Mastermind Jürgen Engler is a visionary who has had a lasting influence on the music landscape for decades. In the late 1970s, he was among the first German punk rockers with his band Male and took Campino (lead singer of German million sellers ‘Die Toten Hosen’) on tour with him before Die Toten Hosen were even founded. In the eighties, he formed DIE KRUPPS, who went on – together with his congenial partner Ralf Dörper [PROPAGANDA], who has also co-penned countless lyrics since "Wahre Arbeit Wahrer Lohn" – to be a driving force of the industrial and EBM movements. When this scene was taken over by the mainstream in the nineties, the group from Düsseldorf integrated tough thrash guitars into their sound and became, along with Nine Inch Nails and Ministry, the most important source of inspiration in the electro metal genre and also influenced numerous bands of the Neue Deutsche Härte (New German Hardness). It is this successful phase (keywords: “Fatherland”, “To The Hilt”) which DIE KRUPPS bring back to life with their latest release “V – Metal Machine Music”, taking up where their “IV – Paradise Now” album (which was not numbered at the time of its release) had left off, following their fairly electro machine-heavy “The Machinists of Joy” recording which saw the light of day less than two years ago.
The title “Metal Machine Music” has appeared before in the DIE KRUPPS discography: once on their same-named maxi single with Accu§er and once on the 1981-1991 compilation, which featured the title’s German version. Jürgen Engler doesn’t mind. The title is so succinct that the new album just had to be called “Metal Machine Music”! The name stands for the ultimate symbiosis of electro and metal, the way I’ve always had it in mind. The artwork with its apocalyptic man-machine theme, reminiscent of “Mad Max”, is a perfect complement. No doubt about it – this albums sees DIE KRUPPS not only follow in the footsteps of their successful electro metal phase of the mid-nineties, it also sees them go even further in terms of sheer toughness! “V - Metal Machine Music” – the title says it all!
