Follow TV Tropes

Following

Context Music / KMFDM

Go To

1[[quoteright:330:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mypictr_330x279_7176.jpg]]
2
3[floatboxright:
4Influences:
5+Music/ThrobbingGristle, Music/PinkFloyd, Music/FrankZappa, Music/DeepPurple, Music/{{Motorhead}}, Music/NineInchNails, The Pop Group, Mark Stewart and the Maffia, DAF, Liasons Dangerouses, Music/{{Ministry}}, [[Music/MarcBolan T. Rex]]]
6
7->''"[[FunWithAcronyms Kein Mitleid Für Die Mehrheit]]!"'' [[note]]"No pity for the majority!"[[/note]]
8
9KMFDM is an {{Industrial}} Rock / IndustrialMetal band, formed in Paris on February 29, 1984. It was originally a performance art group started by Sascha Konietzko and Udo Sturm, but as Konietzko was more interested in studio recordings he began collaborating with Raymond Watts and En Esch (real name Nicklaus Schandelmaier).
10
11They released eleven albums and split up in 1999, citing creative differences. Konietzko was joined by former contributor Tim Skold and vocalist Lucia Cifarelli as ''MDFMK,'' and released one self-titled album, before reforming as ''KMFDM'' in 2002 -- since then they have released five albums, and remastered versions of their previous discography.
12
13The band usually has a revolving lineup - to the point that they were practically an industrial {{Supergroup}} in the late '90s - formed around Konietzko, but Lucia Cifarelli and Andy Selway have also been consistent members since 2002. Konietzko is the only member to appear on every album.
14----
15
16[[AC: Discography:]]
17
18* ''Opium'' (1984)
19* ''What Do You Know, Deutschland?'' (1986)
20* ''Don't Blow Your Top'' (1988)
21* ''UAIOE'' (1989)
22* ''Naive'' (1990)
23* ''Money'' (1992)
24* ''Angst'' (1993)
25* ''Sin, Sex & Salvation'' (EP with ''PIG'') (1994)
26* ''Nihil'' (1995)
27* ''Xtort'' (1996)
28* ''[[LuckyCharmsTitle Symbols (💥☠💣🌀👊)]]'' (1997)
29* ''Adios'' (1999)
30* ''Boots'' (EP) (2002)
31* ''Attak'' (2002)
32* ''WWIII'' (2003)
33* ''Hau Ruck'' (2005)
34* ''Tohuvabohu'' (2007)
35* ''Skold vs. KMFDM'' (2009)
36* ''Blitz'' (2009)
37* ''Greatest Shit'' (2010) (Also released as ''Wurst'' with edited cover art)
38* ''WTF?!'' (2011)
39* ''Kunst'' (2013)
40* ''Our Time Will Come'' (2014)
41* ''Hell Yeah!'' (2017)
42* ''Paradise'' (2019)
43* ''In Dub'' (2020)
44* ''Hyëna'' (2022)
45* ''Let Go'' (2024)
46----
47
48!! KMFDM provides examples of:
49
50* AddedAlliterativeAppeal: "Juke Joint Jezebel."
51* AlienAbduction: "Witness" is narrated by a woman who was taken by aliens and now lives among them, though she seems to be fine with this. In fact, [[BrainwashedAndCrazy she and her fellow abductees]] are looking forward to introducing you to "the maker"...
52* AntiLoveSong: "Murder My Heart" and "Every Day's a Good Day".
53* AscendedMeme: Some of the fake acronyms for ''KMFDM'' ("Kill Motherfucking Music/DepecheMode" and others referring to Music/KylieMinogue and Music/{{Madonna}}, most notably) made up by fans have been referenced in both "Sucks" and "Kunst".
54* AWildRapperAppears: Andrew "Ocelot" Lindsley on "K.M.F".
55* AxCrazy: "Thrash Up!" and "Me and My Gun."
56* BeYourself: "Freak Flag".
57* BerserkButton: Do '''NOT''' mention Nazis, Columbine, or Creator/{{MTV}} around Sascha.
58* BilingualBonus: Among other languages, some songs are in German ("Leid und Elend"), Italian ("Panzerfaust"), Latin (the chorus of "Tohuvabohu"), Russian ("Davai"), Spanish (their cover of "Los Ninos del Parque"), et cetera. Sascha himself speaks English, Russian, and German fluently.
59* BizarreInstrument[=/=]EverythingIsAnInstrument: Whipping, banging, breaking stuff, a drill, a vacuum cleaner, lawnchairs, rocks, rubble, dirt, metal percussion, the Soviet synth, the scratch Piano, a party balloon solo, and a cockpit voice recorder.
60** At their first show they hired laid-off steel workers to bang on the support beams of the venue where they played their first concert.
61* BreakupSong: ''KMFDM'' of all people have several: "Every Day's a Good Day," "Adios," "Strut," and possibly "En Esch."
62* BrickJoke: "Inane" contains the line: "German engineering, astounding ingenuity / Over a decade of conceptual continuity," which is updated in "Kunst" to "twenty nine years of conceptual continuity." "Liquor Fish & Cigarettes" updates it again to "thirty-eight years of conceptual continuity."
63** In "Virus," the listener is directed to check the resistance in their cells, "Apathy" contains the lyric: "No resistance in the cells"
64* CallBack: The opening line of "Professional Killer" is "Conquer Your World" which is also the name of a song by Sascha's side project ''Excessive Force.''
65* TheCameo: Nivek Ogre on ''Symbols'' and ''Adios,'' Koichi Fukuda and Sebastian Komor on ''WTF?!'' and F.M. Einheit on ''Xtort.''
66** Music/PeterMurphy as well on a rare version of "Today."
67* CarefulWithThatAxe: Lucia has a few of these moments. In fact, she mentions that she destroyed an expensive microphone from screaming her head off on the official website.
68* CatchPhrase: "[[OurProductSucks KMFDM Sucks!]]" has become popular with the fans.
69** "Rip the System" was the band's during the ''En Esch'' era along with "I'm a sick, sick man, but I got class, 'coz you only gain respect when you're kickin' ass."
70** "In for the kill" appears on multiple tracks and albums.
71* ClusterFBomb: K-M-F, track 1 on 2019's ''Paradise''.
72* CoolShades: Sascha's.
73* CoverVersion: "Los Ninos del Parque" by ''Liaisons Dangereuses,'' "Mini Mini Mini" by ''Jacques Dutronc,'' "Mysterious Ways" by Music/{{U2}}, "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" by Music/NancySinatra, "Being Boiled" by Music/TheHumanLeague, "Crazy Horses" by ''The Osmonds,'' "Material Girl" by Music/{{Madonna}}, and "Godlight" by Music/PattiSmith.
74** Sascha once did a solo cover of "Down in It" by Music/NineInchNails.
75** On a ''KMFDM'' tribute album Raymond Watts covered "Disobedience" (Technically covering himself), and Gunter Shultz covered "Light."
76** ''Slick Idiot'' also covers "A Drug Against War" sometimes as well as the ''Errol Brown'' song "Everybody's a Winner."
77** Gunter Schultz and En Esch collaborated on covers of "Head Like a Hole" and "Terrible Lie" by Music/NineInchNails, and "Rhinoceros" by Music/TheSmashingPumpkins.
78** En Esch has covered "Work for Love" by Music/{{Ministry}}, and collaborated with ''Terminal Sect'' for a cover of "Who Made Who" by Music/{{ACDC}}.
79** ''PIG'' has covered "War Pigs" by Music/BlackSabbath, "Hello Hooray" by Music/AliceCooper, "Just Like You" by Music/{{Ministry}}, "Head Like a Hole" by Music/NineInchNails, and "1979" by Music/TheSmashingPumpkins.
80* {{Eagleland}}: "New American Century," "Sex on the Flag," and most of ''WWIII'' are pretty blatant Type 2's.
81* EarlyBirdCameo: Tim Skold on ''Symbols,'' and William Wilson on ''WTF?!'' and "Day of Light."
82* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: ''Opium'' is straight forward {{Industrial}}, their next two albums turned into proto-EBM, and their next few were a mixture of IndustrialMetal and more dance influenced fare. ''Angst'' was the first album to consist mainly of Metal songs.
83* EleventhHourRanger: Tim Skold when he first joined the band. Subverted when he became a member of ''MDFMK'' and rejoined temporarily when ''KMFDM'' reformed. He then left and came back for a few collaborations years later.
84* FullCircleRevolution: "Anarchy" is about one.
85* GenreMashup: Being an {{Industrial}} / IndustrialMetal band, this is a given. They mostly mix Electro Punk, Industrial Dance, and ThrashMetal but {{Funk}}, UsefulNotes/{{Punk}}, [[{{Reggae}} Dub,]] HipHop, and SynthPop influences have appeared before.
86* GratuitousGerman: An intentional example: the title was literally picked out of a newspaper scraps, and it's grammatically incorrect - "no majority for the pity". Sasha stated he liked the sound of it.
87* GreatestHitsAlbum: ''Greatest Shit'' / ''Wurst'' is a collection of remixed versions of some of ''KMFDM'''s best known tracks.
88* HiddenTrack: "Fairy" on ''Xtort'' and "Nihil" on, well, ''Nihil.''
89%%* IAmTheBand: Sascha and En Esch are this.
90* IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming: Starting with ''UAIOE'' and breaking the chain with ''Hau Ruck'' (originally named ''FUBAR,'' which would have kept the five letter album title tradition going). ''Tohuvabohu'' came close to resuming the tradition with five syllables in the title. Their album ''Blitz'' returned to the tradition, but ''Our Time Has Come'' appears to have departed from it once again.
91* InitialismTitle: Their name is an initialism of: "Kein Mehrheit Fur Die Mitleid, the nonsensical German phrase meaning: "no majority for the pity" -- though it's often translated roughly as: "no mercy for the masses" (which would be Kein ''Mitleid'' Fur Die ''Mehrheit''). [[http://web.archive.org/web/20071009101108/http://www.sonicenvelope.com/thread2.html And then there's all the fan-suggested names...]]
92* {{Industrial}}: One of the key bands in the genre. Their first album ''Opium'' qualifies as Old-School Industrial. ''Don't Blow Your Top'' and ''What Do You Know, Deutschland?'' have a dance-oriented EBM sound. Good portions of ''UAIOE,'' ''Money,'' and ''Naive'' sound like this too. Their post ''Tohuvabohu'' albums have distinct Electro-Industrial influences.
93* IndustrialMetal: Most of their '90s and 2000's work is this, though some of it Electro-Industrial. Their newest albums are pretty evenly split between the two genres.
94* IntercourseWithYou: "UAIOE," "Loving Can Be an Art," "Liebesleid," "Hole in the Wall," and "Conillion."
95* InTheStyleOf: All of their covers are done in their traditional style except for "Mysterious Ways" which is done like a straight forward cover.
96* IronicNurseryTune: "The Death and Burial of C.R." from ''WTF?!'' is the nursery rhyme "Who Killed Cock Robin?" set to [[OminousMusicBoxTune really fucking creepy music.]]
97* {{Irony}}: Despite their hatred of ''MTV,'' they appeared on ''120 Minutes'' in 1992. On top of that the "A Drug Against War" appeared on ''WesternAnimation/BeavisAndButthead.''
98** "Intro" is the last track on ''WWIII.''
99* KangarooCourt: "Rebels in Kontrol" mentions this in a later part of the song resembling a news broadcast, which says that: "the world's political leaders have been detained and will be tried by kangaroo courts for their committed crimes against humanity." The segment ends with Lucia screaming: "Make the rules up as we go!"
100* KillItWithFire: "Ultra."
101* LaResistance: "Anarchy," "Jihad," "New American Century," "Not in My Name," and "Rebels in Kontrol."
102* ListSong: "Inane." Also a SongOfSongTitles as it includes the name of every album and single they had released at the time.
103** "Kunst" is this as well, using titles from songs that were created both before and after ''Xtort.''
104** "Wrath" deserves a mention here.
105* LoudnessWar: Particularly their last six albums.
106* LyricalDissonance: "Juke Joint Jezebel," "Don't Blow Your Top," "Everyday's a Good Day," etc.
107* MadnessMantra: "Rip the System" and "Die Now, Live Later."
108* NewSoundAlbum: ''UAIOE'' marked the band's transition from straightforward {{Industrial}} to IndustrialMetal. Then there was ''Symbols'' which was divided between IndustrialMetal and more Electro-Industrial styled music. They went back to straight IndustrialMetal when they reformed but eventually started combining it with Electro-Industrial (again) on ''Blitz,'' which they've kept on doing since then.
109** 2020's ''In Dub'' is entirely {{Reggae}} remixes of previous singles, following on from the tracks "Paradise" and "No God" on 2019's ''Paradise''. It works surprisingly well.
110* ObligatoryBondageSong: "Take it Like a Man," "Liebesleid," and "Hole in the Wall."
111* OminousMusicBoxTune: "The Death and Burial of C.R." and the opening of "Day of Light."
112* OppressiveStatesOfAmerica: Most of their {{Protest Song}}s are about this, most notably "WWIII."
113* PissTakeRap: "Murder" and "Rules."
114* ProfessionalKiller: Take a wild guess.
115** Arguably, that song can also be thought to be about the executioner operating the electric chair.
116* ProtestSong: "Terror," "Glory," "A Drug Against War / Wall Street," Most of ''WWIII,'' "New American Century," "Not in My Name," "Anarchy," "Pussy Riot," "Rebels in Kontrol," "The Problem," "No Peace," "Dogma," "Murder," "Friede," "Skurk," "Preach / Prevert," "Urban Monkey Warfare," "Spit or Swallow," "Free Your Hate," "Feed Our Fame," "Spectre," "Bait & Switch," Take 'm Out," "Me and My Gun," "That's All," "Rubicon," "Full Worm Garden," "Total State Machine," "Rip The System 2.0," and arguably "Lynchmob."
117** "Money" is either this or a parody of GangstaRap.
118* RapRock: "Rules," "Murder," and "Money."
119* ReligionRantSong: "People of the Lie," "Murder," "Beast," Disobediance," "Godlike," "Jihad," "Preach / Pervert," "Viva la Mort," "I Will Pray," "Sex on the Flag," "Help Us / Save Us/ Take Us Away," and "Die Now, Live Later."
120* TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized: "Rubicon," "Rebels in Kontrol," "More & Faster," and the cover of ''Our Time Will Come.''
121** Inverted with "Anarchy," "Rebels in Kontrol," and "Free Your Hate," they are criticisms of violent revolution.
122* {{Sampling}}: "Godlike" samples a guitar riff from "Angel of Death" by Slayer, "Liebesleid" samples "O Fortuna," and ''WWIII'' uses a lot of George W. Bush samples and a sample of one of Hitler's speeches.
123** "Fake News" samples the notorious "alternative facts" interview with Kellyanne Conway.
124** "Godlike" was actually the second time they sampled "Angel Of Death" - earlier, they incorporated a MetalScream from the song into "En Esch".
125* SanitySlippageSong: "Brute," "Thrash Up!" "Flesh," "Ultra," "Piggybank," "Disgust," "R.U,OK?" "Me and My Gun," "Revolution," "Spit Sperm," the chorus of "Terror," half of ''Hau Ruck'' ("Ready to Blow," "You're No Good," "Auf Wiederseh'n," and "Real Thing")
126** The most disturbing was probably "Ooh La La."
127* SelfDeprecation: As mentioned earlier, "KMFDM sucks" is common among the fans thanks to the song "Sucks" off of the ''Angst'' album; it's typically chanted live to announce the audience wants an encore or on Website/YouTube videos. Like "Music/{{Primus}} sucks," it usually upsets some fans that aren't aware of the joke.
128* SelfParody: "Light," "Megalomaniac," "Sucks," "Inane," "Intro," "Bitches" "Burning Brain"...
129* SixthRanger: William Wilson, Tim Skold (see EleventhHourRanger above), and Raymond Watts (Twice).
130* ShoutOut: The credits of ''Blitz'' lampshades the [[Music/GeorgeClinton P-funk]] style bass riff.
131** "Stars & Stripes" references "As the Veneer of Democracy Starts to Fade" by Mark Stewart and "Terror" references "How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder?" by the Pop Group. Sascha is a huge Mark Stewart fan.
132** "Itchy Bitchy" references Music/BobMarley's "No Woman No Cry."
133** Their facebook page lists their hometown as [[ComicBook/JudgeDredd Mega-City One.]]
134** "Don't Blow Your Top" consists entirely of lyrics from Music/FrankZappa songs - similarly the entire first verse of "UAIOE" is borrowed from Frank Zappa's "I'm The Slime". "Conceptual continuity" is mentioned in "Inane" and "Kunst." "Conceptual continuity" is what Zappa called it when he made references to his own songs.
135* SlasherSmile: The cover of ''UAIOE.''
136* SpokenWordInMusic: "Dogma," "Fairy," "Terror," "Not in My Name," "Rebels in Kontrol," Death & Burial of C.R.," and "Inane."
137* StartMyOwn: After ''KMFDM'' broke up, En Esch and Gunter Shultz formed ''Slick Idiot.'' Raymond Watts, when not working with them, would focus on his solo project, ''PIG.''
138* StrawNihilist: "Beast" is a satirization of this trope.
139* SymbolSwearing: The ''Symbols'' album.
140** The symbols are used in the track "Down and Out" as a SoundEffectBleep.
141* TakeThat: "Me and My Gun" is one towards the news outlets that blamed them for Columbine and it doesn't pull its punches.
142** The original mix of "Go to Hell" is called the "Fuck MTV Mix." [[{{Understatement}} Sascha doesn't think very highly of MTV.]]
143** "Don't Blow Your Top" seems to be a pretty abrasive take that towards record companies.
144* ThrashMetal / SpeedMetal: The ''Agogo'' version of "Godlike," "A Drug Against War," "Hole in the Wall," "Glory," "Saft und Kraft," "Apathy," "Son of a Gun," "WWIII," "Bullets, Bombs and Bigotry," "Every Day's a Good Day," "Glam Glitz Guts & Gore," and "Thrash Up!" (Sort of). They're influenced by the genres in question relatively often.
145* TitleDrop: The band drops their name into songs occasionally.
146** Examples: "Megalomaniac," "D.I.Y.," "Sucks," "A Drug Against War," "Inane," "Back in the USSA," et cetera.
147* VocalTagTeam: Originally between Sascha, En Esch, and some female vocalists, in the ninties it became Sascha and various female vocalists with some lead vocal or spoken word contributions from guest vocalists and sometimes Raymond Watts or Tim Skold while En Esch gradually became a backing vocalist. In the 2000's, it was between Sascha and Lucia. Tim Skold made some contributions in the early 2000's until he left and made more lead contributions on various guest appearances. William Wilson has been gradually becoming a common lead vocalist lately.
148* WordSaladLyrics: "Megalomaniac," "Torture," "Stray Bullet," half the songs on ''Xtort'' (specifically "Rules," "Blame," "Ikons," "Power," and "Craze"), "Sycophant," "UAIOE," the chorus of "Urban Monkey Warfare," and the title track of ''Tohuvabohu.''
149* XtremeKoolLetterz: The songs "Krank," "Ikons," "R.U.OK?" and "Rebels in Kontrol," as well as the albums ''Xtort'' and ''Attak.''

Top