Two years after top-5-album and with three pre-singles in their back Blutengel releases their new album „Un:Gott". Once again frontman Chris Pohl allows a view into his world, whose development mostly can be described with one attribute musically as much as lyrically: larger!

Where the journey started with „Child Of Glass" 20 years ago, the circle closes for „Un:Gott" builds the bridge between past and future. The traditional style loved by fans is maxed out to the last consequence. Epic melodies unifies with danceable beats and produce sinister, extremely catchy anthems lead by vocalists Chris Pohl and Ulrike Goldmann. The chorusses are even more direct into the ear, the melancholy is a bit more gloomy, the angry parts are a bit more furious, hope is even brighter, the sustained emotions more intense. Regarding that, the band satisfies with their lack of compromise in maintaining their trademarks and carrying it sensibly into the new times. A part of this is the lyrical concept being derived directly from the album title: Unmensch is the German word for the opposite of human, a human that behaves inhuman. Analogical an „Un:Gott" is a god that spreads despair and makes bad things happen. Should you pray to this god and follow his strict rules? Or do you better go with the other side? Is probably the devil ruling the world? The question about death and what comes after it is a natural follow-up. But the human has his place as well with his guilty pleasures and suffering, including his best luck and worst curse: love.

You can listen and order the album here or watch their latest music video below!

On the 18th-of February 1977 The Damned released their debut album ‘Damned, Damned, Damned’. The most important album of the late seventies punk movement, though when it comes to The Damned they are the architects of the revolution, what punk was and the direction it was heading.

Indeed, with The Damned there was a lot of firsts, they were the first band from the United Kingdom to release and chart a punk single in ‘New Rose’ in October 1976. The first UK punk band to tour America and play the blank generations ground-zero in New York’s CBGB’s. But it is that album ‘Damned, Damned, Damned’ which is the true-milestone, it was the first album released by a UK band from the surge of punk. Eight months before The Sex Pistols released ‘Never Mind The Bollocks..”, though a more fully formed debut than the Pistols, and released while The Clash were only starting to record their self-titled debut.

Without doubt both the influence and quality contained with ‘Damned, Damned, Damned’ made this the most important album release of the nineteen-seventies.
Produced by the Stiff Records maestro-Nick Lowe (Elvis Costello, Wreckless Eric), this was old-school rock and roll fused with teenage angst and layered with escapism, atomic art aimed at the heart of the British establishment and the pretentious state with the rock music circus of the day.

Raw-energy, the essential ingredient injected into the albums twelve-tracks by Dave Vanian, Brian James(London SS), Captain Sensible, and drummer Rat Scabies. Opening with the single-‘Neat Neat Neat’, the incendiary slice of punk, released simultaneously with the album. And closing with the nod to their heroes, a cover of The Stooges ‘1970’-renamed ‘I Feel Alright’, the adventure The Damned brings the listener on is one which resonates strongly within modern society today.

The bulk of the songwriting for the release was done by guitarist Brian James, the man who many feel responsible for punk, although after the follow-up-‘Music For Pleasues’ this original incarnation would break up as Jones departed towards the end of seventy-seven. This makes ‘Damned, Damned, Damned’ that bit more special as it the original sound captured of a band hungry and striving forward.
The only moment the band slow down is the terrifying-'Feel The Pain', the rest is an all-out attack on the senses as James is turning the guitar-sound into a noise-generator than an instrument. Tracks like- 'Stab Your Back’ is perhaps too moronic a track for even The Ramones, the collection is still the finest time-capsule from a moment in time where music had possibilities regardless of how it was executed.

New Rose;

Is she really going out with him?
Ah!
I got a feeling inside of me
It's kind of strange like a stormy sea
I don't know why, I don't know why
I guess these things have got to be
I gotta new rose, I got it good
Guess I knew that I always would
I can't stop to mess around
I got a brand new rose in town
See the sun, see the sun, it shines
Don't get too close or it'll burn your eyes
Don't you run away that way
You can come back another day
I got a new rose, I got it good
Guess I knew that I always would
I can't stop to mess around
I got a brand new rose in town
I never thought this could happen to me
I feel strange, why should it be?
I don't deserve somebody this great, oh, oh
I'd better go or it'll be too late
Ah!
I got a feeling inside of me
It's kind of strange like a stormy sea
I don't know why, I don't know why
I guess these things have got to be
I got a new rose, I got her good
Guess I knew that I always would
I can't stop to mess around
I got a brand new rose in town, uh
Oh!
Na-na-no!

Track List; Original 1977

Neat, Neat, Neat
Fan Club
I Fall
Born to Kill
Stab Your Back
Feel the Pain
New Rose
Fish
See Her Tonight
1 of the 2
So Messed Up
I Feel Alright

-All tracks written by Brian James, except ‘Stab Your Back’ and ‘I Feel Alright’.

Kevin Burke-Feb 2019

Today, exactly 16 years ago, American Industrial Metal band Ministry released their eighth studio album Animositisomina (18.02.2003). It was the last Ministry album to feature Al Jourgensen’s longtime partner in crime and bass-player / composer / producer Paul Barker, ending the Luxa/Pan production era.
Later, Jourgensen would reveal in an interview that this is one of his least-favourite Ministry albums saying “it was no fun to make” as he was forced to quit his heroin habits during the recording sessions.

Animositisomina Tracklist:
Animosity
Unsung
Piss
Lockbox
Broken
The Light Pours Out Of Me
Shove
Impossible
Stolen
Leper

On February 17, 2014, Bob Casale died at the age of 61, in Los Angeles, California, due to heart failure. As with most musicians their legacy is both the influence and the music they leave behind, in the case of Casale what he accomplished with Devo is astounding.

The debut full-length album by Devo-“Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!” broke into the UK charts reaching a high of number-twelve, that set the chain reaction of legend.
Although released to mixed reviews, since then Rolling Stone has listed in amongst the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, it is also listed in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die-for a reason. It is the punk-electronic crossover, somewhere balancing between all-out rage and novelty recording. Produced by Brian Eno and David Bowie on the back of their experimental Berlin-trilogy, Devo became the perfect project.

“This is the band of the future”-David Bowie on Devo.

The strangest album-title comes from the lead single, released this month in 1978-“Jocko Homo" introduced the call-and-response "Are we not men?-We are Devo!". Indeed that single charted in the UK’s top-100.
“Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!” broke down barriers as it reflected perfectly the state of rock-music. The death of glam, the cliches which were already falling into the punk movement and the heavyweight stadium acts who played for the money and not the audience is meshed into every inch of the album. It flung back the pretentious notions of the old-guard with a cover of The Rolling Stones “Satisfaction”, became spokespeople for the hippy-drug generation with “Too Much Paranoias”. In time Devo could be perceived as journalists, highlighting their perception of what the music business had become.

Bob Casale was intricate in the Devo sound, providing back vocals, keyboards and that sixties-based rhythm guitar sound. Though his later years was spent in the field of soundtracks to movies such as - Four Rooms, Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, the past would always reach for him in the form of reunion shows from 1996 until 2007.
Along with bands like Kraftwerk, Talking Heads, and Pere Ubu, Devo hailed a new era of electronic based compositions that set the trajectory for much of modern music. Looking deep with the modern framework of music points directly in the sound of LCD Soundsystem, Radiohead, even in Arcade Fire, you frequently find strong traces of Devo.

Kevin Burke Jan 2019

This month it’s been 23 years since American industrial metal band Ministry released their cover version of Bob Dylan’s ‘Lay Lady Lay’ (February 1996). The song was performed earlier during a charity concert in October 1994, with Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam performing the backing vocals. Later the studio version of the song was recorded and released as a 4 track CD single from Ministry’s sixth studio album, Filth Pig. The song also appears on the 2008 Ministry cover album, Cover Up. In the Rolling Stone magazine’s review of Filth Pig, critic Jon Wiederhorn wrote that the cover "amalgamates a deep distorted bass line, clicking electronic percussion, jangling acoustic guitars, ominous curls of feedback and Ministry frontman Al Jourgensen's trademark howls”.

Lay Lady Lay (CD) Tracklist

Lyrics

Lay lady lay
Lay across my big brass bed
Lay lady lay
Lay across my big brass bed
Stay lady stay
Stay while the night is still ahead
Stay lady stay
Heaven's fills our head
Whatever colors that you have in your mind
I show them on to you and you see them shine

Stay lady stay
Stay with your man a while
Till the break of day
Then you're gonna see him smile
His clothes are dirty but his hands are clean
And you're the best thing, he's ever seen
Why wait any longer for the world to begin?
You can have your cake and eat it too
Why wait any longer for the one you love
When he's standing over you?

Lay lady lay
Lay across my big brass bed
Stay lady stay
We're gonna build the whole night ahead
I long to see you in the morning light
I long to reach for you all night

Lay lady lay
Lay lady lay
Lay lady lay
Lay lady lay
Lay lady lay

Songwriter: Bob Dylan

© Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

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