Genre: Industrial / Neofolk 01 Gulag Good-bye 02 Free 03 Gebirge, See, Flachland, Spree 04 Velebitski Vukovi 05 Wohin Wir Gehören 06 Izobrazba 07 God Broke 08 Der Geist Der Erzeihung 09 Tri Srca Junacka 10 Der Meldereiter 11 Na Rad! 12 Good Evening, Zagreb 13 Nezdrava Tvorba 14 Ashura This DVD-R is a document of a Bleiburg live performance at the Panoptikum Club in Kassel, Germany, in June 2007. The Eastern Front have taken the unusual step of releasing this simultaneously as an audio CD-R and a video DVD-R, in an edition of 300 copies each. Both the audio and video discs are presented in the oversize gatefold card sleeves which are typical for Eastern Front releases, though the artwork is slightly different for the two different releases. The DVD includes an extra track which isn’t on the CD version – more of this later. For this performance, Stefan Rukavina, the German-Slovenian founder of Bleiburg, is joined by Edmund W. Schroeder, who also records as MDMA, who contributes live vocals to some tracks as well as playing synth throughout. Those familiar with Bleiburg’s sprawlingly vast back catalogue will know that the band’s music is widely various, from ethnically-tinged neo-folk through martial industrial to hard electronic dance music, but this performance stays firmly within the last category, with 14 songs including such well-known Bleiburg compositions as ‘Der Meldereiter’, ‘Gebirge, See, Flachland, Spree’, ‘Der Geist Der Erzeihung’ and ‘Good Evening, Zagreb’. ‘Free’ is a cover of the Depeche Mode song. Tracks which stand out for me include ‘Velebitski Vukovi’, its hard EBM beat embellished with richly textured cut-up noise, ‘Izobrazba’, which invokes WAT-era Laibach with its intricate rhythms, and the more laid-back ‘Tri Srca Junacka’, which has a leisurely dub beat overlaid with odd creaking noises and vocal samples, something like the industrial dub of Scorn. There’s a fundamental problem at the heart of this DVD, though, which is simply that it’s not at all interesting to watch. Basically, you’re watching two blokes in black T-shirts stand behind their keyboards for an hour and a quarter. I’ve been to quite a few live shows like this, and frankly, they’re bloody boring. They get even more boring when you’re watching them at home without an overpriced nightclub beer to drink and a steady stream of scantily-clad goth chicks to ogle. If your band looks like this dull on stage, then you owe the audience at least a spectacular light show or some video projections to add visual stimulation, but the Bleiburg show has none of this, just some strobe and dry ice. Audience interaction is minimal, being confined to an occasional nod of the head between songs from EW Schroeder. In fact, were it not for several audience members accidentally wandering in front of the camera, you’d hardly know it’s a live event at all. Compared to some of the Bacchanalian revels I’ve witnessed at punk and metal gigs, this is a very restrained affair. The visual tedium is exacerbated by the whole show being filmed from a single fixed-position camera at house left. The camera pans and zooms in, but never moves from its spot. Even having two cameras to intercut shots from would have made a huge difference, but with such a low-budget presentation, you really need some seriously charismatic performers on stage to compensate for the lack of sophistication in the production, and I’m afraid Bleiburg just don’t cut it. There’s a second less serious problem as well. The extra track on the Open Wound DVD is ‘Wohin Wir Gehören’, which appears as the fifth track. This is noted on the DVD menu, but not on the sleeve, which only lists 13 tracks. This means that the sleeve track-listing is inaccurate after track four. Given that the DVD sleeve differs from the CD sleeve, so it must have been printed separately, it seems a bit careless not to have changed the track-listing. The Eastern Front are selling this DVD-R for the same price as the CD-R, but even if you’re a Bleiburg fan, take my word for it, there’s no real point in watching this. Sure, you might as well get the DVD-R for the extra track, but you’ll probably enjoy this at least as much, and possibly more, without the visuals. I have a lot of respect for The Eastern Front as a label, and I’m quite partial to the music of Bleiburg as well, but I really don’t understand why either the artist or the label thought that Open Wound needed to be released as a DVD. As music, this is fine, but as a film, it’s pretty pointless.