MERRY XMAL
CHICAGO—The scene is so perfect that it should be out of some damn movie. A dark club with black cinder block walls, a sweaty crowd pressing against the stage, four sullen, stonefaced musicians of mixed gender setting up a throbbing rock pulse fronted by a strikingly beautiful Aryan blonde singer dressed head-to-toe in black, miming and whirling her fists around and singing in German.
MERRY XMAL
The Beat Goes On
“Ach, tanks! Gut!!”
CHICAGO—The scene is so perfect that it should be out of some damn movie. A dark club with black cinder block walls, a sweaty crowd pressing against the stage, four sullen, stonefaced musicians of mixed gender setting up a throbbing rock pulse fronted by a strikingly beautiful Aryan blonde singer dressed head-to-toe in black, miming and whirling her fists around and singing in German. Any minute you half expect to hear an airraid siren blast the moment apart.
It’s Xmal Deutschland, from Hamburg, doing a late set at Chicago’s Exit. Theirs is a music of rich darkness wrapping itself around a skillful, driving b^at. Everywhere there is noise, lots of scraping and groaning, while Peter Bellendir’s cymbal work helps provide that needed good little bit of subtlety. Singer Anja Huwe, whose voice has the perfect timbre to cut through this din, munches up her German syllables seductively and lets loose with vibrato-less drones stretching out to forever, while Fiona Sangster bangs up synth lines that sound like elementary baroque etudes turned inside out and Manuela Rickers plays her Telecaster nice ’n’ raspy.