TEN YEAR ANNIVERSARY REPOST!
Celebrating our 10th anniversary docweasel.com is posting some of our most popular articles from 10 years ago this month
Everything about KMFDM revolves around themes, from the artwork, to the 5 letter titles, to the way they mix up the member roster for each album. For ATTAK, It sounds as if the band threw some songs together and called it an album… I guess if I had to give this album a theme, it would be “Tim Skold’s guitars.”
KMFDM/ATTAK
Three years after their farewell album, KMFDM is doin’ it again, this time a little more chaotic and futuristic sounding.
ATTAK starts out great, and grabs your attention with “Attak/reload.” The distorted, robot-like female vocals in the background go great with the schizophrenic guitars.
“Dirty” features Sascha’s deep growly voice, and this is one of the songs on the album that might make most “old-skool” fans happy. Then of course, you can always find the typical “fight song” anthems where someone screams KMFDM in the chorus. It wouldn’t be a KMFDM album if it didn’t have one of their anthems.
The worst song on the album is “Save Me.” It sounds like a bad eighties ballad leftover from Skold’s old hair metal band, Shotgun Messiah. “Yohoho” is very ambient and quiet. The vocals remind me of earlier KMFDM, but the music is more futuristic sounding. “Risen” is one of the best songs on the album. It is a militaristic sounding song, and Sascha and Skold trade back and forth between vocals. “Sturm & Drang” just begs to be turned up all the way. The last song, “Sleep,” is my favorite song on the album. It is very tribal sounding, and soft, with loud bursts with the chorus.
There is no real theme for ATTAK. All of their previous albums have had some sort of “sound” that tied the whole album together. Just to name a few examples, NIHIL was a very hard, almost angry album, Symbols has this sort of vintage-y, antique feel to it, and ADIOS has a heavy electronic feel to it. Everything about KMFDM revolves around themes, from the artwork, to the 5 letter titles, and to the way they mix up the member roster for each album. For ATTAK, It sounds like the band threw some songs together and called it an album, it doesn’t sound like they really had a main goal they were working towards. I guess if I had to give this album a theme, it would be “Tim Skold’s guitars.”
The main thing that I am disappointed in is that there are no songs in German. It isn’t KMFDM unless there is a song sung creepily in that dark, evil sounding language. Out of the whole album, there is only one chorus in German, see if you can find it.
As you get more familiar with the songs you start to hear some small elements that tie the whole album together that are too subtle to pick out from the first time you hear it. The theme I’m starting to hear permeating this album is a futuristic sound. Nothing really stands out at first as you listen to it, but as you become familiar with it, you see that it is in fact pretty good.