Frozen Souls of a Mystical Winter

Here's some right fucked up Black Metal strangeness from Kalibos. Kalibos was the concern of two German youth calling themselves Schagrath Charondeimos and Phobos. During their five year run as Kalibos (before changing the name to Lugburz) these entities of unflinching Teutonic evil released six demos, but the only one I have been able to track down is Frozen Souls of Mystical Winter. The program is raw, poorly performed, poorly recorded Black Metal that makes Graveland sound like YES at times. Unlike many of their corpse-painted peers, Kalibos keep the songs short and unsweet, giving you eleven songs in just over fourteen minutes. This is truly bizarre outsider occult art that will melt the frozen soul of any of you who only come here for the fucked up Black Metal.

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Electric Day

Latter day Kraut Rock/Electrofucked band YOU bleeped and blooped their way onto the scene in 1978 and issued this analog synth delight in 1979. Electric Day features a masterful drum performance by Harald Grosskopf (Ash Ra Tempel) and a wealth of repetitive compositions that twist and morph and build. Sometimes dancey, sometimes menacing, and sometimes just relaxing, Electric Day is an excellent album for driving, sitting with your electric bong, or just moving through a post apocalyptic landscape wondering how the fuck the human race will survive.

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Ash Rah Tempel

Here's the first album by the kvlt Kraut Rock band Ash Rah Tempel. Klaus Schulze played the drums, Manuel Gottsching played guitar, and Hartmut Enke played bass. The album contains two lengthy, seemingly improvised tracks. "Amboss" starts as a low hum, cymbals swell, toms rumble in. The song builds with chaotic drums and effected druggy guitars. Things break down into a lopey drum solo by Schulze which gives way to some chicken scratchy guitar that rings in the chaos of the first half. I swear there are blastbeats around the 19 minute mark. "Traummaschine" is a bit more tranquil at first and then turns somewhat menacing before returning to it's original shape. When I listen to this album (which isn't often) I am always reminded of the trajectory of Godspeed You Black Emperor's songs. I would not be the least bit surprised if the members of Godspeed cited Ash Ra Tempel as a major influence. Now you can list them as one of your influences as well.

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Orion Awakes

Some right trippy Kraut Rock instrumenace from Golem. Hammond organs throb, guitars swirl, drums shuffle and pulsate. At times the album is funky and at others it is ominous. The whole affair is swathed in a witchy murk. Open your skull to some Teutonic tabs of pure uncut sonic acid. A veritable lysergermanic feast of psilocybin mind fuck. HIGHly recommended.

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Electrip

Here, I want you to put this on your tongue. Good.

You'll be fine.

Sugar Time

Never mind that Brian Eno claims it is one of his favorite albums, that it had a huge influence on modern electronic music, that it is wideley regarded as one of the most important albums to come out of the fertile Krautrock scene. Cluster's 1974 album Zuckerzeit is just a great record to put on when you are loafing at home, playing chess, or pretending you are the protagonist of a future dystopian action film made in the '70s.

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Bloody Impulse

Blood kind of started out as the fun, jokey pastime of four snarky teenagers living in Speyer, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. By 1989, however, the lads weren't joking around, and their first album, Impulse to Destroy, came ripping forth like a poorly drawn zombie holding some kind of crazy sword to the sky. The album opens, oddly, with the sound of a jet taking off and then it's a thirty-four minute gut-pummel of greasy proto-death grind crust. Why Blood aren't fucking hailed next to Repulsion, Carcass, and Napalm Death as originators of this sort of filth is beyond me. Impulse to Destroy is an undeniable classic.

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Kanguru

Guru Guru were one of the many young, talented bands that emerged from the Krautrock scene. Though not as known as CAN, Tangerine Dream, or Kraftwerk, Guru Guru's third album, Kanguru, is among one of the best releases of the genre. It's broken up into four lengthy sich-edelic mushroom jams that toggle between whimsical and menacing. Mani Neumeier's superior drumming drives the album, and that's also him doing that crazy singing. Guru Guru would invite Amon Duul over to their commune in the mountains of Bavaria and the two groups would ingest drugs, jam, and totally freak the fuck out together. Motherfuckers would run naked and free, tasting purple, shitting sunshine. It was a good time.

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Sentence of Death

Destruction, and this record in particular, is almost enough to make me forgive Germany for certain transgressions in their past. I could write a tome on the cover alone: the clothes, the hair, the sunlight that comes either at the beginning or the end of a day of evil... but then there is the tunes, wild and unhinged, amateurish but so full of youthful thrashing exuberance.

Death Sentence

Isolation Place

When posted Wigrid's Hoffnungstod album, a kind reader from Saarland sent the elusive demo, Ort Der Einsamkeit. This offering from one of Germany's best Black Metal artists is more raw and unforgiving than Hoffnungstod. This has been on my wishlist for some years. Not much has been heard from Wigrid in some time, but hopefully we haven't heard the last from the odd Teutonic hermit calling himself, Ulfhetnar. I guess there is a new Burzum album to chew on.

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Death Warrant

Here's another weird one-off release by another ultra-obscure '80s Heavy Metal outfit. This time it's seedy Germans, Death Warrant. The cover art alone is enough to win me over, but the Death Warrant's punk/new wave approach to NWOBHM style hard rock is pretty charming as well, kind of like a less-polished Accept fronted by a more polished Johnny Rotten. Oh, and the ESL lyrics about poon, rocking the stage, love, and drugs only sweeten the deal. On the opener "Ecstasy" nasal-voiced front-perv, Wolfgang Marquardt, sings what sounds like "If you suck my cock, I'll drive your clitoris." Death Warrant believed only in using single entendre apparently. Despite all this goofiness, the songs are catchy. This EP just fucking rules, but don't take my word for it.

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Hope Dies

Hoffnungstod, by the German one man band, Wigrid, is easily the best bit of Burzum worship ever created. In fact, I think this album ranks right up there with Varg's best work. Originally the material on Hoffnungstod was released on a very limited demo. Fortunately the whole thing was rerecorded for this official No Colors release in 2002. Hoffnungstod is heart-wrenchingly beautiful washes of melancholic riffs, layers of buzzing white hiss, and muffled cries of absolute despair stacked one upon another. This is the audial essence of isolation and hopelessness. Incredible.

Hopeless

Goin' Solar

The term "goin' solar," which appears as the title of this post comes from the excellent mid-'90s San Francisco band Men's Club. It simply means lighting your bong using nothing more than a magnifying glass and the sun's rays. Sounds a little dumb, and very Californian, but I bet you want to try it now, don't you? Now I wonder if way back in 1978 Grobschnitt was hip to this practice of "goin' solar" over their in their town of Hagen, Germany? This fantastic album of sun-worshipping stoner prog was recorded live and it is Grobschnitt's finest moment. The band expands and improvises on their epic song "Solar Music," the result is an angel's flight around the heliosphere where solar storms of THC choked riffage conspire to give your longing earholes a melanoma of catharsis. Fuck, I am high.

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Starstruck

The fuckin' party starts now, assholes, 1984. Starstruck is rollin' up on interstellar choppers, givin' the motherfucking middle finger salute to the whole fuckin' galaxy. You terrestrial squares don't know how to cut loose and have a good time, so once again Starstruck is summoned from deep space to put a bony foot in your tight ass. Starstruck actually hailed from the party town of Karisruhe Germany. Thru To You was their only album, and it is a cannon full of confetti and generic OTT rockers about, well, party things like chicks and cars and the very act of rocking hard. Okay, this doesn't really rock all that hard, more like AOR/Hard Rock, but if you are planning a party this summer, or in the '80s, this might come in handy, but keep your eye on Klaus, that rascal has plans on spiking the punch.

Ich möchte party

Der Todesking

Selbstmord für alle

Night On Brocken

Brocken Moon is a German Black Metal band that showed much promise through a handful of tape releases and then kind of lost me with the full length Das Märchen vom Schnee Perhaps Humanhater, the sole member of Brocken Moon, had effectively ran out of ideas at this point. However, this tape called Schattenlicht des Mondes showcases the band's earliest recording and it is genius. Cold and reflective genius from atop Northern Germany's highest peak, a lonely mountain where witches and warlocks meet to plot nefarious deeds and record demos.

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...Until The Bitter End

I first heard the Neurotic Arseholes way back in '83 on Bob Slade's crucial Off The Beaten Path show on WLRN in Miami. I would tape the episodes and then edit those tapes down to the best stuff and then dub those tapes for friends. So as far as I could tell, The Neurotic Arseholes were Germany's best punk band of the '80s ...Bis Zum Bitteren Ende was the band's first album, it was released by the Aggressive Rockproduktionen label in 1983. Fast melodic hardcore with forrays into ska and new wave, and the trademark voice of Dierk "zombie" Pastowski defined the Arseholes sound. The lyrics (mostly in German) were fiercely political decrying war and poverty and the myriad of social ills befalling Germany in the '80s. I think these guys have sadly been forgotten in the annals of international hardcore lore, but I think they had a hand in influencing the great Articles of Faith, and later KPF and, of course, a band called Hickey. Seriously, this is mandatory, or as they say in Germany: "Wenn Sie don' t so haben Sie ein dog' s-Ohr und Ihre Mamma ist ein bayerischer Bierhallen-Dirnebeutel."

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Victorious is the Ice

I have been loving this, the first CD by Thuringian Black Metal weirdos, Wald Geist Winter titled Seigreich Ist Das Eis (Victorious is the Ice). Sure it looks very plain and generic and sure, the band's name and the album title are about as necro-trite as they come, but WGW's appeal is in their almost happy approach to kvlt grimness. It's rather enjoyable. This band has a distinctly German sound, a bit like a more jubilant Nargaroth. Black Metal ist Nett!

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Choke Thirst Die

Choke Thirst Die are a fairly new Thrash band from Hagen, Germany. Their first cassette release Demonstration Desolation packs much ass kicking into a scant thirteen minutes. Choke Thirst Die give nods to early Bathory and Anti-Cimex in their relentless delivery. Now aren't you foaming at the ear to hear this? I demand more from this brilliant band. Rabid!

Choke On It!

Ursonate

Dadaist poet Kurt Schwitters accomplished much during his lifetime. He was a visual artist, poet, and visionary. Kurt is probably best remembered for publishing a periodical called Merz (today this would be called a zine or a blog.) Schwitters also invented the concept of installation art, starting a conceptual piece/space called Merzbau (the inspiration for the Japanese noise artist Merzbow.) But the focus of this post is his role as the very first freestyle rapper. Schwitters could often be found in the cafes of Berlin, spitting dope lyrics that may have sounded like a barrage of nonsense words and sounds to the brutish, uncultured ear. These "poems" were part of a larger body of work called The Ursonate. Over a period of ten years Schwitters painstakingly worked and reworked The Ursonate into a finalized version. Whinemeal, The Nazis came along and made Berlin a decidedly unfun place to live, and make weird art, so Schwitters hightailed it to Norway. It was there that he was able to make some recordings of The Ursonate for future generations to listen to and scratch their heads at.

Oonka Oonka Oonka!!!