“Don’t Enter!” – God Wears Picaldi

“If you are a false, don’t entry!” And if you are a false, do enter, because the only rule of this weekly section, in which we present you three short blurbs on music we are currently listening to, is that we are under no circumstance allowed to press the enter key. All of these little reviews shall thus consist of one paragraph only. The more this rule renders the blurb illegible, the more the writer has failed. Check back every Friday for a fresh haul of Don’t Enter.

This week’s instalment of Don’t Enter is the result of true teamwork. We provide you with not three, but four reviews, all penned by different authors. The Central theme this time is Germany. One could say it is the axis of our efforts, but that would be inappropriate. German culture is one to be admired, in spite of its unhealthy fascination with nudism and urinating while sitting down. So trousers down and hip hip hooray for Deutʃchland.

Germanen Blut – Die Waelder Midgards | Germany, 2010

The chirping birds, a babbling brook, the wind rustling through the trees, what could this picture lack? Why, the strident Teutonic voices of Germanen Blut intoned over jangling guitars of course! Deviating from their previous use of black metal, 2010’s Die Waelder Midgards sees this now deceased outfit swap blast-beats, pagan warfare and hoarse screams for acoustic guitars, field recordings and a distinctly natural atmosphere; less Wehrmacht and more Wandervogel. True, their voices may not be as pure and beautiful as that of, say, Falkenstein. However, the slightly off-key warbling and timing errors committed by these jolly Germans lends an aura of authenticity and spontaneity to the recordings, as if whilst reclining in the grasses beside their favourite urdeutsche burial mound they just had to burst out into song about how terribly happy they were to be beside the bones of their Volk. Think a more beery and strident Herman Wirth. Besides the leather shorts, the Wandervogel comparison holds up fairly well, as there is also a wandering quality to this record, as if it were all recorded outdoors and on site locations, capturing the musings of these fine fellows as they reconnected with their pre-Christian heritage. In fact, I would rather listen to Germanen Blut jangling away in a field than yet another Death in June clone talking in ‘metaphysical’ tones about losing the war. There is an infectious jollity in these songs, and a beautiful melancholy in others which rings true to the listener because one feels that ‘the Blut’ are being honest in their musical expression, that this was something they had to do. Follow their leather shorts across the woodlands and meadows; they might not always be in tune but they’ll get you there, and you will be happy to have joined them and camped among the glades and streams of heimliches Deutschland. |MDL

Note: due to our elitist nature, we cannot resist pointing out to the commoners that the band name should really be spelled ‘Germanenblut’.

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Kraschau – Offenbarung | Hungary, 2012

While not officially from the land of Bismarck and Bratwurst, the Hungarian Adam Berces and his Kraschau project invoke a more thoroughly and authentically German spirit than so many war-mongering Prussians; they are ‘German’ not so much in the sense of belonging to the Germany of the Protestant Kulturkampf, but German in the sense of belonging to the humbler, quieter Catholic regions. Berces professes an admirably anachronistic fealty to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the surviving steward of these regions upon the fall of the Kingdom of Bavaria; it is this relic of the past that serves as the inspiration for Kraschau‘s identity, and the political touchstone by which Europe’s prevailing liberalism and secularism are judged and condemned. One might be tempted to call Kraschau’s music equally anachronistic considering their dependence on heavy brass, militaristic percussion, and primitive German folk melodies, but it would be wrong to do so: Kraschau belong to this era, musically and otherwise, and their direct, powerful approach to the martial industrial is a welcome insight into both the past and the future. It is at once a tribute to a heroic history, and an exhortation to the heroes of the present to stand for something worth standing for. Offenbarung is roughly divided into two halves. The first is defined by a brazenly warrior stance that is a curious mixture of newly awakened wrath and an impetuous joy that springs from a sincere source. The discipline of the percussion anticipates a battlefield atmosphere, encourages images of righteous warfare, while the easy, fluid chord progressions comprised of the pronounced brass lines are reminiscent of an army on the move, singing cheerfully of death and victory; the songwriting is simply patterned, and yet its sleek transitions are meaningful enough to inspire changes in mood, like a film score underlining different moments of import in changing scenes. The second half of this album is characterized by a stronger sense of nostalgia and sadness. More or less the same musical elements are present, but they are reoriented around exploring this new direction: the percussion is reduced in scale, the brass is mostly absent, and the samples consist more of weeping female chorals than of martial proclamations. This is typified in the final song, “Heimatlos” (Homelandless), a lament for what once was, and which acts as the realization that, despite our dreams of grandeur, we are homeless Romantics come face to face with the hard reality of the world that is. |Maximus

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Priestermord – Vernichtungsfeldzug | Germany, 1997

Nonnenfotzen aufgerissen / Dämonen die in Wunden pissen / Priesterleiber aufgeschlitzt / In jedem noch ein Messer sitzt. What is good black metal? Even on this very site, definitions may vary. There is no way to define just one accurate description of what this style of music entails. Yet sometimes, one encounters a piece of music that is a perfect encapsulation of one such description. Case in point: Priestermord is the most dirty, sloppy, hateful and primitive evolution of a style of German music that began with Absurd‘s first demo recordings. Vernichtungsfeldzug, which translates to „annihilation campaign“ comes crudely burned to a CDR and home-printed booklet, proving once more that every aspect of presentation counts. Beyond this enticing appearance, Priestermord‘s lyrics are a showcase of unsurpassed aggression. What appears at first glance as the Satanic Scribblings of a young teenager, is soon enhanced by an aggressive profanity and deliberate subversion of socially acceptable language on several levels, it becomes clear this has been planned by an adult mind. Pure anger is seldomly intelligent, but the raw emotion of Morbid’s shouting is inescapably powerful. Sometimes, particularly during “Terror, Tod und Teufel”, the music slows down to turn into almost methodical blasphemy, still going far beyond that which their more politically correct contemporaries were ever capable to conjure. It’s a cold, clandestine, but also colourful and courageous concept; it kills me. As with anything related to Priestermord, the music follows the album’s function, being punky, sloppy, badly played and full of heart. It is that, which Absurd could have been had they continued to do what they did. As it is, this album remains part of an undercurrent of bands like Satans Elite Kommando (a project that sprang from Priestermord) or Hellfucked, groups that eschew any sort of cerebral appeal and embrace the barbarism and hate emanating from this music. And it succeeds. Tremendously. Fuck. |Poswicht

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K.I.Z. – Hahnenkampf | Germany, 2007

Every country has an artist that makes you want to learn the local language just to be able to understand their music. Anyone who has listened to Drudkh will have a desire to know more about the beautiful Ukrainian poems that constitute this project’s lyrics. And then there is Alcest, who have undoubtedly motivated many to take up a language course as to be able to indulge in homo-erotic French poetry without restraint. If I were to learn German beyond the disastrous pidgin I speak now, it would be to better comprehend the lyrics of K.I.Z. These annoying tokkies are the hiphop equivalent to the nouveaux riches; they got the moolah, but they ain’t learned da manners, yo. They are the kind of perpetually intoxicated troglodytes who, after coming back from a scandalously hedonistic party, will point and laugh at you while you wait for the train to take you to your shitty helpdesk job at 6AM on a Monday morning. With their bleak, potato-shaped heads and stained wifebeaters, they have a repugnant appearance, but nonetheless they will always be richer and more successful than you are. Now you know the height from which K.I.Z. spits its rhymes, and why their endless, provocative punchlines hit with such force: “Everyone knows I am fabulously rich / I fly to St. Tropez just to take a shit”; “You read a book / I lease a Benz”; “I am forced to rap with a headset / because I’m fisting both your sisters”; “The devil wears Prada, God wears Picaldi / Your mother sells her snatch in front of Aldi”; “I’m getting into the club for free / because I am Adolf Hitler”. Particularly on its album Hahnenkampf, K.I.Z. spits into the face of its proletarian audience a lukewarm phlegm of remorseless insults, metropolitan arrogance and shards of an utterly misplaced superiority complex. And there’s not a thing you can do about it, you blubbering pauper. |Degtyarov

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