This show was on the 10th anniversary of the death of Alan Vega and was in part a commemoration of his life and music, with Lydia Lunch and Marc Hurtado's continuing tour playing the music of Suicide and Alan Vega. Thankfully having battled with all the public transport problems we still managed to arrive just before the support act Nuha Ruby Ra began her set sitting at the same table that Lydia and Marc were sitting at, with Cathi Unsworth and Ian White et al. Nuha was holding two microphones and as the industrial backing tracks kicked into life, she started intoning about the dead as she slowly walked though the audience, with her assistant shining a klieg light onto her, she sat on the steps to the stage and howled her pain into the microphone.
Nuha then started the next piece about how I Feel Love properly on the stage she was stalking and making it seem that her love was of the edgy kind that could fall apart at moment's notice, while the industrial beats pushed it on and started to get a good amount of people dancing. My notes are obviously guesswork, But Nuha Ruby Ra told us that this show was the last one in this phase of her career, while her forceful twisting body and sharp vocals about falling apart, yet still having a chance to dance and grind to this unrelenting beat, while using microphone techniques similar to Diamanda Galas in the way she used the two microphones to create different timbres and effects on her vocals, but with a smaller less operatic range.
Nuha was very thankful to be able to play this show with Lydia while telling us This Isn't Love while provocatively dancing and yelping all the things that she is, which was a most impressive ebm fetishy industrial dance poet that the M.O.T.H. club crowd loved, she left the stage and finished her set back once more in the audience.
After the short break it was time for Marc Hurtado to go behind his table full of electronics and for Lydia to slowly walk to the stage, where her two microphones were waiting, she made sure we all knew this was the 10th anniversary of Alan's passing before they opened with a tsunami of noise and coruscating beats, while Lydia howled about New York and Suicide. Jukebox Baby was like a detonation, forceful and mightily dark and nasty with Marc going nuts behind his table of tricks, twisting knobs and bashing stuff. Johnny sounded frightening in both the way Lydia yelped and contorted the lyrics about him and in Marc's distressed grindcore mauling.
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Cyber Time and the impending takeover of the machines seem to be blasted at us, this was unrelenting like the dark re-working of Johnny Comes Marching Home, making clear that the suffering of soldiers and the victims of war is always disgraceful and we need to stop Hegseth Trump and Netanyahu et al from creating more war damaged people. Ghost Rider was the closest they came to playing a straight version, but not that straight, it had super harsh beats and loads of fist pumping from Marc. Prison Sacrifice had all the pain and suffering of the untold victims of unjust imprisonment in the endless war against letting us all live peacefully, this was a harsh screed and intense industrial manipulations.
Rocket USA made utterly clear just how far from the correct mission the current USA is on, it felt like the rocket had detonated in the middle of the M.O.T.H. club with it's militaria on the walls. Harlem Harlem Baby was almost as nasty as the Half Alive version. They closed with a fraught and nasty version of Frankie Teardrop that left us in no doubt that we are all Frankies and even more so in the weird world of the 2020's. This was another brilliant intense performance by Lydia Lunch who is still incredibly powerful live.
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