The Stool Pigeon music newspaper

“Do you want total war?” Boyd Rice screams, looping the question until Electrowerkz reverberates to such an extent it feels like we’re about to plummet into Angel station 90ft below. Worryingly, some of the crowd seem to welcome the idea of being fed through the mincers of a military industrial complex.

Then again, they’re not the brightest bunch. You’d think you might want to use an anti-dandruff shampoo before donning your jet-black uniform and heading to a venue bathed in UV light. Many of these fascist-fetishising pillocks are generous to Luftwaffe, tonight’s neo-folk support. Standing in front of a runic and cod-swastika backcloth, the males in the band resemble the naughty boyfriend from The Sound of Music, the flautist a budget Annie Lennox singing about the virtue of making coffee from acorns. And where do Luftwaffe hail from? Chicago! If they were Eastern Europeans trying to reclaim their heritage, this might be acceptable (Laibach have explored totalitarian imagery effect). Instead, they go down in flames.

Boyd Rice is no stranger to controversy. His three-decade-long recording career has been accompanied by Social Darwinistic views most would find unpalatable. Yet the fact that Marilyn Manson cites him as an influence is enough to indicate that Rice, unlike the ham-fisted Luftwaffe, is something of a provocateur. Accompanied by a bald psychopath hammering steel ducts, Rice, in leather hat and dark glasses, is all about confrontation. His vocal loop doesn’t hang around for pleasantries, then he slings a naff guitar over his neck to play it with whirring blades that spin from the nose of an electric drill. It’s an intoxicating, grinding noise - sound corrupted to its most pure and elemental state. Unfortunately, it’s short-lived - PA trouble means an early curfew. Rice never had time to give the idiot goths the bombardment they needed to help get their heads round where a fascination with the aesthetics of extreme sound can lead.