|
HORROR
COMICS
SPONSOR
Link to us!
If you would like to use the graphic above, just save the icon image to your server and link it back to feoamante.com! |
|
KMFDM: RETRO
Wax Trax Records/TVT Records
Good Website, put together by Sascha Konietzo himself. |
|
This is the second release of KMFDM catalogue cuts this fall/winter (1998).
That is usually a bad sign. When music companies start dumping Best of
and Greatest Hits on us, it often means that the band is dead or soon
will be. On the KMFDM website, there has been talk of ending the
band or reforming. Considering that KMFDM has long been a soup
of new musicians, this feels weird. You know that feeling you get when
a long time favorite band breaks up? That's the feeling that I'm getting
here. Still, fifteen years of music is nothing to sneeze at.
For those of you who might be hearing KMFDM for the first time, this is a
pretty good sampler. It starts out with 1995's XTORT song POWER. A good
rocking, danceable tune combined with KMFDM's typical humor. Like
many of the KMFDM songs written by Sascha and Gunter Schulz, the
song is little more than a diatribe of emotionally charged words without
connection.
"UNDER A STONE / SKIN AND BONE / THE CHILDREN OF FEAR / ARE NOT ALONE
/ RIVERS OF TEARS / FLESH & BLOOD / AN EYE FOR AN EYE / THAT'S ALL
WE GOT."
Still, what the words sometimes lack, the music makes up for, with catchy
riffs and rhythms that energize you like few can. Techno pop is often
worthless to listen to unless you can be doing something energetic while
you are hearing it. Not so with KMFDM. I like to play it at work
while I'm busy setting up new graphics on the computer all day.
RETRO starts out fine with POWER, JUKE-JOINT JEZEBEL, BRUTE, and right on through
to VOGUE. After that comes GODLIKE-DOGLIKE which contains the overabused
KMFDM "RIP THE SYSTEM" chant. Why they keep skipping
on this line is anybody's guess. At this point I almost feel like it is
prosyletizing, and I don't particularly like being preached to. This chant
is repeated in the rap songs of MORE & FASTER and of course, RIP THE SYSTEM.
Overall this is a good representation of what KMFDM offered us over the course
of their career. Between the two collections, I prefer AGOGO, but KMFDM:
RETRO ain't bad.
This review copyright 1998 E.C.McMullen Jr.
Return to Shadow Music |
CD
TRIVIA
Since this review was written in 1998, the April 1999 Columbine
High School Massacre
in Littleton, Colorado occurred. Among the music that the two murderers
were said to
enjoy,
Marilyn Manson and
KMFDM
topped the list. The two murderers also built bombs
in the house where they lived with their parents, and had so many
guns in their
bedroom that they were unable to take them all to the school.
The
U.S. media, largely chose to ignore the fact that both Marilyn Manson
and KMFDM are anti-hate songs,
which fueled the hysteria fire for teen Copy Cat crimes across the
U.S. and Canada.
Who knows how different things would have been if the U.S. news
media had reported the incident with something resembling truth
and responsibility?
If
the two murderers had not had such easy access to illegally obtained
firearms,
they would have undoubtedly set off their bombs, which would have
killed many more people, possibly the entire school.
In the wake of anti-gun hysteria, this fact is also being currently
ignored by the media. |
|
