Influences:
- Throbbing Gristle, Pink Floyd, Frank Zappa, Deep Purple, Motörhead, Nine Inch Nails, The Pop Group, Mark Stewart and the Maffia, DAF, Liasons Dangerouses, Ministry, T. Rex
"Kein Mitleid Für Die Mehrheit!" note
KMFDM is an Industrial Rock / Industrial Metal 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).
They 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.
The 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.
Discography:
- Opium (1984)
- What Do You Know, Deutschland? (1986)
- Don't Blow Your Top (1988)
- UAIOE (1989)
- Naive (1990)
- Money (1992)
- Angst (1993)
- Sin, Sex & Salvation (EP with PIG) (1994)
- Nihil (1995)
- Xtort (1996)
- Symbols (💥☠💣🌀👊) (1997)
- Adios (1999)
- Boots (EP) (2002)
- Attak (2002)
- WWIII (2003)
- Hau Ruck (2005)
- Tohuvabohu (2007)
- Skold vs. KMFDM (2009)
- Blitz (2009)
- Greatest Shit (2010) (Also released as Wurst with edited cover art)
- WTF?! (2011)
- Kunst (2013)
- Our Time Will Come (2014)
- Hell Yeah! (2017)
- Paradise (2019)
- In Dub (2020)
- Hyëna (2022)
- Let Go (2024)
KMFDM provides examples of:
- Added Alliterative Appeal: "Juke Joint Jezebel."
- Alien Abduction: "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, she and her fellow abductees are looking forward to introducing you to "the maker"...
- Anti-Love Song: "Murder My Heart" and "Every Day's a Good Day".
- Ascended Meme: Some of the fake acronyms for KMFDM ("Kill Motherfucking Depeche Mode" and others referring to Kylie Minogue and Madonna, most notably) made up by fans have been referenced in both "Sucks" and "Kunst".
- A Wild Rapper Appears!: Andrew "Ocelot" Lindsley on "K.M.F".
- Ax-Crazy: "Thrash Up!" and "Me and My Gun."
- Be Yourself: "Freak Flag".
- Berserk Button: Do NOT mention Nazis, Columbine, or MTV around Sascha.
- Bilingual Bonus: 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.
- Bizarre Instrument/Everything Is an Instrument: 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.
- 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.
- Break-Up Song: KMFDM of all people have several: "Every Day's a Good Day," "Adios," "Strut," and possibly "En Esch."
- Brick Joke: "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."
- In "Virus," the listener is directed to check the resistance in their cells, "Apathy" contains the lyric: "No resistance in the cells"
- Call-Back: 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.
- The Cameo: Nivek Ogre on Symbols and Adios, Koichi Fukuda and Sebastian Komor on WTF?! and F.M. Einheit on Xtort.
- Peter Murphy as well on a rare version of "Today."
- Careful with That Axe: 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.
- Catchphrase: "KMFDM Sucks!" has become popular with the fans.
- "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."
- "In for the kill" appears on multiple tracks and albums.
- Cluster F-Bomb: K-M-F, track 1 on 2019's Paradise.
- Cool Shades: Sascha's.
- Cover Version: "Los Ninos del Parque" by Liaisons Dangereuses, "Mini Mini Mini" by Jacques Dutronc, "Mysterious Ways" by U2, "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" by Nancy Sinatra, "Being Boiled" by The Human League, "Crazy Horses" by The Osmonds, "Material Girl" by Madonna, and "Godlight" by Patti Smith.
- Sascha once did a solo cover of "Down in It" by Nine Inch Nails.
- On a KMFDM tribute album Raymond Watts covered "Disobedience" (Technically covering himself), and Gunter Shultz covered "Light."
- Slick Idiot also covers "A Drug Against War" sometimes as well as the Errol Brown song "Everybody's a Winner."
- Gunter Schultz and En Esch collaborated on covers of "Head Like a Hole" and "Terrible Lie" by Nine Inch Nails, and "Rhinoceros" by The Smashing Pumpkins.
- En Esch has covered "Work for Love" by Ministry, and collaborated with Terminal Sect for a cover of "Who Made Who" by AC/DC.
- PIG has covered "War Pigs" by Black Sabbath, "Hello Hooray" by Alice Cooper, "Just Like You" by Ministry, "Head Like a Hole" by Nine Inch Nails, and "1979" by The Smashing Pumpkins.
- Eagleland: "New American Century," "Sex on the Flag," and most of WWIII are pretty blatant Type 2's.
- Early-Bird Cameo: Tim Skold on Symbols, and William Wilson on WTF?! and "Day of Light."
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Opium is straight forward Industrial, their next two albums turned into proto-EBM, and their next few were a mixture of Industrial Metal and more dance influenced fare. Angst was the first album to consist mainly of Metal songs.
- 11th-Hour Ranger: 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.
- Full-Circle Revolution: "Anarchy" is about one.
- Genre Mashup: Being an Industrial / Industrial Metal band, this is a given. They mostly mix Electro Punk, Industrial Dance, and Thrash Metal but Funk, Punk, Dub, Hip-Hop, and Synth-Pop influences have appeared before.
- Gratuitous German: 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.
- Greatest Hits Album: Greatest Shit / Wurst is a collection of remixed versions of some of KMFDM's best known tracks.
- Hidden Track: "Fairy" on Xtort and "Nihil" on, well, Nihil.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: 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.
- Initialism Title: 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). And then there's all the fan-suggested names...
- 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.
- Industrial Metal: 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.
- Intercourse with You: "UAIOE," "Loving Can Be an Art," "Liebesleid," "Hole in the Wall," and "Conillion."
- In the Style of: All of their covers are done in their traditional style except for "Mysterious Ways" which is done like a straight forward cover.
- Ironic Nursery Tune: "The Death and Burial of C.R." from WTF?! is the nursery rhyme "Who Killed Cock Robin?" set to really fucking creepy music.
- Irony: Despite their hatred of MTV, they appeared on 120 Minutes in 1992. On top of that the "A Drug Against War" appeared on Beavis And Butthead.
- "Intro" is the last track on WWIII.
- Kangaroo Court: "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!"
- Kill It with Fire: "Ultra."
- La Résistance: "Anarchy," "Jihad," "New American Century," "Not in My Name," and "Rebels in Kontrol."
- List Song: "Inane." Also a Song of Song Titles as it includes the name of every album and single they had released at the time.
- "Kunst" is this as well, using titles from songs that were created both before and after Xtort.
- "Wrath" deserves a mention here.
- Loudness War: Particularly their last six albums.
- Lyrical Dissonance: "Juke Joint Jezebel," "Don't Blow Your Top," "Everyday's a Good Day," etc.
- Madness Mantra: "Rip the System" and "Die Now, Live Later."
- New Sound Album: UAIOE marked the band's transition from straightforward Industrial to Industrial Metal. Then there was Symbols which was divided between Industrial Metal and more Electro-Industrial styled music. They went back to straight Industrial Metal when they reformed but eventually started combining it with Electro-Industrial (again) on Blitz, which they've kept on doing since then.
- 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.
- Obligatory Bondage Song: "Take it Like a Man," "Liebesleid," and "Hole in the Wall."
- Ominous Music Box Tune: "The Death and Burial of C.R." and the opening of "Day of Light."
- Oppressive States of America: Most of their Protest Songs are about this, most notably "WWIII."
- Piss-Take Rap: "Murder" and "Rules."
- Professional Killer: Take a wild guess.
- Arguably, that song can also be thought to be about the executioner operating the electric chair.
- Protest Song: "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."
- "Money" is either this or a parody of Gangsta Rap.
- Rap Rock: "Rules," "Murder," and "Money."
- Religion Rant Song: "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."
- The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: "Rubicon," "Rebels in Kontrol," "More & Faster," and the cover of Our Time Will Come.
- Inverted with "Anarchy," "Rebels in Kontrol," and "Free Your Hate," they are criticisms of violent revolution.
- 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.
- "Fake News" samples the notorious "alternative facts" interview with Kellyanne Conway.
- "Godlike" was actually the second time they sampled "Angel Of Death" - earlier, they incorporated a Metal Scream from the song into "En Esch".
- Sanity Slippage Song: "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")
- The most disturbing was probably "Ooh La La."
- Self-Deprecation: 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 YouTube videos. Like "Primus sucks," it usually upsets some fans that aren't aware of the joke.
- Self-Parody: "Light," "Megalomaniac," "Sucks," "Inane," "Intro," "Bitches" "Burning Brain"...
- Sixth Ranger: William Wilson, Tim Skold (see 11th-Hour Ranger above), and Raymond Watts (Twice).
- Shout-Out: The credits of Blitz lampshades the P-funk style bass riff.
- "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.
- "Itchy Bitchy" references Bob Marley's "No Woman No Cry."
- Their facebook page lists their hometown as Mega-City One.
- "Don't Blow Your Top" consists entirely of lyrics from Frank Zappa 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.
- Slasher Smile: The cover of UAIOE.
- Spoken Word in Music: "Dogma," "Fairy," "Terror," "Not in My Name," "Rebels in Kontrol," Death & Burial of C.R.," and "Inane."
- Start My Own: 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.
- Straw Nihilist: "Beast" is a satirization of this trope.
- Symbol Swearing: The Symbols album.
- The symbols are used in the track "Down and Out" as a Sound-Effect Bleep.
- Take That!: "Me and My Gun" is one towards the news outlets that blamed them for Columbine and it doesn't pull its punches.
- The original mix of "Go to Hell" is called the "Fuck MTV Mix." Sascha doesn't think very highly of MTV.
- "Don't Blow Your Top" seems to be a pretty abrasive take that towards record companies.
- Thrash Metal / Speed Metal: 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.
- Title Drop: The band drops their name into songs occasionally.
- Examples: "Megalomaniac," "D.I.Y.," "Sucks," "A Drug Against War," "Inane," "Back in the USSA," et cetera.
- Vocal Tag Team: 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.
- Word Salad Lyrics: "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.
- Xtreme Kool Letterz: The songs "Krank," "Ikons," "R.U.OK?" and "Rebels in Kontrol," as well as the albums Xtort and Attak.
