If your band is a conceptual one, that writes to enhance the stories of characters created throughout the career, how do you pull off a concert avoiding spoilers and weaving a new narrative? Defeater showed us how at their recent show at Musik & Frieden.
Starting out with a song off their self-titled upcoming record, due to be released on May 10th, Stale Smoke could be a story about anybody. It tells of the dead-end existence of a monotonous hand-to-mouth life, no improvements in sight. Each of Defeater’s records focuses on one of the characters they established on their debut. As of yet, there has been no disclosure on which one the self-titled is going to be based around: it seems fitting they would throw the audience right into the mysterious corners of that unknown person’s secrets.
Bastards, too, serves as a prologue – was the album Letters Home about the father of the fictional family introduced on the first record, before he came to be the father he is? The second track off the record follows the opener before Defeater launch into several songs appearing on Abandoned, their most recent release.
Whilst said record dominates the evening, there is time for the new Mothers’ Son, Blessed Burden from their debut, as well as an appearance of their EP in the shape of The Red, White, and Blues.
Defeater dedicate the encore Cowardice to lead singer Derek Archambault’s grandfather, who had also been an inspiration to the performed December 1943.
Supporting the hardcore ambience was Dead Swans from Brighton, who, despite having released their only LP ten years ago, have been touring consistently every since. The second support Swain, originally from the Netherlands and now residing in Berlin, make life look just a tad brighter with their catchy grunge-y rock.
Defeater did not perform any new songs beside the singles already out, but with their new record on the horizon, here’s to hoping they come back to grace us with a live performance of it soon.
