Words by Chris Mace > Images Courtesy of Sanctuary Records
April 2004

"What could be more beautiful than German ultra-heavy beat bands for the entire family?" KMFDM asked this of the residents of their native Hamburg in the early 1980s on a promotional bill. Suffice to say, their guitar driven, beat-heavy machine sound and aggressive lyrics don't amount to family music, if there is such a thing; but the Ultra Heavy Beat stuck as a moniker as they became a staple of the nascent industrial-metal scene-a fast living family, dysfunctional as apple strudel.

Their latest album, WWIII, released in September on Sanctuary Records was produced heavily on Macs, primarily with ProTools. "Everything is Mac based, that goes for the whole KMFDM camp. We use, as most bands do, some sort of trackage and use the Macs to fire off sequences during shows and little bits that otherwise just can't be played . . . we don't bring like four guys with trumpets on the road," says co-founder Sascha Konietzko, from his Seattle flat overlooking wide shipping lanes full of tankers.

KMFDM is an acronym for "Kein Mitleid Fur Die Mehrheit," roughly translated as "No Pity for the Majority," which explains their anti-mainstream stance, and the general fervor of some of the stops on the WWIII tour as they lambasted (to the choir no less) what they see as America's passivity in the face of the current political climate, and the media's collusion in a warmongering foreign policy agenda. However, some fans just roll their eyes at these polemics, aware of the fact that KMFDM changes their line up nearly every album; and you never know what you are going to get.

The wailing guitars on a few of the tracks have a stadium rock feel that clashes with the screeching, stomping, and pounding sounds of an automated factory floor, as well as the Noam Chomsky-like, lyrical finger wagging (sampling Bush is just too easy). But they aren't out to please all the people all the time-one reason for what Sashca says is immensely gratifying work, but why they haven't transitioned to major commercial success like Nine Inch Nails, Ramstein, Ministry, or other bands they have toured with. Still, the album's virtuous production is a testament to the fact that they have been at this for 20 years, and the album gets better with repetition and at higher volumes.

When I spoke to Sascha they had just completed the 12th and final track of the music for the Spiderman 2 video game to be released for the Play Station in July, all done on Macs. It's a big means of exposure, especially considering the number of Play Stations out there and the amount of time people tend to spend with a game.

Not that they've played the game. They watched a VHS tape of someone else playing it and quickly wrote some tracks which blew away the game's producers. "They were like, ÔWow, this is the best video game music we've ever heard'-and I was just thinking, well, you've probably not worked with very good people then," Sascha said. But he insists that the gig was strictly for-hire and if KMFDM were oriented solely toward financial success it would look quite different.

I asked if there have been any recent influences on their music and Sascha said no, "there hasn't been much exciting stuff going on." When I asked about some of the electroclash bands coming out of New York, he said he hadn't heard of any and after giving him a flakey description ("lots of 80s references, synth-pop mixed with anything really, but punky in an indie rocker sense, with like, dissonant drum machine beats . . . Soviet, Peaches, W.I.T., the compilations Larry Tee puts out"). I mentioned Fischerspooner. "Fischerspooner is total shit man, what's so new about that?"

I said that maybe the genre is innovating by using the past in creative ways, but he still wasn't having it. "In a couple of years we're going to have the retro movement of yesterday. What was I eating? Let's have it again. What was I wearing? Let's have it again." Ok, no recent influences; but he made a point-no bullshit.

Yet, one has to wonder about the intent of the music when confronted with the track, "Intro," which is a kind of corny introduction to the band (only two of them are German), and borrows from an earlier track off Angst, "[KMFDM] Sucks." Both songs are done with a rather off-color sense of humor: "Whatever we tell ya is meant to be crap, we hate all music and especially rap . . . Sounds to amaze you for a couple of bucks. . . No doubt about it KMFDM sucks!"

They are careful to not take themselves too seriously. I just wish they had lightened up in producing most of this album (and would stop mentioned their name in songs). While it's a welcome addition for fans of a band that's been around for 20 years, it doesn't rival Nihil, as Sashca says; but you have to expect artists to covet their most recent creations.

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