With the exception of Rammstein (a raging postindustrial roar of a rock band) and Tokio Hotel (a neo-glam group of anime-like youngsters), Germany has been strangely silent on the band front in recent years. Well, silent but for the racket coming out of KMFDM, which has released either an EP or an LP every year since 1984.
But even the most accomplished racket makers can get bogged down in Bavaria, and since 1991, the band has been based stateside, where the bulk of its fan base stays engaged via all the right social devices. Those fans also continue to fall out en masse every time their industrial-strength favorite comes to town. And since KMFDM basically hasn't been off the road since the group's inception, those visits are frequent.
South Florida gets another dose this Saturday, Halloween, of all dates. And the band will do it to the tune of something called Blitz. Like all of KMFDM's albums, Blitz errs on the more accessible side of industrial. Lead single "People of the Lie" sounds like a collision between Scritti Politti and Killing Joke, and "Strut" comes off almost as if a soul singer fronted Kill Hannah. But even when KMFDM waxes sophomoric ("Up Uranus"?), it attempts to kick out the jams like it was 1984 all over again.
Yes, KMFDM might have reached its peak with the release of 1993's crank-speed A Drug Against War. But don't think for a moment the proto-industrial agitprop power rockers have shuffled off to Buffalo. In fact, don't think at all. Because that might spoil the pummeling you'll get if you decide to spend All Hallows Eve with a bunch of unmasked men for whom volume is a lot like God.
