Stagedives and Highfives: Gorilla Biscuits in Cologne

Yesterday saw the long awaited and highly anticipated reunion tour show by New York hardcore legends Gorilla Biscuits taking place at Cologne's "Kantine" club. This one was announced at the beginning of the year and should have taken place in summer, but due to some problems noone really knows about it got pushed back to fall and this is where we are now. Now there are not many shows that are labelled "must be there", but this one certainly was. Lots of people showed up, the plates on the cars in the parking lot were showing lots of different cities from all over Northrhine-Westphalia and even farther away.
Kicking things off were Deny Everything who unfortunately played to a small crowd with lots of people still standing outside (the show was sold out, by the way. Was anyone surprised?) or hanging around at the bars. The venue itself was way too big for a small band like them, but it seemed they had their share of fun and their show was good as well.
Next up were Waterdown and noone, really noone knew why those guys had to play at this show. They've been around for quite some time now and I think I once heard or read somewhere that they were the German first band on Victory Records. Which at the time was something they could brag about. I bought their first CD back in the days, but only because they had a coverversion of Slime's "Ettikette tötet" on there. The rest of the music was simply boring metalcore stuff. And nothing has changed today. Still boring crap really noone cares about. Oh well, such bands are always a welcome excuse to get yourself refreshed and order a drink at the bar.
The main act then let the people wait for quite some time. With Missy Elliot's "Get Your Freak On" (or whatever that song is called, I just can't seem to really tell them apart) they entered the stage, your usual fanfare was playing and they started off with "New Direction". No surprises here. They went on to play the hits, they even did some coverversions (amongst others notably "New York Crew", "Dancefloor Justice" or "Pushed Too Far"), the people were having fun in front of the stage, there were bodies flying all over the place, singalongs, fingerpointing, you name it.
Still, I just didn't really got into this. The first half hour of this 70 minute set to me looked rather like being on the verge of turning into something ridiculous. I don't know if I raised my expectations too high or whatever I was expecting, but to me this was more like some coverband doing a show with GB songs and some extras. It took some time until the band settled in. At first they were just standing on stage, playing their songs and basically doing nothing. Apart from Civ who was running around on stage, but to be honest, we all seen singers do this numerous times. Again, this is just me, people were having fun up front and maybe I was just annoyed by the light show that kept shining right into my face. But this wasn't something I will place high up in my all time favourite show list. It was solid, no doubt. But nothing special. Just another rock show.