music
Similarities with Tokio Hotel: New Kraftklub album
Singer Felix Brummer (right) and guitarist Steffen Israel 2019 at the Lollapalooza Festival Berlin. photo
© Britta Pedersen/dpa
At least since the “#WirSindmehr” concert in their hometown of Chemnitz, Kraftklub has been considered one of the most political German bands, a pioneer in the fight against the right. Her new album is out now.
When Chemnitz became the epitome of right-wing violence in late summer 2018, Kraftklub held back. In response to the riots there, the Chemnitz band around frontman Felix Kummer organized a free concert with other artists such as Trettmann or Die Toten Hosen under the motto “#WirSindMore”.
Now the first Kraftklub album since 2017 is coming out: “Kargo” will be released this Friday – and it hasn’t gotten any less political. A depressing ballad is about “Alman Angst”. It is about those who like to be called “concerned citizens”. “Wittenberg is not Paris” addresses a dangerous new German Biedermeierism, accuses political comfort and a generation that is older but not more critical.
Against German honesty
For one song on the album, the Chemnitz indie band got the support of another East German band: Tokio Hotel. In “Fahr mit mir (4×4)” they go together in search of a place where no national flags are hoisted in the allotments. “Asparagus fields pass by, if I leave, I won’t come back,” says the song against German conservativeness.
Tokio Hotel singer Bill Kaulitz, who comes from Magdeburg and now lives in the USA, settles accounts with his old homeland: “I’m sorry. Something with a home office can’t be home for me.”
How the collaboration of the two bands could look like on stage was shown two days before the album release in Hamburg: Kraftklub played there at the Reeperbahn Festival together with Kaulitz, a spontaneous concert that was announced only the afternoon before via Twitter and presented “Fahr mit mir”. live. Kaulitz is part of the Reeperbahn Festival jury for the young talent award – so he was just on the Elbe anyway.
The collaboration with Tokio Hotel is definitely a new path for the band – also musically. Otherwise, the fourth studio album by Kraftklub – to the expected delight of many fans – fits in fairly seamlessly with the previous work of Kummer and Co.