War in.
First time when I heard the name Kanonenfieber was in the end of 2021, when Dmytro Kumar, 1914 vocalist mentioned this name in the interview. I checked one or two songs, noted the good mix of black metal, death and catchy melodies but that’s all. However, everything changed drastically when I saw Kanonenfieber on stage at Hellfest. I got there with zero expectations but after an hour I became a huge fan, who digs deep into the lyrics and can’t get enough of the band’s music. And I believe I wasn’t the only one who was impressed so much: the music and theatrical show with uniforms, balaclavas, pyros and lots of other things did its job so good. So when I came back from the festival, I told everyone about the band and their music and now I am lucky enough to tell about the upcoming album Die Urkatastrophe.
A brief backstory.
Kanonenfieber is a one-man-band, created by Noise, talented multi-instrumentalist and vocalist from Bamberg, Bavaria in 2020. The main theme is World War I and the lyrics are in German (so for people like me, who doesn’t know German: well, google translator is our friend here.) At the live shows Noise plays with a bunch of live musicians, named Gunnar, Hanz, Kreuzer and Sickfried. At this time Kanonenfieber released one long play Menschenmühle (“Human Mill”), three EP’s and one live album. Also there was a single “Stop The War” and I thank Noise for this song a lot.
Die Urkatastrophe.
Die Urkatastrophe is a direct continuation of the previous releases, conceptually and musically. Actually, the first single, “Menschenmühle” shows it with the name, the lyrics and the music, of course – it’s right-in-your-face fierce drumming, blackened riffs and catchy vocal line. I don’t know how Noise manage to do it, but this extreme metal piece is extremely catchy and great opener for live shows (checked and approved.) “Sturmtrupp” (“Storm Trooper”) continues the musical fierce but with a larger amount of melody in guitar parties. Another extremely heavy yet melodic song is “Waffenbrüder” (“Brothers In Arms”), which is one of my favorite from this album. The structure of this song reminds me epic dark canvas “Die Schlacht bei Tannenberg” from the previous album: strong and catchy melody in verse, lilting chorus, great for headbanging with lots of black metal tremolo and double bass over it. From time to time there are some slow dark guitar picking passages that give the listener a few seconds of rest before shelling them with a bunch of extreme guitars and drumming. Also there is a guest guitarist in this song, Maik Weichert from Heaven Shall Burn; if you are familiar with the band, you can hear his guitar easily. “Ausblutungsschlacht” (“Bleeding Battle”) preceded by short spoken word (or rather a poem) “Verdun” is slow-paced yet heavy and brutal piece about the battle of Verdun, one of the bloodiest battles in WWI. The tragedy and despair can be heard here in every note even without understanding the lyrics while drumming and riffs can be interpreted as heavy shells that falling around you, when the only thing you can do is keep your head down in your trench. Keyboards add a lot of despair atmosphere and tragedy to the song too. Nevertheless, for some reason “Ausblutungsschlacht” reminds me “One Hundred Day Offensive” by mentioned 1914 and I can’t do nothing about it.
Talking about melody, I can’t just pass by “Lviv zu Lemberg” (“Lviv to Lemberg”), a song about Carpathian Winter War or some specific episode of it. For my sorrow I didn’t get lyrics with the promo, so I can only guess what is song about basing only on my knowledge. Anyway, musically this song starts as pure melodic death metal, changes a bit towards blackened death with blast-beast and dense riffs in verse and gets back to melodic death in chorus. Another outstanding thing here is extremely melodic solo, not so inherent to such extreme music but somehow it still fits this song well.
“Gott mit der Kavallerie” (“God With The Cavalry”) is quite surprising: the intro taking us to some thrash metal territory, but closer to chorus music turns into blackened death again (there are even some galloping parts.) The main melody is catchy, of course and in this song we can even hear some epicness.
However, the song I liked the least is “Der Maulwurf” (“The Mole”.) This is a tragic story of German war miners who dig the tunnels towards to the enemy position to place the bombs and filling the bags with the sand for the trenches. It was a devastating and very dangerous work because many times tunnels were collapsing, burying the soldiers alive and the lack of air did its job too. But let’s get back to the music: “Der Maulwurf” is slow-paced song with distinct bass guitar and epic chorus, emphasized with double bass and huge guitar riffs. I can totally understand why the band choose to make the video for this song and this will be a huge number when played live, for sure: the crowd will sing along with the band just like “ahoy” in “Die Havarie” – one of my brightest memories from Kanonenfieber‘s show at Hellfest.
War out.
As a fan, I would say “this is gonna be the album of the year” and things like that but I won’t because this is another great album indeed and once released, it will speak for itself. One more time Noise managed to combine extreme metal with extremely catchy melodies and put serious, mostly tragic stories in the lyrics. And I sincerely think that once you will listen to Kanonenfieber, you won’t get rid of it so easy. So listen to this album. Read the lyrics. Go and see their show. Support this band.
EOM.
Die Urkatastrophe will be released on September, 20th via Century Media Records.
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