Das Ich
Die Propheten

THE REVIEW

You can recognize one by his really improbable hair, the other because he looks like he's just come out of a concentration camp: they are keyboardist Bruno Kramm (also known in metal circles for collaborating with Morbid Angel and Atrocity) and singer Stefan Ackermann, a madman like few others. Together they are Das Ich, and "Die Propheten" is their first full-length, a massive album, a work that truly deserves more attention than it actually receives.

Devoted to a kind of truly horrifying electro-goth, the music of these two shady characters is really an experience beyond genres, and it’s just by chance that they ended up in the EBM cauldron. In fact, this bare industrial with gruesome horror atmospheres seems rather to take inspiration from the exploits of old Teutonic glories like Kraftwerk and Einsturzende Neubauten, without forgetting the lessons of paranoia imparted by the fundamental Virgin Prunes. I'll say more: the impression is that the members of these formations were ruthlessly slaughtered and that their corpses began jamming at a rave-party from the underworld!

"Es ist ja Krieg… " grim drum beats, some bells, and the curtain rises: a fantastic and terrible world materializes before our incredulous eyes. The plastic sounds (it's 91, but it feels like '85!) and the limp flow of orchestrations make everything more squalid and cold. A silicone flute, a chilling piano, and then a harsh and theatrical voice, reminiscent of Blixa Bargeld of the early days (also thanks to the German spit-sung lyrics). A piercing scream, truly brutal, and then a catastrophe of sounds crashes over our unprepared ears. The thought is more like: what the hell am I listening to?
"Kain und Abel": a groovy dance rhythm shakes us to our core, and the "balla balla balla balla balla balla with the dead" is the irresistible refrain that will animate our most engaged Saturday nights. The most surprising thing is how a potentially hit synth-pop track turned into a dark and twisted ceremonial.

"Die Propheten" makes it clear we are not facing simple electronics; the approach is baroque (and exquisitely gaudy, let's be clear from the outset) and, I wouldn't want to overstate, at times it seems to verge on the late progressive which has become synonymous with the soundtracks of horror films. Bruno Kramm is not the type to laze around behind a PC pressing buttons; Kramm is one who works his ass off to set up an entire synthetic orchestra, whose evolutions, however, resemble the uncoordinated ballet of a mad puppet. "Des Satans neue Kleider" is a slow ritual that allows Ackermann's sickly throat to roam far and wide, sometimes taking the form of a drooling old lady, a mischievous sprite, or a demon from hell. It becomes increasingly clear that here the two play complementary roles, and where Kramm takes on the part of the genius, Ackermann rightfully takes on the part of the extravagance: paranoid, theatrical, always and decidedly over the top, he is the real mainstay of the evening, the unsuspected added value of Das Ich.

"Gottes Tod" is a "Trans-Europe Express" of death, eight minutes of dry drum-machine and minimal electronics, an unstoppable train descending into the depths of an unreal and dreamlike dimension, where everyday elements become something monstrous, where repetition grinds paranoia, where the same phrase, with the necessary variations, repeated to exhaustion ends up marking, in a crescendo of tension, a dark and disturbing ritual. Der Hass starts off like any Michael Jackson song might start, but the gothic settings and split voices reveal the vocation of Das Ich to desperately try and cloak dance music with an unhealthy morbidity.

"Lügen und das Ich", a violent track with post-punk nuances, is the pinnacle of Ackermann's delirium: his frantic and paranoid singing is something that really goes beyond, and among anarchic screams, childish rhymes, and esoteric chants, the race to the volume knob is a must for all of us. Kramm's ruthless beat does the rest, also reminding us just where people like Hocico come from. Frevel is the chilling piano that closes the curtain and ends the crazy staging. As we make our way to the exit, whispers and gloomy gothic atmospheres accompany us, still troubled by the visions and sounds echoing and bouncing in our minds.

Well, here we are again at the evening thought: so, between vampires and devils, it feels like being at the festival of the dead. But the question is: is this charade able to transcend the narrow confines of the adolescent target it evidently aims for? But of course, yes. First of all, from a strictly musical point of view, all the content is there: in short, Kramm knows what he’s doing, it's true that sometimes he seems to lose his way, ending up tangling up in unknown places, but the winning solutions and the catchy riffs are plentiful, and in this case, compositional irrationality merges into the unhealthy charm the work inspires as a whole. Then, from a meta-musical point of view, beyond the vampires and devils, Das Ich represents an unease, a psycho-social discomfort, a paranoia and schizophrenia that elevate them to be the chroniclers of contemporary man's neurosis, no more and no less (and take this statement with a grain of salt) than masters in the field like Cale, Gira, Cobain, Cave, and many others. But above all, to those of us who delve into the nightmare (or rather, the twilight), who are not afraid of devils and vampires, but rather are thrilled to death, this music appeals to us because it makes us move our asses, because we blast it in the car full blast on Friday night, because it projects us into the illusions of the weekend and allows us to forget the evils infecting our weekday existence.

If you think that's little…