CASPAR BRÖTZMANN MASSAKER has announced new live performances throughout Europe this year. These upcoming shows will feature a full live lineup, featuring CASPAR BRÖTZMANN on guitar, Saskia von Klitzing (Fehlfarben) drums and Edu Delgado on bass, and the tour dates include CASPAR BRÖTZMANN BASS TOTEM shows with Sunn O))).
Southern Lord has also launched the preorders for the next two titles in their ongoing CASPAR BRÖTZMANN MASSAKER reissues series, with Der Abend Der Schwarzen Folklore and Koksofenapproaching release this July.
CASPAR BRÖTZMANN is one of the most unique and innovative guitarists of the last forty years. With his Berlin-based trio MASSAKER,
he evolved a whole new autonomous approach to writing rock songs,
starting from sounds that were widely considered ornamental if not
detrimental “sonic waste,” such as shrieking feedback and droning
overtones. This plethora of sounds were arranged into tracks to sound
like breaking concrete, grinding metal, or bursting glass, at once
monumental and threatening, impenetrable, and hermetic, yet also
archaically tender and loving.
Even today, as the art of noise has reached a level of sophistication that no one could have imagined thirty years ago, CASPAR BRÖTZMANN MASSAKER‘s
music is resoundingly singular. Ultra-heavy riffs and beats, ominous
tribal chants, and a raw physical force is conjured up by these three
sinister and proud minds of their era. Their unhinged, unified stream of
energy is captured on these remastered reissues and the results are
thrilling.
Stream CASPAR BRÖTZMANN MASSAKER’s “Bass Totem” from Der Abend Der Schwarzen Folklore HEREand “Die Wiege” from Koksofen HERE.
Both Der Abend Der Schwarzen Folklore and Koksofen will
be reissued via Southern Lord on July 5th, with CD, LP, and digital
formats made available. Find preorders at the Southern Lord Bandcamp HERE, US webshop HERE, and Euro webshop HERE.
CASPAR BRÖTZMANN BASS TOTEM w/ Sunn O)))::
7/30/2019 Festsaal Kreuzberg – Berlin, DE [tickets]
7/31/2019 Festsaal Kreuzberg – Berlin, DE [tickets]
10/07/2019 Backstage Werk – Munich, DE [tickets]
10/08/2019 ZKM – Karlsruhe, DE [tickets]
10/09/2019 Rosstall – Basel Kaserne, CH [tickets]
10/10/2019 Felsenkeller – Leipzig, DE [tickets]
10/13/2019 Kablys – Vilnius, LT [tickets]
10/14/2019 Vene Theatre – Tallinn, EE [tickets]
10/15/2019 Kulttuuritalo – Helsinki, FI [tickets]
CASPAR BRÖTZMANN MASSAKER:
11/05/2019 Hafenklang – Hamburg, DE
11/06/2019 MTC – Koln, DE
11/07/2019 Le Guess Who? – Utrecht, NL
11/08/2019 Oslo – London, UK
11/09/2019 Atelier Claus – Brussels, BE
Originally released in 1992, Der Abend Der Schwarzen Folklore is the third MASSAKER album, released by Rough Trade Germany. According to BRÖTZMANN,
the title track and “Bass Totem” are the band’s most accomplished
songs. It’s certainly the most sonically refined of their albums,
recorded during a residency over several weeks at the pastoral site of
Conny Plank’s studio near Cologne, and produced by Ingo Krauss and Bruno
Gebhard, who had worked with the famed Krautrock producer until his
death in 1987.
Der Abend Der Schwarzen also features their new drummer Danny Lommen, whom BRÖTZMANN
and bassist Eduardo Delgado had headhunted at a concert with Lommen’s
Dutch prog-core band Gore. Lommen shared their tastes in sheer volume
and presence, and, “has a completely unique sound to his drumming, “as BRÖTZMANN
marvels. “He plays ultrahard and clear, with authority and no
compromise, nothing, not even the most turbulent and speedy beats, sound
fuzzy – a statement.” This, he adds with a smile, would sometimes lead
to intense moods during rehearsals, when he overpowered – no small feat –
competing with the sounds of BRÖTZMANN‘s guitar.
The Tribe and Black Axis were still if very loosely rooted in some kind of heavy rock. Der Abend Der Schwarzen Folklore
erases these residues from their genetic make-up, evolving into a
free-form noise, strangely motionless like an earthquake rumble, that
sounded like nothing else at the time. The opening title song gives the
best example with its densely shifting chunk of howling and screaming
guitar shreds and grimly determined rumbles from the bass, accented by
heavy single beats or massively rattling, yet transparent outbursts from
the drums. An impenetrable sense of threat fills the sound, interrupted
only by breaks of skinny brooding, giving way to BRÖTZMANN‘s
throaty growl evoking a lonely march through hostile wastelands under
flaming sunsets. Culminating in an archaic choir chanting about black
walls rising – a monstrous cloud of thick high-voltage tension.
BRÖTZMANN speaks of the heavy nature of the lyrics,
inspired by 19th century artist Caspar David Friedrich’s painting “Das
Eismeer,” translated to “the sea of ice,” which depicts a shipwreck the
icy shores of Antarctica. It deals, of course, with ideas of the sublime
in nature – but also “the end of hope,” as the painting was known until
the sixties. And indeed, BRÖTZMANN credits his dark
and brooding sounds to the uneasy times. With the wall down, the Eastern
Block broken, East and West Germany were politically united but
emotionally didn’t share much more than a certain angst and uneasiness
with respect to the future, which erupted in ugly right-wing riots and
violence. BRÖTZMANN felt the rise of a black folklore
that he wanted to address, though he never admitted to it at the time
because, he said, he didn’t want to sound like, “some naive romantic,”
not underestimating the music’s gothic values; a weird idea, once you’ve
listened to Der Abend Der Schwarzen.
Koksofen (which translates to “blast furnace”), originally released in 1993, has become one of MASSAKER‘s most popular albums. Like its predecessor, Der Abend Der Schwarzen Folklore, the album took shape in MASSAKER‘s
rehearsal room below the Berlin subway station Schlesisches Tor, and
was recorded at Conny Plank’s studio near Cologne, with Plank’s former
associates Ingo Krauss and Bruno Gephard producing.
There’s a different kind of intensity to Koksofen. The features of MASSAKER‘s
sound are in full bloom. Mountainous noises tower up and crash down,
and tormented sounds rise from ominously seething grounds, haunting the
entire songscape. The feel of doom and dread hangs heavily over the five
songs, and the title song rumbles, shrieks and wails, plagued by BRÖTZMANN‘s guttural growls of war, suffering, and death.
Reflecting on the album to this day BRÖTZMANN remarks “Koksofen
is still a mystery to me.” He continues, “I can still feel the troubled
times in these songs.” The effects are certainly potent for the
listener too. And the album undoubtedly affirms MASSAKER as the fiercely original and compellingly raw musicians that they are.
For review copies of the Der Abend Der Schwarzen Folklore and Koksofen reissues in The Americas contact dave@earsplitcompound.com and elsewhere contact lauren@rarelyunable.com.
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