The cruxshadows @ Manchester academy 3, 2005
Another uk tour from the u.s goth band with support from katscan and mechanical cabaret. Thankfully this time around it's a better venue than the last time I saw them at the night & day cafe (boiling is not the right word to describe that venue!).
First on are Katscan, they were a little different than I expected (having seen photos of them in bloody medical gear!) but not too bad, having only heard a few tracks beforehand they were musically what I had expected at least but a few tracks were a bit too similar for my liking. They certainly weren't terrible though compared to the second support band Mechanical cabaret who fair enough might intend to be a goth comedy band but I didn't 'get it' if they are. They were a bit too gimmicky for me and verging between trip hop and random electronic bleeps with spoken vocals it just didn't appeal to me really.
After that you can spot rogue making his way/hiding in amongst the crowd whilst the cruxshadows start their set, with the usual dancers (who must have been bloody knackered afterwards!) and a slight change in line-up. Going through a decent set of old tracks and newer tracks, we get rogues usual crowd wandering (being slightly scared that he'll pop up from nowhere and scare the crap out of you!) and dancing with the audience. Going through tracks such as 'deception', 'winterborn (this sacrifice)', & 'resist', we got more amusing crowd dancing antics including a bar style dance with an audience member and rogue during 'deception'. They come back for an encore ending on 'marilyn my bitterness' during which half the audience get grabbed up onstage (god knows how they all fitted on), overall it was a very entertaining night.
Review by queenoftiaras