KMFDM – ENEMY (Metropolis Records) (13th Floor Album Review)
KMFDM, the medium for Sascha ‘Käpt’n K’ Konietzko’s musical machinations, with an ever changing array of fellow musicians, artists and beat merchants, have been creating industrial rock since 1984. A journey that peaked in the 1990s with a quartet of albums: Angst (1993), Nihil (1995), Xtort (1996) and Symbols (1997), selling well into the 100,000s each.
Alongside bands like Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, and Revolting Cocks, KMFDM, ruled the (student at least) radio stations, and led the emergence of the synthesis between EDM, punk and metal. But while Nine Inch Nails managed to break into the mainstream. KMFDM broke up at their height, and whilst reforming in 2002, releasing albums with amiable regularity until now, their popularity has never hit the heights of the 1990s again.
Ergo, tKMFDM’s 2024’s Let’s Go album received unveiled criticism for being almost a dance album rather than an industrial rock onslaught. True there were dulcet tones and a magnanimous melodica, but if the truth be known, the success of their EDM/Punk/Metal collab, was the danceability borne out of this melding. And at the risk of being an algorithm, KMFDM, had (obviously) endeavored to reinvent, rather than just repeat itself.
It’s with this in mind ENEMY succeeds as an album. Full of passionate politics, ENEMY is packed with melody, noise, beats, even a reggae beat in fact – Stray Bullets 2.0. The album’s namesake tune ENEMY has a luscious introduction, almost Sisters of Mercy like, but shades of the industrial rock KMFDM of the past, erupt in a rollercoaster of energy. Oubliette, the second advance release from ENEMY, is a slicker driven beat of metal and harmonic female vocals, replete with metallic lead guitar.
Across the albums nine other tracks, KMFDM career across their tapered range of genres, from metal-dominated anthems such as the Judas Priest tainted Outernational Invention, to EDM-orientated dancefloor, akin the Numanish A Okay. All the while KMFDM affect an escape from monotony, by additionally swapping between Konietzko and bandmate Lucia Cifarelli’s vocals, including a guest vocal’s appearance by Konietzko daughter Annabella Asia Konietzko on You.
In its termination ENEMY, perhaps saves its best for last, as The Second Coming revisits industrial eclecticism, a piece that appeals reminiscingly to this old industrial punk, with its neo Cabaret Voltaire taint.
Simon Coffey
ENEMY is out today via Metropolis Records
