Raging Fyah ADD

Review: Raging Fyah in Wuppertal, Germany @ U-Club 8/28/2012

08/30/2012 by Lea Jerczynski

Review: Raging Fyah in Wuppertal, Germany @ U-Club 8/28/2012

Considering the fact that the festival season ended only the weekend before the show on a Tuesday night, cosy U-Club, located in Wuppertal, Germany, was not too overcrowded on August 28th.

The six guys out of Jamaica are capable of combining the full range of different traditional styles and elements of Jamaican music and creating something brisk new out of it without forgetting to pay tribute to the roots where it comes from.

At 10 o'clock pm Ellen Köhlings from German RIDDIM magazine entered the stage to announce the newcomer band by giving some special thanks to the guys who did their last show in Europe that night after spending 2 months on the continent.

Raging Fyah started their show very energetically with a fulminant instrumental intro of 'Step Outta Babylon', placing the emphasis on guitar and base, very much to the glee of the audience that welcomed the musicians with a warm round of applause. Spreading some easy, rootsy 'Irie Vibes' with the same-titled song and 'Music Isn't Biased', Raging Fyah went on with a nice and slow vibe. After only a few songs it soon became clear that these guys obviously can be counted to the rare examples of musicians whose music sounds just as good as recorded when performed live on stage - maybe even better, because of their perfect interplay within the band.

Raging Fyah showed some gratefulness for the welcoming of the European audience by dedicating their brand new track 'Delighted' to them, surprising with some typical dub sound effects that were set in precisely by engineer Mahlon Moving.

Showing their versatility in playing different types of Reggae, Raging Fyah mashed up the place with a rapid rhythm of 'Running Away', a Ska-influenced track from their debut album Judgement Day.
The performance kept on spreading a young, rebellious, and untamed spirit: Symbolically tearing his hair out while singing 'Far Away', stretching up his fist in the sky during sweet-melodic 'Behold' or pointing out the finger against '(...)foolish man(...)' in 'Judgement Day', the poses of lead singer Kumar Bents and the other band members always seemed to be extremely meaningful, but they never looked rehearsed.
The patrons seemed to be really impressed by the apparent playful ease of Raging Fyahs' performance: They rewarded the band by clapping their hands above their heads collectively to the strong offbeat and baseline of the socially critical tunes 'Karma' and 'World Crisis'.

Roots Rock track 'I and I' was played by Raging Fyah in a more rocky version and closed the show musically as energized and full of guitar and base as it had started.
Lead singer Bents finally ended the gig showing some German skills by telling the crowd that the band's in love with each and every person in it: 'Wir lieben euch alle' (We love all of you).

Of course the encore wasn't left out: Raging Fyah presented the rhythmic 'Cyaan Cool', a demanding song addressed to bad minded people and the melodic highest-grade anthem 'Ganja', before leaving stage shortly only to appear again immediately.
The guys showed some thankfulness to their supporters from RIDDIM magazine and the whole of Europe again for their hospitality.
When Kumar Bent lead over to the brand new 'Barriers', thematically dealing with meditative topics again, the powerful performance of the song thrilled the massive again which payed tribute to the energized show by dismissing Raging Fyah with a hurricane of applause.

The fact of the guys composing all of their songs by themselves, as the band told Reggaeville, makes their tracks become individual master pieces of music, perfectly customized to both the versatile voice of lead singer and background singers and the sound of instruments that is clear and heavy at the same.

The band works as a team and the meditative and spiritual but young and kind of cheeky team spirit is transferred to the audience very soon and allows it to be part of that team for the time of the show.
Visiting a Raging Fyah live show is a real intensive and inspiring pleasure on one hand for people who love the good pure live music style and on the other hand also for fans of new and innovative music.

After the show, the band members showed off some real pleasant nature by spending about 40 minutes signing posters and taking photographs with fans in the front area of the club instead of relaxing in the backstage area or leaving for the hotel after such an exhausting gig and only a few hours before flying home to Jamaica.

Bon Voyage, Raging Fyah!