Since New Year's Eve festivities are often a particularly perverse vision of Hell, the mysterious venue that serves as Rosa Crux's lair (let's stylize it Rosa†Crvx for aesthetic fidelity) seemed an ideal place to end 2024 with a final ritual. At least we wouldn't be bothered with the conga or any other atrocious torments that even Dante didn't dare to imagine.
A magnificent theatre showcasing the gothic scene (in recent years, Sieben, Sexblood, JE T'AIME, Malefixio, Then Comes Silence and Aux Animaux have all set up their bats here), this former mill on the outskirts of Rouen plunges us into the very special world of the enigmatic project that Olivier Tarabo and Claude Feeny have been working on for forty years. Redecorated as a vault that would make Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, Mario Bava or Terence Fisher green with envy, the attention to detail is impressive. We are welcomed in a superb lounge that doubles as a shop (with an incredible selection of dream objects), where we can also pick up our (very beautiful) tickets for the Totenbahn, a ‘macabre train’ that strips the traditional fairground attraction of its flashy effects to offer a fun, mystical and disturbing funereal experience. The bar is called La Clocue du Diable (the Devil's Bell), and you pay in Lvx (the local currency) to have a drink around a coffin. It's as immersive and cosy as the coziest of tombs.
You'd almost forget that you were there to listen to some music. Small benches, as in church, allow some of the audience to sit down, leaving those at the back a chance to see the musicians play below, between the columns and under the vaults in a majestic catacomb setting. As logistics demand, opening for Rosa†Crvx offers the privilege of playing surrounded by a carillon and the B.A.M. (Batterie Acoustique Midi), those delightful automaton skeletons. You forget about the screen, relegated to a corner for lack of appropriate space, to better appreciate the rest.
CURTAIN
In recent years, a number of bands from the French and international gothic scene have emerged from their long slumber. Corpus Delicti, Les Tétines Noires, The March Violets and Rosetta Stone have all been reborn after years of silence, and there are even rumours that Rosa†Crvx might (finally) be releasing a new album! Curtain had a late resurrection too: after two albums and an EP between the late 90s and the early 2000s, the cold wave outfit announced their return in 2022 and released Between Us this year, their first album in 18 years.
On stage, François Peronet's bass amplifies the post-punk tension of the tracks, giving a more rock energy and spontaneity to the spleen. Curtain is all about melancholy, despite the liveliness of the electronics: there's plenty to dance to, but it's all sadness. On vocals, Emmanuel Burget conjures up spectres in shades of grey, rainy memories of The Cure and Clan of Xymox. The pop sweetness of the recent track Unbelievable collides with more aggressive parts like the corrosive Good Career or Can't Say No, with its incisive guitar and frenetic panic. It just goes to show that the more recent tracks, while lacking the dissonant deviances of Urban Disease, can still bite hard! At times like these, you can't help but think that playing in front of a seated audience must feel very strange for the band. It's a fine balancing act between visceral energy, cold revelry and introspection. Curtain are looking to the future, with several dates to come and a new album in the pipeline: let's keep an eye on them!
DAGEIST
There's something immediately charming about DaGeist. The complicity between singer Davide Schiavoni and bassist Frédéric Strzelczyk is obvious, and both exude a touching sympathy. It's almost annoying: DaGeist's music is haunting and sad, but their live shows impose a good humour, a pleasure in sharing that makes you involuntarily smile when you thought you could sulk quietly in the darkness. Their faces are irresistible, their energy infectious.
These two know how to turn up the heat, despite the coldness of the tracks. Live, the music takes on a new, more aggressive dimension, highlighting a few flashes that flirt with industrial and techno, such as the snarling Trash Disco or The Abyss of Years, where mechanical harshness and fractured sensitivity blend, Schiavoni easily replacing Trisomie 21's Philippe Lomprez on vocal duties. DaGeist find a surprising grace in the acrobatic mix of emotions that blend together in a sometimes dizzying whirlwind: hopes, nostalgia, regrets, the desire to wiggle your booty but also to let it all go so you can watch the rain fall on the window panes. They drip with sadness during No One is Innocent before making hearts with their fingers and reminding us, with a touch of show-off, that this project has taken them to American and Japanese stages. DaGeist were warm and welcoming, and thanked an appreciative audience. The crowd came from many places this evening, but it was clear that when they heard their home region being mentioned, the people of Lille applauded louder than anyone else: in the Crypt, DaGeist are also at home.
ROSA†CRVX
Let's forget about irresistible faces, bittersweet parties and wiggling booties. Enough frivolity: Rosa†Crvx takes to the stage with an elegant sobriety bordering on austerity that contrasts radically with the ostentatious appearance of the venue. No disguises, no ornamentation: despite the décor, the ritual never goes over the top and retains an elegant sincerity that gives it credibility. This is not a circus, as the seriousness of Procvmbere immediately reminds us. The programmed, martial rhythms give the impression of witnessing our own execution. We hold our heads up. Is it to get a better view over the crowd, or is it a masochistic impulse? Here's a free neck, so slice away! We are guilty, so guilty. Behind her piano, Claude Feeny is always intimidating: hes closed face, absorbed in hes task, is a judgement in itself and would have us confess our worst secrets. Olivier Tarabo, host and master of ceremonies, declaims in Latin with the fervour of a possessed man. The sound is impressive, capturing all the music's grandeur with a breadth that would make the much larger venues we've recently seen the band playing in blush.
The setlist has been slightly reworked since the Lille and Paris dates a month earlier, but it's with the same pleasure that we receive the sentence. The ‘Venite Venite Venite!’ still sounds as much like an injunction as an accusation (they sound like ‘vanities, vanities!’) and serve as a springboard for 1335, where we savour the meeting of a frenzied guitar and a solemn bell. These tracks, unreleased for the moment, may sound like funereal omens, but they augur well for the album to come.
The feverish, hallucinatory atmosphere of Qvi Non Cessant, with the addition of bagpipes to underline the unreal touch of possessed incantations, the demented liturgies of Terribilis, the bewitched guitar of the hypnotic In Tenebris: Rosa†Crvx declaims, combines the sinister with the sublime, elevation and entombment, and strings together curses. Over time, the show has evolved. These days, Frédéric from DaGeist returns to play bass for Aglon and Hel Hel, adding extra density to two tracks with a rock'n'roll edge once again. Rosa†Crvx has a sense of suspense and masters the tension of the show, a mystical crescendo whose climax arrives with the frenetic and terrifying Vil, somewhere between expressionist nightmare and industrial alienation. Like all rituals, the concert follows its own codes: it's also the signal that the end is nigh.
As Eli Elo starts, those standing tiptoed to their feet and phones were raised to film the famous Danse de la Terre ('Earth Dance'). "We thought about doing it outside, but it's too cold": as there was no question of making La Crypte impassable for the rest of the evening, the ritual is reinvented. Thick smoke replaces the usual earth, adding a new, more ethereal, poetic and ghostly touch to this fascinating show that has the air of a sacrificial rite. You come away from this performance with the impression of having witnessed something unique. By taking on a grandiose show in such an intimate setting, Rosa†Crvx are nurturing their reputation as a very special project that isn't approached like any other music group. This majestic moment brought together the followers, the faithful, those in the know: midnight was approaching and we hadn't really come to celebrate 2025 but rather to bury 2024. It was a wake to be proud of: let's hope that many more years will come to die here.
