Live And In The Flesh
KMFDM - October 5, 2005
Almost a year to the date of the first KMFDM show I had hit up at Call the Office in London, Ontario, KMFDM provided me with yet another opportunity to catch their well-oiled industrial machine live. This time the show was being held in Ottawa at Barrymore's, a small club with the capacity of about 500 people. I was the only one out of the handful of us attending that had seen them live already, and I assured the guys they would be in for quite the performance. KMFDM were out promoting their latest album (fourteenth!), Hau Ruck. That Wednesday in October finally came around and we made our way to the city for showtime!
KMFDM brought along The Birthday Massacre for this tour, a Canadian band based out of London, Ontario. TBM had just released their second studio album, Violet and were eager to share their new material with the audience that night. They weren't up on stage for long, but they were able to get us warmed up within the limited amount of time that they had to work with.
The Birthday Massacre had just finished tearing down their instruments and set before KMFDM stormed the stage. The energy and passion that this band brought to the stage was unbelievable. Hau Ruck, the title track off of their latest album had their set fired up on all cylinders in no time. I was fully engaged after they rushed right into their next track, and one of my personal favourites, Son of a Gun! Free Your Hate, another one of their latest tracks followed it up. I figured we would be hearing plenty of Hau Ruck material. We ended up hearing just under half of their entire new album live, including the Jacques Dutronc cover Mini Mini Mini. The songs from their latest release worked seamlessly among their classics throughout the set as they pumped us up more and more.
Seeing as how KMFDM had fourteen albums worth of content to work with, it was no surprise they were able to incorporate tracks from eight of those albums into their show. Adios, one of my favourite tracks off of the album of the same name started to wind down their regular set. Waste, Last Things, and probably the highlight of the night for me, A Drug Against War, brought the song tally up to twelve already, and you could tell that they would be out for more. The crowd was loving every minute of it cheering them on to come back out. KMFDM charged back with a full-blown encore featuring WWIII, Attak/Reload, and yet another classic, Megalomaniac to finish us all off with a fifteen song setlist! I haven't been to another one of their shows since, but I can assure you that this one won't be the last.