17-03-2010 Matthau Mikojan

Supports: Seelentaucher; Venue: MTC, Cologne (Germany)
By: Nina Mende

Cologne – again! Maybe I should consider moving here thinking of how often I actually come to Cologne to see shows, but then again no…. And anyway, this review is not about whether I should move to Cologne or not. It is about the show I went to see. And that was Matthau Mikojan on the latest Germany tour, last day of the tour.

Matthau Mikojan (born Matti Mikkonen, March 26, 1982 in Tampere) is a Finnish rock musician, singer, guitarist and songwriter in a band named after him. In addition, he has thrown some gigs with a Finnish rock band called Black Jezus but he isn’t an official member of it. Instead, he plays guitar in another Finnish rock band named Don Skorleone & Consiglieres. From 1999 till 2007 he was also singer of Bloodpit. Already quite a short time after breaking up with Bloodpit, in September 2007, Matthau Mikojan starts recording his first solo album which is released on March 12, 2008 in Finland. On February 6, there is already a pre-release for the single “Stiletto Heels”. On the album named after the artist, Matthau plays almost all instruments himself, except for the drums played by another musician, Simo Stenman (The Bitterlicks). Matthau’s live band’s line-up causes furore because until April 2008, it also included his brother Sir Christus, who had left his long-time band Negative in January 2008. Also in the video for Matthau’s second single “Too Fortunate To Cry”, the brothers appear together, but then Sir Christus leaves the band with no drama involved. Matthau plays sundry gigs and festivals in Finland with his live-line-up, they are followed by the “Schraubelocker Tour” through Germany and Switzerland.

As I arrived at the venue there were already people waiting outside to get in. Some others came in later. The audience was quite mixed. From Emo to Goth, or just regular looking people you could find. Most of the audience were girls though. But there were also some boys in the audience. The venue was small, but it was still not very crowded in it. Unfortunately!

The first band of the night was Seelentaucher, the one that filled in for the other two opening acts that were actually supposed to play. Seelentaucher is a German band singing mostly German. The voice was pure and clean, the singer played acoustic guitar. The band was totally in their element, all very focused on what they were doing. The audience enjoyed watching Seelentaucher and the band enjoyed playing. They played for about 30 minutes, talked quite a lot to the audience and had a good time. For one song they got somebody from the audience up on stage, but that person sneaked back off stage quickly as the band wasn’t paying attention.

Up next was Matthau Mikojan and band. It hasn’t gotten much more crowded, a few more people had arrived, but not too many. Cologne was going to miss out on a great show. As the band entered the stage the people were cheering loudly, all squishing to the front of the stage even more. As Matthau began to sing, many in the audience danced and sang along. Matthau was talking a lot with the audience, actually, the entire band talked a lot with the audience. They played songs off all albums plus covers. One for example was by Billy Idol. Some of the girls went really wild and jumped around so much they happened to spill their drinks. Others were holding up a cake or little notes, but pulled them back down again quite fast. Every one seemed to be taking pictures with their digital camera, all trying to get the best shot of each band member. Matthau kept on introducing them all, especially the new bass player. Their new backdrop had the faces of each member on it, very neat. All songs were performed strongly with a lot of passion of all three musicians. To some songs Matthau told a little story. The guys joked around on stage and laughed a lot. It was a nice and familiar atmosphere in the audience. Everybody enjoyed it. After an hour they left the stage, but the audience demanded an encore. So Matthau Mikojan and band returned for another three songs before the show and the tour was over. A little sad, but all good things have to come to an end some time. Now we are all looking forward to the next one.