02.08.2018 Oomph!

Wacken Open Air XXIX

Wacken (Germany)

(Pentax K-5 with Sigma AF 70-200mm 2.8 EX DC APO HSM II)

It has been six years since that I watched Oomph! for the last time at the Wacken Open Air. To that time the stage was called Party Stage and they were living up to that name. Today it is called Louder Stage and again the name was saying it all. Since their 25th jubilee in 2015 there was no new album released but that did not do any harm as the chosen songs were also making the people in front of the stage move.
Surprisingly, they were mainly relying on tracks of their most successful albums “GlaubeLiebeTod” and “Monster” that are already a little bit older and were omitting the latest album “XXV” completely. Actually, Oomph! is formed “only” by singer Dero Goi, Andreas Crap and Robert Flux. Each of them is taking over several instruments and the background singing but live they are reinforcing themselves by Hagen on bass, Felix on keyboards, Okusa as percussionist and Silvestri on drums so that it was getting quite crowded on the meanwhile quite huge stage. Again and again Dero was picking up the drumsticks to work on his drums whilst he was cheering the audience on to sing along even louder. In-between there were even Oomph!-chants. The lyrics were loudly sang along by really everyone and it was a huge party with crackers like “Mein Schatz” or “Sandmann”. Not only the band was having a lot of fun. In-between Dero jumped onto the audience for some crowd surfing before the atmosphere was at its boiling point during the last two songs especially “Augen Auf!”. Everybody was loudly counting before the refrain started and Dero encouraged the people again and again to get even louder.
This gig was simply wicked! Terrific songs (although there could have been some newer ones also), great atmosphere and nice weather. Whereas I find it very admirable that in the beginning all bandmembers came onto the stage wearing long dark clothes. But at considerably more than 30°C it did not take long time until they were taking them off. At some point in time I absolutely have to watch them on a solo concert and hopefully there will soon be some new material!