Silberbart
4 Times Sound Razing

I no longer remember which critic, and for which publication, stated in 1975 that if Hitler had wanted to invade Poland with a rock album, he would have chosen "Sabotage" by Black Sabbath. It's a statement that has always perplexed me, not so much because the album in question still doesn't have a robust impact today, but rather because it makes me wonder: did Hitler really need to borrow an album from the enemy?

In Germany in the early '70s, there were already quite monolithic works to represent divisions of "Panzer": one could think of the first LPs by the Scorpions, or dig through the heavy psych quite popular in German lands at the time, from the early days of Eloy to more obscure bands like Nosferatu or Night Sun, up to the overwhelming raids of Guru Guru.

My favorite battleship remains, however, "4 Times Sound Razing" by Silberbart, a power trio formed by Tajo Teschner (vocals/guitar), Peter Behrens (drums), and Werner Flug (bass). The feature that makes this album unique isn't its originality, considering that the band's reference points - from Guru Guru to Blue Cheer, with a touch of MC5 and some vague (free) jazz temptation - are all well recognizable, nor its sheer sonic power. The charm of "4 Times..." lies in what it tells us about the culture it comes from, the Germanic (before just German) culture: it is, in fact, an album not only simply disruptive, but self-destructive. Self-destruction is a note that gives a desperate and fatalistic tint to the entire Germanic culture: it is present in the Twilight of the Gods, not just an apocalyptic myth, but a final all-against-all struggle, in which even the gods have no other purpose but to destroy and be destroyed, dragging the entire cosmos with them. It is the self-destruction of the Thirty Years' War, a conflict whose scope would still terrify today. It is Hitler's final delusion in the face of the imminent end of his Reich, when he wanted to drag all of Germany into a suicide of unimaginable proportions.

It's what comes to mind when you listen to this LP from its very first track, with the slightly demented title of "Chub Chub Cherry." Stoner à la Blue Cheer, jazzy bass, shouted and strangled vocals, a chorus almost tiptoeing, then everything dramatically accelerates on the guitar solo, like a car deliberately launched at full speed toward a wall.

And it's only the beginning. The trio shifts nervously, restlessly, and erratically between deliberately antithetical atmospheres, playing with contrasts that leave you stunned, without a foothold. The desolate, slender verses of "Brain Brain" suddenly explode into frantic screams and deliberately awkward movements, the already very hard "God" evolves into an unparalleled sonic argument, "Head Tear of the Drunken Sun" starts like the best California-marked heavy psych to then go through all the phases of the most deconstructed and disconnected free-rock.

This deliberate act of sonic self-harm also stands out for its sinister and at times very violent impact, with an unsuspected modernity. One cannot help but think of Slayer's "Hell Awaits" when hearing certain riffs and passages of "Brain Brain," while it would be enough to accelerate the verses of "God" to obtain a song by Kreator - the vocals, in this case, would already be perfect.

I love this album, therefore, not only for its krautrock exuberance, for the repeated waves of heavily saturated guitars, for its good seventies flavor. I love it for the attitude, because at the end of a listen, I find myself checking that it hasn't devastated my home, or that it hasn't made me lose control to the point of hitting my head against a wall. It doesn't surprise me at all that shortly after the release of "4 Times Sound Razing" the Silberbart broke up: what could they have staged after such an extreme work? It's for this reason that Krautrock (almost) always represents a guarantee: it has never known half measures.