Picture: Francois Berland
When the two New Wave musicians Bruno Kramm and Stefan Ackermann sent out their first religion-critical demo tapes at the end of the 1980s, they could not have guessed that the songs overdubbed on them, such as “Gottes Tod” (God’s Death) and “Des Satans neue Kleider” (Satan’s New Clothes), would herald the birth of a new genre, the Neue Deutsche Todeskunst (New German Death Art), and only a few months later serve as the anthem of a black scene in reunified Germany, whose magic can still be felt today in the new millennium.
Since the early works “Satanic Verses” and the album “The Prophets”, Das Ich combined drama with music, expressionism with classical music and electronics with gothic to an intensity previously unknown in the music scene. In this way, they inspired countless bands and forms of expression across all genres. On extensive worldwide tours in Europe, USA, South America, Asia, Israel and Russia, they not only represented the culture of a new, expressive Germany, conscious of its terrible past, but also helped emancipate their mother tongue from Schlager, folk music and Krautrock.
Between their albums “Staub”, “Egodram”, “Lava”, “Antichrist” and “Cabaret”, Stefan Ackermann and Bruno Kramm always let long periods of inspiration pass in order to develop their own musical language for each epoch and turning point in time. Across the scene boundaries, they earned a reputation with their controversial and intense live shows that even today, more than 25 years after “God’s Death” knows no comparison. Together with the metal band Atrocity, they broke through the then almost impenetrable scene boundaries between metal and gothic, wrapped the poet Gottfried Benn with their “Morgue” setting in a disturbing sound image, which found its world premiere in its time-critical representation in the renowned Schauspielhaus Zurich. To this day, Everblacks like “Kain und Abel”, “Von der Armut” or the technoid VNV Nation remix version of “Destillat” are a constant companion of the worldwide gothic parties.
After the hard illness of singer Stefan Ackermann and the political excursion of composer Bruno Kramm, Das Ich are now back with a new lineup and working on a new album.
