Artist: DIE KRUPPS
Album: V - METAL MACHINE MUSIC LTD. EDIT. (2CD DIGI)

Release date: 2015
EAN/UPS: 886922689321
Media type: CD

Visionary source of inspiration
Mastermind Jürgen Engler is a visionary who has had a lasting influence on the music landscape for decades. In the late 1970s, he was among the first German punk rockers with his band Male and took Campino on tour with him before Die Toten Hosen were even founded. In the eighties, he formed DIE KRUPPS, who went on – together with his congenial partner Ralf Dörper, who has also co-penned countless lyrics since "Wahre Arbeit Wahrer Lohn" – to be a driving force of the industrial and EBM movements. When this scene was taken over by the mainstream in the nineties, the group from Düsseldorf integrated tough thrash guitars into their sound and became, along with Nine Inch Nails and Ministry, the most important source of inspiration in the electro metal genre and also influenced numerous bands of the Neue Deutsche Härte (New German Hardness).

It is this successful phase (keywords: “Fatherland”, “To The Hilt”) which DIE KRUPPS bring back to life with their latest release “V – Metal Machine Music”, taking up where their “IV – Paradise Now” album (which was not numbered at the time of its release) had left off, following their fairly electro machine-heavy “The Machinists of Joy” recording which saw the light of day less than two years ago.

The brute concept
>We always work in a very conceptual way<, stresses Jürgen Engler, who has lived in Texas for many years. >That’s why our comeback album “The Machinists Of Joy” consisted of a cross section of our work to date. But it was clear to me even then that its successor would have to be a brute, tough recording. That idea had been haunting us for some time, and a number of songs had already been kicking around, at least as rough drafts. “Alive In A Glass Cage” even dates back to 1985 and was written at the same time as the original version of “Fatherland”. “The Vampire Strikes Back” was penned after the “Paradise Now” album and featured – in a slightly tamer version – in the video game  “Wing Commander: Prophecy” in 1998. Other tracks are two or three years old, but most of the material is all new, with a lot of input from our guitarist Marcel Zürcher.<

Ass-kicking sequencers
>Over the years I have collected lots of old analogue synthesizers, which have an unbelievably fierce sound and are a real kick up the ass of all those spaces which are so popular at the moment, those arpeggios consisting of digital boxes and all that other polished bullshit,< Jürgen Engler laughs – and indeed: DIE KRUPPS have never sounded as hard, particularly as the mercilessly hammering electronics are supported by Marcel Zürcher’s phat thrash riffs. To boot, the band’s line-up has also been adapted, reactivating ex-Accu§er drummer Volker Borchert, who had been the skinsman of DIE KRUPPS in the early nineties and whom Jürgen knows from his time as label boss of the metal imprint Atom H Records.

Battle Extreme
The lyrics follow the music consistently into extreme realms. Titles such as “Battle Extreme”, “Kaos Reigns”, “Bonded by Blood”  and “Road Rage Warrior” speak for themselves and reflect what concerns Ralf Dörper and Jürgen Engler at the moment. >We live in pretty eventful times with extreme opposites.< Which are unfortunately “simply irreversible”, as the lyrics on the new single “Battle Extreme” go.

Metal Machine Music
The title “Metal Machine Music” has appeared before in the DIE KRUPPS discography: once on their same-named maxi single with Accu§er and once on the 1981-1991 compilation, which featured the title’s German version. Jürgen Engler doesn’t mind. >The title is so succinct that the new album just had to be called “Metal Machine Music”! The name stands for the ultimate symbiosis of electro and metal, the way I’ve always had it in mind.< The artwork with its apocalyptic man-machine theme, reminiscent of “Mad Max”, is a perfect complement.

No doubt about it – this albums sees DIE KRUPPS not only follow in the footsteps of their successful electro metal phase of the mid-nineties, it also sees them go even further in terms of sheer toughness!

“V - Metal Machine Music” – the title says it all!


CD 1:

1.    Die Verdammten (Prelude)
2.    Kaltes Herz
3.    Battle Extreme
4.    Fly Martyrs Fly
5.    The Truth
6.    Road Rage Warrior
7.    The Vampire Strikes Back
8.    Alive In A Glass Cage
9.    Branded
10.    Kaos Reigns
11.    The Red Line
12.    Bonded By Blood
13.    Volle Kraft Voraus
 
CD 2:

1.    Kaltes Herz (Reworked By Darkhaus)
2.    Alive In A Glass Cage (Remixed By Faderhead)
3.    Road Rage Warrior ‘82
4.    Battle Extreme (Demo)
5.    Kaos Reigns (Demo)
6.    The Vampire Strikes Back (Demo)
7.    Kaltes Herz (Demo)
8.    Alive

 
LINE-UP:

Jürgen Engler (Vocals)
Ralf Dörper (Synthesizer)
Marcel Zürcher (Gitarre)
Volker Borchert (Drums)
Nils Finkeisen (Gitarre)