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PORTFOLIO: Experience 9 + 10/99: misc. It´s been almost ten years since the wall came down, paving the way for the reunification of the city of Berlin. For 28 years, a rigorously guarded concrete partition divided the city as part of the Iron Curtain between East and West. The reunification parties were heart-felt but fleeting, and after the fireworks fizzled out and the champagne bottles were emptied, reality hit, not just in form of a hangover either. People started to notice that they had been living in totally different systems. Although East and West Germans spoke the same language, they had entirely different life experiences. Now, ten years later, the gap between the two parts of Germany has closed, but it hasn´t disappeared completely. In East Berlin there are still rundown buildings and unemployment runs high. Those with jobs only receive 80 percent of what their West Berlin counterparts take home. In terms of music, this process of coming together has been a good kick in the butt for the whole Berlin scene, since the East German musicians have come up with some great new ideas. So this "City Beat” will focus on bands that have their roots in the former German Democratic Republic. A good example and by far the most popular of these is Rammstein, the group introduced in Experience Hendrix, volume 3. SUBWAY TO SALLY Originally formed as a gothic outfit in 1992, the septet quickly changed into a folk rock act using medieval instruments like bagpipe and shawn, together with a violin plus a full-blown rock band with the usual guitar, drums and bass. In their lyrics they make use of the German language of the 18th century, avoiding terms like telephone, motorcar and computer. "For a long time our music might have been a little too sophisticated, but now we´re making songs for the man on the street. We wanted to create something unique, something you can understand without needing a manual”, says guitarplayer Ingo Hampf, commenting on the group´s latest album "Hochzeit” (wedding). "We noticed at what point people cheered at our concerts and we tried to combine these highlights in our new songs.” The album incorporates elements from Renaissance music of the 15th and 16th century with the crunching guitars and heavy rhythms of the present day. Hampf, a gifted musician, took classical music lessons for eighteen months in order to master the Renaissance composition. The combination of metal and classical music is one possible interpretation of the album´s title: "We wanted to wed opposites like love and hate, black and white.” The self-proclaimed aim of Subway To Sally is "to be different than other bands”. In order to achieve this, the ambitious group invented new forms of audience participation: In one song they get their fans to let out an ear-splitting primal scream, in another they entice them to dance in big circles. Concludes Hampf: "Our singer Eric gets depressed when he puts on the same act two nights in a row. He wants every performance to be a special event!" THE INCHTABOKATABLES "No guitars” is the battle-cry of another Berlin-based band, The Inchtabokatables. Two violins, one cello, drums and bass are employed by the innovative fivesome, scarily at times - they sound heavier than a fully armed heavy metal band. The German music press consequently dubbed their sound "Industrial Folk” for a lack of a better term. The group was founded around 1990, before its members were part of the medieval scene. Each year there are numerous medieval festivals all over Germany, at which knights in shining armor are fighting clumsily with massive swords or attack each other with wooden lances on the back of muscular steeds. Artisans show old crafts made with ancient tools, and there are medieval bathhouses, food prepared using old recipes and of course old music played by minstrels and bandsmen. BB Breuler, the fiddle-wielding front man of the Inchies, gained notoriety as one of the wildest among the wandering players. He used to play his instrument hanging upside down from a rope slung around the gallows pole. On their last two records "Quiet” and "Too Loud” The Inchtabokatbles shed the ancient sounds and turned to more melancholy tunes. "We´re not interested in medieval music anymore. We want to move on”, BB Breuler stresses. A characteristic feature of their music is its somber mood with an almost Irish feel to it, well suited for a rainy day in Dublin. "Privately we laugh all the time, nobody suffers from depression. But it´s hard to play happy songs without sounding silly. Dark titles seem to have a greater longevity.” TANZWUT Did you know that the devil is the front man of a Berlin band? "Teufel” in German is the name for Satan and Teufel´s band is called Tanzwut (dance fury). It stems from a medieval phenomanon: during the pestilence in the 14th century people expected the world to come to an end shortly. They gave away all their worldly belongings and fell into a dancing fury, often using drugs like mushrooms and alcohol. "We saw a paralell to our modern times. Today people are taking drugs like ecstasy to dance for days on end. So we took this name that we found in some ancient history book”, Teufel explains. Tanzwut mixes rock, electro, techno and medieval music. Actually all five members play in another band called Corvus Corax (Latin for raven). Here, in their second band, they not only blow huge bagpipes and play simple drums but use flashbombs, smoke and pyrotechnical effects giving the self-proclaimed "kings of the bandsmen” a mind-blowing Kiss appeal. Tanzwut on the other hand uses guitars, keyboards, samples and loops. They sound, if you will, like Rammstein in the 14th century. For their eponymously titled debut album, they haven´t included any of the medieval songs they know so well. "With the execption of "Eisenmann” (a Black Sabbath cover known of course as "Iron Man”) we composed new material”, says Teufel. "The combination of ancient and modern elements is inspiring for us. People watch a concert because they want to be taken out of their daily routine. This was the same in ancient Greece as it will be in the year 2925.” KNORKATOR Maybe the most original and wackiest of all the Berlin bands is Knorkator. Named after bone-crushing Hollywood movies like "Terminator”, heavy metal records like "Jugulator” (Judas Priest) and the old fashioned German slang term "knorke” (meaning something like "cool”) the trio unites three unlikely characters: screamer Stumpen boasts a voice that rises and falls over four octaves (very similar to former Judas Priest siren Rob Halford). Half of his entire body is covered by a deep black tattoo - every Friday for eight years he stubbornly trotted to his tattooist. Keyboarder Alf Ator sports a half-moon haircut and claims to have been born in Mongolia. Guitarplayer Buzzdee sometimes wears up to ten pair of sunglasses at the same time and asserts to have been a substitute guitarrist in some obscure japanese kabuki band. Knorkators second record "Hasen-Chartbreaker” is a mind-boggling experience. It starts with a cover shot that shows the threesome wearing Bugs Bunny teeth and poor man´s Kiss make-up. Musicwise they offer a tender, classical ballad they call "Hardcore”, a death-metal version of the Beatles "With A Little Help From My Friend” and an unlikely symphonic version of AC/DC´s "Highway To Hell”. Their lyrics, mostly in German, break almost every existing taboo, politics excluded. "We place ourselves in the mind of a twelve-year-old and take things like sex, shit, hate and violence to extremes”, says Mastermind Alf Ator. "It´s of course a rock‘n’roll satire, dealing openly with what´s been repressed in our society. It shows what prudishness and repression can lead to.” |
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by Henning Richter |