Die Robot - Bossanova Ballroom - November 21, 2023

[Portland, OR] Second time we’ve seen them unfortunately. I’m embarrassed that three of the shows I’ve taken NiceButAlsoDangerous to are so genreatically similar … but I think the West Coast just has more of the industrial / darkwave I’ve always loved. Death rock, the origin genre of all these bands, started in San Fran or LA – both of these are bold statements that I cannot, in good conscience, stand by. Austin was definitely more psychedelic garage punk. Anyway, Die Robot is KMFDM, i.e., cheesy cock rock with choir-y woman vocalists backing up. As a youth, my passion for Ministry was only matched by my disdain for KMFDM. But Die Robot’s front man does amuse me with his shamelessly gimmicky ‘sexy’ poses. He peeked his head out before the show to check out the crowd and grimaced – small audience… blue hairs – but he still pulled out all the stops. He had a CCCP tattoo which NiceButAlsoDangerous knew meant the Soviet Union but I googled to see it was also a synth pop band from the 80s. He made the crowd yell ‘forces’ like a middle school teacher – generating some collective consciousness Durkheim might say (yes I’m teaching classic sociological theory this term). He described one song as a call to social action – he can calm down. For unknown reasons, there were three professional photographers running around capturing action shots – they had to be fronts. Pretty good light show. A person of multiple genders in front of me had a jacket that said “As above, So below” – which google tells me was a 2014 film but also represents The Principle of Correspondence (“The Kybalion. This Principle embodies the truth that there is always a Correspondence between the laws and phenomena of the various planes of Being and Life.”) (i.e., it’s gothy).


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