, none of it felt gratuitous. This wasn’t spectacle for its own sake — it was sonic storytelling, and its strength lay in the economy of its parts: one voice, one presence, and an overwhelming sense of design.
The result was eclecticism sharpened into a blade — the horrorcore elements, the nu-metal pacing, the glitched-out electronic motifs, and the industrial thrust didn't compete, they coagulated into a singular, horrifying beauty. Tracks like "Columbine," "Elisa Lam," or "Gary Heidnik" are not just songs — they are portraits, refracted through trauma, built to disturb and seduce.
SKYND doesn’t pretend to offer catharsis. There is no resolution. Just tension, repetition, rupture — and that voice, soaring above it all like a damaged angel in a crime-scene opera.
A revelation? Absolutely. But more than that — a warning disguised as music. And I loved every second of it.
Nouvelle Vague – A Dream Reimagined on Stage
There are concerts, and then there are evenings that feel like opening a secret door inside your own memory. The Nouvelle Vague spectacle at WGT was just that — not so much a show, as an atmosphere. A cinematic reverie woven from whispers, shadows, and songs you thought you knew.
It’s astonishing how this French collective continues to reinvent the very idea of reinterpretation. Their covers — mostly New Wave and post-punk classics — aren’t mere tributes. They are delicate transformations, drenched in bossa nova, lounge, and chanson noir. And when performed live, they bloom into something even more rare: an invitation to feel differently about what you already know.
From the first notes, the audience was caught in a suspended breath of elegance. The arrangements were minimal yet intoxicating. Each beat softened, each melody slowed just enough to allow the lyrics to fall with more weight. Joy Division’s "Love Will Tear Us Apart," The Cure’s "A Forest," or Depeche Mode’s "Just Can’t Get Enough" — suddenly not teenage anthems anymore, but haunted lullabies, full of fragility and grace. But the true spell was cast by the vocalists, moving through the songs like sirens in silk. Flirtatious, melancholic, ironic, wistful — they played with tone like dancers play with light. Every gesture, every glance, felt choreographed not for spectacle, but for emotional precision. It was elegant, but never distant. The kind of performance where the heart smiles before the lips do.
And somewhere between the fog machines and soft spotlight, between nostalgia and newness, it became clear: Nouvelle Vague doesn’t cover songs — they dream them differently. And they let us dream with them.
Alphaville – A Walk Down Memory Lane, Bittersweet and Faintly Glimmering
To witness Alphaville at WGT was not about chasing musical perfection. It wasn’t even necessarily about the performance itself — but rather about what those songs mean to us, what they carry. There are few melodies more deeply etched into the European collective memory than "Forever Young" or "Big in Japan." They’re not just pop songs — they’re ghosts of adolescence, warm flashbacks to youth, to yearning, to that strange hunger for beauty and eternity we felt before we had the words for it.
So when those unmistakable synth lines floated through the air, something stirred. Not because it was delivered flawlessly (it wasn’t), nor because the arrangements were groundbreaking (they weren’t) — but because the emotional core of the music still pulsed. The set felt like a hazy mirror, slightly cracked, showing not the present but the echo of a golden past.
Yes, time has moved on — in vocal range, in energy, in staging. But Alphaville was never just about spectacle. The magic always lived somewhere else: in the feelings they unlocked. In that moment, we weren’t standing in front of a legendary band — we were standing in front of our own memories.
And maybe that’s enough.
Maybe that’s exactly what we needed.
Kite – The Sound That Breaks You, Gently
Kite is not just a band I love. It’s a wound I return to willingly. Their music doesn’t play at you — it enters you, carefully, tenderly, and then rearranges something vital inside.
Niklas Stenemo’s voice is unlike any other. It’s not just beautiful — it’s disarming. It bypasses all my emotional firewalls, all the hardened layers I didn’t even know I was carrying, and it goes straight to the heart. No resistance, no delay. Just one note, and I’m undone. There’s a tremble in his tone that feels like honesty made audible. It’s fragile and strong in the same breath — like someone singing in a storm, refusing to break. His voice doesn’t ask for attention. It claims it, because it speaks to something you’ve hidden even from yourself. And when he sings, I feel seen in ways that words alone could never reach.
The sound around him — the sweeping, icy synths, the ghostly echoes, the slow-burn buildups — all create a sonic space where emotions have no place to hide. It’s vast and intimate at once. And then, that moment: goosebumps, every time. Because Kite doesn’t just perform, they summon. Nostalgia, longing, quiet despair, but also light. Hope. Tenderness. That impossible ache of being alive.
At WGT, it happened again. That familiar shiver in my spine, tears just behind my eyes, and that sense of: yes, this is the feeling I’ve been waiting to remember.
Saturay started with heavy rain and Agra old school ebmers
Absurd Minds & Spetsnaz
Some days don’t start with coffee — they start with a bassline that hits you square in the chest, reminding you what it feels like to experience music with your whole body. Saturday afternoon at Agra began exactly that way, with two bands that don’t just perform — they resurrect entire eras.
First came Absurd Minds. For someone who grew up with "Deception", this wasn’t just a show — it was a personal time capsule, a reminder of days when melancholy came dressed in electronic textures, and you didn’t have to choose between emotion and rhythm. The realization that "Deception" came out 25 years ago? That’s enough to make you wonder if it’s time for a medical check-up — but also proof that music doesn’t age when it’s born of truth.Toralf still sings with that same clarity, depth, and shade of sorrow. The band's sound may have grown more refined, more restrained over the years — but it has gained a kind of dignity that doesn’t suppress emotion, only shapes it into something quietly powerful.
And then came Spetsnaz — and the nostalgia got steamrolled. This wasn’t a show. It was a march. Pure EBM with an iron pulse, vocals that don’t ask, they command. For me, it was a direct link back to the "Grand Design" era — my favorite kind of stomp, raw and merciless, no frills, just the pulse of pure drive and discipline. It’s the kind of music that doesn’t invite you to dance — it demands it, because your body has no other choice, because the beat takes over. Spetsnaz doesn’t need stage gimmicks or drama, because their sound is already a weapon. And thank the scene gods for that.
After that show I moved to Moritzbastei, wwhich, at that point was already packed to its capacity
Lovataraxx – Claustrophobia, Catharsis, and a Beat That Won’t Let Go
To see Lovataraxx live at WGT, you had to fight for it. Literally. Moritzbastei was bursting at the seams, with every square centimeter occupied by people hungry for sound, for sweat, for that unmistakable pulse. It wasn’t just packed — it was a collective exhale on the edge of explosion. And once they hit the stage, it was absolutely clear: every bruised rib and lost drop of air was worth it.
Lovataraxx, the French coldwave/dark electro duo from Grenoble, are masters of that delicate collision between rhythm and rupture. Their sound fuses coldwave melancholy with an irresistible club logic — beats that throb, synths that stab, vocals that walk a tightrope between detachment and desperation. But live? Live, it transforms.
Their WGT show wasn’t just good — it was feral. The kind of set that grabs your spine and reprograms it to move. The pounding rhythm didn’t just invite dancing — it demanded surrender. Their electronic arsenal was sharp, lean, and full of razor precision, but what made the performance unforgettable was their sheer charisma and kinetic control of the room. No distance. No walls. Just electricity and sweat.
The emotional charge in their music — always present in recordings — became a physical force onstage. They made the room feel like an underground cathedral for the wired and the brokenhearted.
Lovataraxx don’t just play gigs.
They stage possessions.
Next I moved on to WGT Noise Floors
Darkrad — A Shrine of Sound and Fury
Candles flickered. A canvas stood upright like a question. The room breathed in silence. What we were looking at seemed like a sacred space — dim, minimal, reverent. But that was just the surface. The altar was set, but the offering hadn’t begun.
And then: Jana.
She doesn’t enter the stage — she emerges from it. A force older than any stage could contain. Sorceress. Priestess. Baba Yaga. Fury. Earth. Memory. Her presence was not staged, it was summoned. Every gesture, every breath was ritual, not performance.Black paint struck the canvas — not in strokes, but in blows. Like scars made visible. As if she was exorcising pain with each movement. Voice rising, not to entertain, but to tell. And the song — a melody not known by the mind, but remembered by the body. Rooted. Shared. Ancestral. I didn’t recognize it in any logical sense, but it lived in me. Inherited. Unnamed. Felt.
What unfolded was raw expression without filter, without staging tricks. Primal art stripped to its core: body, sound, and one canvas to carry it all. Jana offered something frighteningly intimate — and courageous beyond words.
It wasn’t theatre.
It was invocation.
And then… after the solemn, breathtaking ritual that was Darkrad, came an explosion.A release.A wave of pure, unfiltered muscle and heart.One project after another ignited the stage — a chain reaction of handmade fury and electronic pulse.
Musique Electronique. Heimstatt Yipotash. Udo himself.
This wasn’t just music — it was a kinetic charge. Each beat giving the body a reason to move, to stretch, to burn off all that had built up before. A celebration of movement, sweat, and sound sculpted into rhythm.
I danced like I had new legs. Like the world ended and started right there. Perfect finale. Thank you for this chain of energy, this fire of sound, this reminder of why we come back.
WGT 2025 — you broke me open, and I’m grateful.
I also had some beautiful reunions. Old friends I hadn’t seen in years, since the early 2000s maybe, suddenly appearing in the crowd as if summoned by memory itself. We hugged, we laughed, we caught up. These weren’t just concerts - they were moments threaded into the larger tapestry of life.
And now, to the music…
Then Comes Silence at WGT - Vastness in Every Note
I’ve been following Then Comes Silence for years now. From small, intimate club stages to bigger festival slots - every time I see them live, I’m struck by the same thing: how naturally they command the space. Whether it's a smoky venue in the shadows or a towering hall like Agra, they don’t just perform - they inhabit the stage. And this year’s show at WGT was no exception.
What makes their performance so magnetic is the way they balance emotional weight with minimalistic means. There’s no overproduction, no excess. Just pure guitar textures that shimmer and cut, basslines that pulse like a second heartbeat, and drums that stay vibrant, alive, and insistent. Every element is placed with care - never crowding the others, never straining for attention. The music is given space to breathe, and in doing so, it runs freely: dark, melodic, unbound.
And then there’s Alex Svenson’s voice.
His vocal delivery is effortless but not passive. It reaches out, clear and resonant, cutting through the layers with a kind of haunted grace. There’s something magnetic in the way he sings: part lament, part incantation. It doesn’t force itself upon you; it draws you in. It wraps around you, not like a wave, but like fog - soft, persistent, impossible to ignore.
The entire set felt like a slow-burning invocation, emotionally charged yet sonically restrained. The kind of performance that reminds you: you don’t need theatrics when the music itself holds all the depth, drama, and sincerity you could ask for.
Then Comes Silence once again proved that you don’t need to shout to be heard. You just need to mean every note. And they do.
SKYND - The Theatre of the Unspoken
"If you can't be a good example, be a horrible warning."
If one word could capture SKYND’s performance, it would be confrontation — not aggressive, but intimate, ritualistic, and deeply unsettling in its precision. Minimal in form, maximal in impact, SKYND creates a space where true crime becomes both the subject and the stage, and the listener is never merely a spectator, but a witness.
The contrast is striking: the set is visually stripped down, the aesthetic cold and deliberate — yet what unfolds is anything but empty. SKYND’s voice is the center of gravity. Piercing, elastic, theatrical, and eerily childlike at times, it twists and climbs with feral elegance. There’s an echo here of Yolandi Vi$$er — not just in vocal technique, but in that uncanny ability to embody discomfort and power simultaneously. It’s both playful and merciless, exaggerated and controlled. A voice that doesn’t imitate trauma, but channels it.
Behind her, Father weaves a tightly wound tapestry of sound — industrial edges, nu-metal throb, electronic fracture, and cinematic dissonance all converging. Every track felt like a file pulled from an evidence locker and reanimated on stage. And yet, none of it felt gratuitous. This wasn’t spectacle for its own sake — it was sonic storytelling, and its strength lay in the economy of its parts: one voice, one presence, and an overwhelming sense of design.
The result was eclecticism sharpened into a blade — the horrorcore elements, the nu-metal pacing, the glitched-out electronic motifs, and the industrial thrust didn't compete, they coagulated into a singular, horrifying beauty. Tracks like "Columbine," "Elisa Lam," or "Gary Heidnik" are not just songs — they are portraits, refracted through trauma, built to disturb and seduce.
SKYND doesn’t pretend to offer catharsis. There is no resolution. Just tension, repetition, rupture — and that voice, soaring above it all like a damaged angel in a crime-scene opera.
A revelation? Absolutely. But more than that — a warning disguised as music. And I loved every second of it.
Nouvelle Vague – A Dream Reimagined on Stage
There are concerts, and then there are evenings that feel like opening a secret door inside your own memory. The Nouvelle Vague spectacle at WGT was just that — not so much a show, as an atmosphere. A cinematic reverie woven from whispers, shadows, and songs you thought you knew.
It’s astonishing how this French collective continues to reinvent the very idea of reinterpretation. Their covers — mostly New Wave and post-punk classics — aren’t mere tributes. They are delicate transformations, drenched in bossa nova, lounge, and chanson noir. And when performed live, they bloom into something even more rare: an invitation to feel differently about what you already know.
From the first notes, the audience was caught in a suspended breath of elegance. The arrangements were minimal yet intoxicating. Each beat softened, each melody slowed just enough to allow the lyrics to fall with more weight. Joy Division’s "Love Will Tear Us Apart," The Cure’s "A Forest," or Depeche Mode’s "Just Can’t Get Enough" — suddenly not teenage anthems anymore, but haunted lullabies, full of fragility and grace. But the true spell was cast by the vocalists, moving through the songs like sirens in silk. Flirtatious, melancholic, ironic, wistful — they played with tone like dancers play with light. Every gesture, every glance, felt choreographed not for spectacle, but for emotional precision. It was elegant, but never distant. The kind of performance where the heart smiles before the lips do.
And somewhere between the fog machines and soft spotlight, between nostalgia and newness, it became clear: Nouvelle Vague doesn’t cover songs — they dream them differently. And they let us dream with them.
Alphaville – A Walk Down Memory Lane, Bittersweet and Faintly Glimmering
To witness Alphaville at WGT was not about chasing musical perfection. It wasn’t even necessarily about the performance itself — but rather about what those songs mean to us, what they carry. There are few melodies more deeply etched into the European collective memory than "Forever Young" or "Big in Japan." They’re not just pop songs — they’re ghosts of adolescence, warm flashbacks to youth, to yearning, to that strange hunger for beauty and eternity we felt before we had the words for it.
So when those unmistakable synth lines floated through the air, something stirred. Not because it was delivered flawlessly (it wasn’t), nor because the arrangements were groundbreaking (they weren’t) — but because the emotional core of the music still pulsed. The set felt like a hazy mirror, slightly cracked, showing not the present but the echo of a golden past.
Yes, time has moved on — in vocal range, in energy, in staging. But Alphaville was never just about spectacle. The magic always lived somewhere else: in the feelings they unlocked. In that moment, we weren’t standing in front of a legendary band — we were standing in front of our own memories.
And maybe that’s enough.
Maybe that’s exactly what we needed.
Kite – The Sound That Breaks You, Gently
Kite is not just a band I love. It’s a wound I return to willingly. Their music doesn’t play at you — it enters you, carefully, tenderly, and then rearranges something vital inside.
Niklas Stenemo’s voice is unlike any other. It’s not just beautiful — it’s disarming. It bypasses all my emotional firewalls, all the hardened layers I didn’t even know I was carrying, and it goes straight to the heart. No resistance, no delay. Just one note, and I’m undone. There’s a tremble in his tone that feels like honesty made audible. It’s fragile and strong in the same breath — like someone singing in a storm, refusing to break. His voice doesn’t ask for attention. It claims it, because it speaks to something you’ve hidden even from yourself. And when he sings, I feel seen in ways that words alone could never reach.
The sound around him — the sweeping, icy synths, the ghostly echoes, the slow-burn buildups — all create a sonic space where emotions have no place to hide. It’s vast and intimate at once. And then, that moment: goosebumps, every time. Because Kite doesn’t just perform, they summon. Nostalgia, longing, quiet despair, but also light. Hope. Tenderness. That impossible ache of being alive.
At WGT, it happened again. That familiar shiver in my spine, tears just behind my eyes, and that sense of: yes, this is the feeling I’ve been waiting to remember.
Saturay started with heavy rain and Agra old school ebmers
Absurd Minds & Spetsnaz
Some days don’t start with coffee — they start with a bassline that hits you square in the chest, reminding you what it feels like to experience music with your whole body. Saturday afternoon at Agra began exactly that way, with two bands that don’t just perform — they resurrect entire eras.
First came Absurd Minds. For someone who grew up with "Deception", this wasn’t just a show — it was a personal time capsule, a reminder of days when melancholy came dressed in electronic textures, and you didn’t have to choose between emotion and rhythm. The realization that "Deception" came out 25 years ago? That’s enough to make you wonder if it’s time for a medical check-up — but also proof that music doesn’t age when it’s born of truth.Toralf still sings with that same clarity, depth, and shade of sorrow. The band's sound may have grown more refined, more restrained over the years — but it has gained a kind of dignity that doesn’t suppress emotion, only shapes it into something quietly powerful.
And then came Spetsnaz — and the nostalgia got steamrolled. This wasn’t a show. It was a march. Pure EBM with an iron pulse, vocals that don’t ask, they command. For me, it was a direct link back to the "Grand Design" era — my favorite kind of stomp, raw and merciless, no frills, just the pulse of pure drive and discipline. It’s the kind of music that doesn’t invite you to dance — it demands it, because your body has no other choice, because the beat takes over. Spetsnaz doesn’t need stage gimmicks or drama, because their sound is already a weapon. And thank the scene gods for that.
After that show I moved to Moritzbastei, wwhich, at that point was already packed to its capacity
Lovataraxx – Claustrophobia, Catharsis, and a Beat That Won’t Let Go
To see Lovataraxx live at WGT, you had to fight for it. Literally. Moritzbastei was bursting at the seams, with every square centimeter occupied by people hungry for sound, for sweat, for that unmistakable pulse. It wasn’t just packed — it was a collective exhale on the edge of explosion. And once they hit the stage, it was absolutely clear: every bruised rib and lost drop of air was worth it.
Lovataraxx, the French coldwave/dark electro duo from Grenoble, are masters of that delicate collision between rhythm and rupture. Their sound fuses coldwave melancholy with an irresistible club logic — beats that throb, synths that stab, vocals that walk a tightrope between detachment and desperation. But live? Live, it transforms.
Their WGT show wasn’t just good — it was feral. The kind of set that grabs your spine and reprograms it to move. The pounding rhythm didn’t just invite dancing — it demanded surrender. Their electronic arsenal was sharp, lean, and full of razor precision, but what made the performance unforgettable was their sheer charisma and kinetic control of the room. No distance. No walls. Just electricity and sweat.
The emotional charge in their music — always present in recordings — became a physical force onstage. They made the room feel like an underground cathedral for the wired and the brokenhearted.
Lovataraxx don’t just play gigs.
They stage possessions.
Next I moved on to WGT Noise Floors
Darkrad — A Shrine of Sound and Fury
Candles flickered. A canvas stood upright like a question. The room breathed in silence. What we were looking at seemed like a sacred space — dim, minimal, reverent. But that was just the surface. The altar was set, but the offering hadn’t begun.
And then: Jana.
She doesn’t enter the stage — she emerges from it. A force older than any stage could contain. Sorceress. Priestess. Baba Yaga. Fury. Earth. Memory. Her presence was not staged, it was summoned. Every gesture, every breath was ritual, not performance.Black paint struck the canvas — not in strokes, but in blows. Like scars made visible. As if she was exorcising pain with each movement. Voice rising, not to entertain, but to tell. And the song — a melody not known by the mind, but remembered by the body. Rooted. Shared. Ancestral. I didn’t recognize it in any logical sense, but it lived in me. Inherited. Unnamed. Felt.
What unfolded was raw expression without filter, without staging tricks. Primal art stripped to its core: body, sound, and one canvas to carry it all. Jana offered something frighteningly intimate — and courageous beyond words.
It wasn’t theatre.
It was invocation.
And then… after the solemn, breathtaking ritual that was Darkrad, came an explosion.A release.A wave of pure, unfiltered muscle and heart.One project after another ignited the stage — a chain reaction of handmade fury and electronic pulse.
Musique Electronique. Heimstatt Yipotash. Udo himself.
This wasn’t just music — it was a kinetic charge. Each beat giving the body a reason to move, to stretch, to burn off all that had built up before. A celebration of movement, sweat, and sound sculpted into rhythm.
I danced like I had new legs. Like the world ended and started right there. Perfect finale. Thank you for this chain of energy, this fire of sound, this reminder of why we come back.
WGT 2025 — you broke me open, and I’m grateful.
