Xmal Deutschland , often written as X-Mal Deutschland, was a musical group from Hamburg, Germany. Founded in 1980 with a completely female line-up, they became successful
outside their native country. The lead singer of the band was vocalist
Anja Huwe. Xmal Deutschland's last album was released in 1989.
Biography
Xmal Deutschland was formed in 1980 by Anja Huwe (vocals), Manuela Rickers (guitar), Fiona Sangster (keyboards), Rita Simonsen (bass guitar) and Caro May (drums) in Hamburg, Germany. Their first single, "Schwarze Welt", was released a year later on Alfred Hilsberg’s ZickZack label. The band also contributed to the label compilation Lieber Zuviel Als Zuwenig (ZZ 45). Around this time Rita Simonsen was replaced by Wolfgang Ellerbrock.
In 1982, the band released the goth
classic "Incubus Succubus". Drummer Caro May left the band and formed a
new band, and the vacant drummer position was filled by Manuela
Zwingmann the same year. While German audiences were less than receptive
at first, a United Kingdom tour opening for the Cocteau Twins resulted in a deal with independent label 4AD. Their debut album, Fetisch
and the singles "Qual" and "Incubus Succubus II" were released in 1983,
all three making the UK Independent Chart, even though the band wrote
and performed in German.
Manuela Zwingmann left the band after one year, being replaced by
Peter Bellendir. This lineup,
Huwe/Rickers/Sangster/Ellerbrock/Bellendir was the longest lasting. The
single "Reigen" and the album Tocsin were released in 1984, followed by a world tour in 1985. Tocsin reached number 86 in the UK Albums Chart.
The Sequenz EP was essentially a remake of a John Peel
session, which had been originally recorded on 30 April 1985, and
broadcast on 13 May 1985. The EP contained the tracks "Jahr Um Jahr II",
"Autumn" (the band’s first song with English lyrics, apart from brief
snatches of English that appeared in "Qual", "Young Man" and "Tag für
Tag") and "Polarlicht" but omitted "Der Wind", which was played at the
Peel sessions.
"Matador", produced by Hugh Cornwell of The Stranglers, was released in 1986. Xmal Deutschland also opened for The Stranglers at a concert in Wembley Arena, London. Their follow-up album, Viva was recorded in Hamburg and was released in 1987, followed by the single "Sickle Moon". Viva contains a large number of English lyrics, among others a poem by Emily Dickinson. It was during this time that the band were interviewed by Jamie Meakes for the fanzine House of Dolls.
After the release of Viva, Manuela Rickers, Fiona Sangster
and Peter Bellendir left the group. Anja Huwe and Wolfgang Ellerbrock
continued to work with Frank Z (of Abwärts)
on guitar. Producer Henry Staroste played keyboards and studio drummer
Curt Cress completed the line-up that recorded the 1989 LP Devils,
and the singles "Dreamhouse" and "I'll Be Near You". This also proved
to be the last release of Xmal Deutschland, showing a change of
direction towards mainstream pop.
The group made a few live appearances in 1990, but eventually the group split up.
Plasmatics were an American punk rock and heavy metal band formed by Rod Swenson and Wendy O. Williams in New York City, New York,
in 1977. The band was a controversial group known for wild live shows
that broke countless taboos. These included chainsawing guitars, blowing
up speaker cabinets, sledgehammering television sets, and blowing up
automobiles live on stage. Williams was arrested in Milwaukee by the Milwaukee police before being charged with public indecency.
The Plasmatics' career spanned five studio albums and multiple EPs. The band was composed of vocalist/front person Wendy O. Williams
and various other musicians rotated behind her over time. Aside from
Wendy and manager Rod Swenson, guitarist Wes Beech was the only other
permanent member of the group. Guitarist Richie Stotts was a co-founder of the band and a mainstay of the pre-breakup core group (1978–1983).
Jean Beauvoir, bass player in the lineup made significant contributions
to the band both musically and visually, sporting a blond mohawk
hairstyle during what is considered the most impactful years of the
band's existence. It was a style he introduced and retained throughout
his career. In addition to Wendy O. William's solo efforts, Jean
Beauvoir was the only member to achieve post-Plasmatics success. He went
on to become a multi-platinum solo artist, producer and songwriter,
producing and writing with groups such as The Ramones, KISS, Debbie
Harry (Blondie), The Pretenders and many others.
After the full breakup of the band following the release of Coup d'etat,
Richie was edited out of band videos and was not referred to by name in
a 2006 compilation DVD released by Plasmatics Media LLC (via
plasmatics.com).
History
Formation and early years (1977–1979)
In 1977, Rod Swenson, who received his Master of Fine Arts in 1969
from Yale where he specialized in conceptual, performance, and
neo-dadaist art, held the view that the measure of true or high art is
how confrontational it is. He began a series of counter-culture projects
which, by the mid-'70s, found him in the heart of Times Square producing experimental counter-culture theater as well as video and shows with the likes of the then-little-known bands The Dead Boys, The Ramones, Patti Smith, and others. It was there that he met Wendy O. Williams (her actual birth-given name, the O. standing for Orlean and her initials spelling "WOW") after Wendy happened upon a copy of Show Business Weekly
someone had discarded on the bus station floor. The issue lay open to a
page with an ad in the casting calls section for Rod's theater show Captain Kink's Sex Fantasy Theater. She answered the ad and applied for a job.
Wendy and Rod began auditioning potential band members in 1977
and, in July 1978, the "Plasmatics" gave their first public performance
at what would later become the rock shrine CBGB on New York City's Bowery.
The earliest version of the band was a three-piece put together with a
strong emphasis on visuals. The band quickly realized they needed
another guitarist to hold them together musically. Guitarist Wes Beech
joined the group; he would become, after Wendy, the only permanent
member of the group playing or touring behind or involved in the
production of every Plasmatics and Wendy O. Williams record ever
recorded.
From their initial gig at CBGB, the Plasmatics quickly rose in
the New York City punk underground scene of the time. From playing a
single weekday night, they moved quickly to playing repeated stands of
four nights straight with two sold-out shows each night. They had lines
stretching around the block and brought more fans into CBGB during this
time than any other band in its history. The group quickly outgrew CBGB,
largely because there were no intermediate rock venues to play in New
York City at that time. The band's stage show soon became notorious,
with acts such as chainsawing guitars in half part of their performance. Jim Farber of Sounds
described the show: "Lead singer/ex-porn star/current weightlifter
Wendy Orleans Williams (W.O.W. for short) spends most of the Plasmatics'
show fondling her family size breasts, scratching her sweaty snatch and
eating the drum kit, among other playful events".
Rod Swenson soon made a deal to book what was then a little-known polka hall called Irving Plaza
from the Polish War Veterans who ran it at the time. The band
repeatedly sold out the venue, with the Plasmatics helping to give
Irving Plaza national recognition and launch it on the path to becoming
an established rock venue in New York City. Having then caught the full
attention of the most important people in the entertainment world of New
York City, the Plasmatics headlined the Palladium on November 16, 1979, the first group in history to do so at full ticket prices and without a major label recording contract.
New Hope for the Wretched, Beyond the Valley of 1984 and Metal Priestess (1980–1981)
The Plasmatics were soon selling out shows in Philadelphia, Boston, venues in New Jersey, and elsewhere in the Northeast. Chris Knowles of Classic Rock
magazine wrote: the Plasmatics "were the biggest live attraction in New
York... and the media was on them like white on rice... It's one thing
to play at subversiveness, but The Plasmatics, unlike other Punk
bands... put their Punk philosophy into action." Many U.S. record labels
were afraid to sign the band; The band was signed by Stiff Records, a British label, in March 1980, and appeared on the cover of Sounds in June that year. Artists and Repertoire (A&R)
from Stiff Records flew to New York City to see a show in person to
determine if what they had been reading and hearing could possibly be
real. The day after seeing the performance, Stiff put in an offer and a
deal was inked within a month. A few months later, The Plasmatics began
to record songs in New York City for what would become the album New Hope for the Wretched. As creative decisions go Stiff's choice to ask long-time Rolling Stones producer Jimmy Miller
to be behind the console for these recordings was not the best. The
Stones were pre-washed musical æthestics compared to the demands of The
Plasmatics and a convenient substance abuse on Miller's part allowed the
disbandment of his contractual liaison.
In addition to songs like "Corruption" and "Living Dead" – linked
to TV smashing and automobile destruction – "Butcher Baby" featured a
chainsaw sawing through a guitar, in place of a guitar solo, which was
replicated during live shows. The Plasmatics visited the UK for a tour,
which met with opposition from some quarters including the Greater London Council
(GLC), particularly for their intention to blow up a car on stage and
Williams' semi-nudity. The GLC cancelled the band's show at the Hammersmith Odeon
after fire inspectors decided the show would not meet safety
requirements, although police had already arrived to disperse the
gathering crowd before the decision had officially been taken. (Williams, recalled Debbie Harry
in 2014, "was such a big deal back then. She showed her tits and she
blew up cars on stage and broke TVs – and now it would just be normal.") Released as a single by Stiff Records, "Butcher Baby" reached No. 55 on the UK Singles Chart.
Stiff America had scheduled a release and a US tour. To
capitalize on the band's popularity, the US edition of the album was
packaged with a poster for the cancelled Hammersmith Odeon show and an
insert for the Plasmatics Secret Service, the official fan club. The
album reached No. 55 on the UK Albums Chart.
The band was set to tour the West Coast for the first time after the
London cancellation and get their momentum back. To kick off the tour,
Wendy drove a Cadillac towards a stage at a free concert on New York City's Pier 62 loaded with explosives, jumping out moments before the car would hit the stage, blowing up all the equipment.
The permits needed for this were hard to get and only allowed for an
estimated 5-6,000 people. The day of the performance, 10,000 showed up, jamming the downtown streets and lining the rooftops. Even though it cost virtually the entire advance for the US release of New Hope for the Wretched to do it, Wendy was quoted by a reporter from the Associated Press
as saying, "It was worth it because it showed that these are just
things and... people shouldn't worship them," a point she'd repeat more
than once.
The Plasmatics' debut in Los Angeles was at the famed Whisky a Go Go. The show was originally planned for only 2 nights, but was later expanded to 4 due to large sold-out crowds.
The ABC show Fridays, which was looking to be a more cutting-edge version of Saturday Night Live, booked Wendy and the Plasmatics to appear in late December to go live on national TV.
In January 1981, Wiliams' stage performance in Milwaukee led to
her arrest on charges of indecency after she reportedly "simulated
masturbation with a sledge hammer in front of an audience".
After objecting to being searched she was thrown to the ground and
reportedly kicked in the face (later requiring a dozen stitches), with
manager Rod Swenson also beaten unconscious when he tried to intervene.
Williams was charged with battery of a police officer, resisting
arrest, and "conduct in violation of a Milwaukee city ordinance
pertaining to establishments that sell liquor", with Swenson also charged, but both were later cleared of all charges.
A subsequent performance at the Palm Club sold out, and passed without
incident, although the venue was raided after the show by the vice
squad, with more than 30 police officers in attendance in case of
trouble. Williams was also arrested on obscenity charges in Cleveland, but she was again acquitted.
A second album was long overdue but due to the ongoing legal
battles and the Miller debacle with the first album, which was costly
both in terms of time and money, it was agreed that this one had to be
lean and mean. Bruce Kirkland at Stiff agreed to put up the funds as
long as Rod produced and the album was done in less than 3 weeks at a
quarter of the cost of the first.
Given the recent turn of events, Rod proposed the name Beyond the Valley of 1984. The tour, in 1981, became "The 1984 World Tour". In between touring drummers, Alice Cooper's Neal Smith was brought in to drum on the record. The album, with its Orwellian
and apocalyptic theme, and songs such as "Masterplan", "Pig is a Pig"
and "Sex Junkie", was released a few months later. During the album's
recording, the Plasmatics were booked on Tom Snyder's
late night TV show, on which the host introduced them as possibly "the
greatest punk rock band in the entire world." Recording engineer Eddie
Ciletti mixed the record at the Ranch recording studio in New York as
well as the TV sound for the Snyder performance.
The album cover for Beyond the Valley was photographed in
the Arizona desert where Wendy appears on horseback with the band
(without a drummer) as the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse".
The 1984 World Tour continued with the bold slogan "Down On Your Knees and Pledge Allegiance!".
During the last part of the tour, Rod was contacted by American singer, songwriter and record producer Dan Hartman's office, asking for a meeting with Wendy and Rod. Hartman, who produced .38 Special, James Brown, and others, had been working on a session in LA when he picked up Beyond the Valley of 1984
and could not stop playing it. He felt it was "ground breaking". He
said, "I knew I wanted to meet these people and do something with them."
Dan came down to the Tribeca loft, met Wendy and Rod, and a month later
he and Rod were working on the production of the Metal Priestessmini-LP. The band needed more product but another album was premature, partly because Capitol Records was now making overtures for the next one. Bruce at Stiff was ready to release it and that summer Metal Priestess was recorded at Dan's private studio off his schoolhouse-turned-home in Connecticut. Released early that fall, Metal Priestess saw the band move closer to heavy metal, and included new members Chris "Junior" Romanelli (replacing Jean Beauvoir) and Joey Reese.
The band made an appearance on SCTVs "Fishin' Musician" shortly after releasing Metal Priestess.
Coup d'etat (1982–1983)
By
the spring of 1982, a worldwide deal was inked with Capitol Records,
and Dan Hartman offered to produce a demo of the album for Capitol with
Rod at Electric Lady Studios, Jimi Hendrix's old studio, in NY. The whole album was arranged, recorded and mixed within a week. Dieter Dierks, who had just come off a number one album with Scorpions, also expressed interest in producing.
Coup d'etat
was a breakthrough album that began to blend the punk and metal genres,
something that would later be done time and time again by bands such as
S.O.D., Anthrax, and the Cro-Mags
by the end of the 1980s. Wendy also broke ground for her unique singing
style. She pushed her vocals so hard she had to make trips into Cologne, Germany, where the album was being recorded, each day for treatments to avoid permanent damage to her vocal cords.
The Hartman demo was released 20 years later under the name Coup de Grace. The rawer version of Coup d'Etat,
which took less than a tenth of the time and a fraction of the budget,
is hailed by many fans as the true version of the album.
The video Rod produced and directed of "The Damned" featured
Wendy driving a school bus through a wall of TVs, climbing onto the roof
of a moving bus which had been loaded with explosives, and then singing
from the roof and jumping off a few moments before the bus goes through
the second wall of TVs and then blows sky high.
As touring began, it became clear that Capitol was beginning to turn away from the group in favor of groups such as Duran Duran,
who could generate ten times the sales with none of the political
liability and fallout. Soon after the album was released, Capitol
Records dropped The Plasmatics.
In 1982, Lemmy of Motörhead was approached by his label to do a follow-up to his successful Motörhead/Girlschool collaboration, St. Valentine's Day Massacre
EP and Motörhead's manager Doug Smith got in touch with Rod Swenson in
the States and proposed a Wendy and Lemmy duet of the country classic "Stand by Your Man". The B side would have two tracks, the Plasmatics "Masterplan" sung by Lemmy and Motörhead's "No Class" sung by Williams. The A-side would have Wendy and Lemmy do a duet of the title track of the EP.
Tracked at a Canadian recording studio, the Stand by Your Man
sessions proved to be tumultuous as guitarist Eddie Clarke (who was
producing the tracks, but not playing on them) quit Motörhead in the
middle of the project. Rod Swenson and Dan Hartman, who had finished
demoing the Plasmatics Coup d'Etat album together, were called
upon to finish the rough and raw project in the mix which they did at
Electric Lady Studios in New York. Rod then shot the cover with Lemmy
and Wendy on it and the raw crude project was put out by Bronze records.
Hiatus and Wendy O. Williams' solo career (1984–1986)
In 1982, Kiss
asked for Wendy and the Plasmatics to appear as a special guest on
their tour. Kiss wanted the controversial street edge that Wendy would
bring as part of their tour and for the Plasmatics it was a chance to
play in front of different audiences in different markets than they
would ordinarily play. By the end of the tour with KISS it was clear
that, although the formal notice that Capitol would not pick up their
option for a second album did not come in for six months, the
relationship with Capitol was done. It had taken months and months for
the deal to be done, months to record and release the album and now
months to get out of the deal. Gene Simmons
approached Wendy and Rod about producing the next Wendy O. Williams
album. So as to avoid any wasted time in legal issues with Capitol
Records, it was decided not to use the Plasmatics name on the record at
all and was simply called WOW,
the initials for Wendy O. Williams. Gene Simmons felt it would give him
the freedom he wanted to add more new players to the album.
Wes Beech remained to play rhythm and lead and T.C. Tolliver, the drummer on Coup d'Etat,
remained to play on the new album. Gene Simmons played bass under the
pseudonym of "Reginald Van Helsing". The only other new player on the
album was lead guitarist Michael Ray,
brought in to solve the technical challenges that had been a problem
for several albums and had come to a head with the more complex music of
Coup D'Etat. Gene also pulled in the talents of Ace Frehley, who had not played with KISS since leaving the band years before, Paul Stanley, and then-current KISS drummer Eric Carr and guitarist Vinnie Vincent each did one song as guests. The record was released on Passport (international and U.S. distribution by JEM).
Review copies were sent out to the various media outlets. Malcolm Dome, a reviewer for Kerrang! magazine, had picked the WOW album as his album of the year. Williams received a Grammy nomination for 'Best Female Rock Vocal' in 1985.
With Mohawks now starting to become common, Wendy decided to let
her hair grow in, and the cover Rod shot for what would be called the
"album of the year" in the pages of Kerrang! was the very opposite of the earlier covers; total simplicity.
Wes Beech took a sabbatical for personal reasons and would not
tour with the band on the next tour. The band decided to return to being
a 3-Piece. Wes came in as Associate Producer with Rod on the album and
worked on writing, arranging and recording, but the recording would be
Michael, TC, and Greg (who would go on to play with Alice Cooper, Ritchie Blackmore and others and who had been brought in as the touring bassist for the WOW
album). There was tremendous excitement in tackling the project a kind
of minimalist, stripped down concept, or rite of purification. The
songs, including the lyrics, would also be minimalistic or archetypal
again giving Wendy a chance to take her vocals step further. The tempo
of the WOW album had been slower than previous albums in an effort to
open it up, but the new album Kommander of Kaos (a.k.a. KOK)
was to bring back the speed and then some. Songs would be played at
breakneck speeds, with screaming leads and vocals. The recording was
done in Fairfield NJ at the giant Broccoli Rabe Recording complex which
would be home to numerous Wendy O./Plasmatics Projects including three
studio albums with what the group fondly called "The Fairfield Sound".
Maggots: The Record (1987–1988)
Wes
had rejoined the band to both tour and play on the next album where the
re-formed 4 piece band became a centerpiece for perhaps the most
complex arrangements in the band's career. After the archetypal
minimalism, both lyrically and musically of Komander, the new album,
which would again carry the Plasmatics name, was again filled with
complexity and returned to the social and political themes previously
found most strongly in Coup but in 1984 before it: environmental decay
and a world where excess and abuse led directly to a doomsday scenario.
Maggots: The Record
was recorded in 1987 and set 25 years in the future where environmental
abuse and the burning of fossil fuels have created a greenhouse effect
leading to an end of the world scenario. Called by many the first
"thrash metal opera", the central theme of the album is an end of the
world scenario that follows from genetic engineering and global warming,
something that was not at all part of the general public awareness of
the time. A group of scientists trying to eliminate pollution in the
rivers and oceans develop an RNA retro virus designed to eat it all up
and then die once the pollution has been consumed. But global warming
leading to the flooding of land areas instead puts the virus in contact
with the "common maggot" leading to a mutated form of maggot that
doubles in size with each generation looking for more and more things to
consume. In the 'end of the world' finale cities are being destroyed
and humans consumed by giant maggots a horrific metaphorical end to a
world blind to human consumption and environmental destruction.
The album features various scenes of The White Family over the
course of three days. The family is devoured while watching a TV game
show. Valerie, the girlfriend of hot-shot television reporter Bruce is
devoured by three massive maggots while lying in her boyfriend's bed.
The final scene has Cindy White trying to fight off the attacking
maggots and running out onto a fire escape where she sees the crowded
streets below as the record shows the entire human population is headed
for imminent annihilation. The album was on the WOW label; distributed
by Profile Records in the U.S. and overseas by GWR Records, which had been started by Motörhead's longtime manager Doug Smith.
Wendy did a performance piece to inaugurate the album at NYC's Palladium,
which had been transformed from a proscenium theater into huge
multi-level club where she sledgehammered and chainsawed to smithereens a
facsimile all-American living room. "Maggots: The Tour" began a week
later using the Plasmatics name for the first time in two albums with
slogans such as "Those Now Eating Will Soon Be Eaten," "The Day of the
Humans is Gone," and lyrics such as "soldiers for the DNA dissidents are
put away, dragged off in the dead of night, disappear without a sight".
Rear screen projectors ran film of human disasters, fascists and other
historical horrors, environmental carnage and human rights violations on
huge screens behind the band during all the songs from the Maggots album.
A review in Kerrang!
came out shortly thereafter: A 5 out of 5 Ks, "Quite simply a
masterpiece... a work of genius." Wendy's vocals "reduces Celtic Frost's
Tom G. Warrior's 'death grunts' to mere whimpers" it went on coupled
with "a mixture of hedonistic operatic melodies..gut forged to some of
the heaviest armadillo beats you're ever like to hear committed to
vinyl."
Band members
Final members
Wendy O. Williams – vocals, saxophone, chainsaw, sledgehammer (1978–1983, 1987–88)
German punk is punk rock music and punk subculture in Germany since punk music became popular in the 1970s.
Origins
When bands like the Sex Pistols and The Clash
became popular in West Germany, a number of Punk bands were formed,
which led to the creation a German punk scene. Among the first wave of
bands were Male, from Düsseldorf, founded in 1976, PVC, from West Berlin, and Big Balls and the Great White Idiot, from Hamburg.
Early German punk groups were heavily influenced by UK bands, often
writing their lyrics in English. The main difference is that German punk
bands hadn't yet become political.
Beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s there were new movements within the German punk scene, led by labels like ZickZack Records, from Hamburg. It was during this period that the term Neue Deutsche Welle (New German Wave) was first coined by Alfred Hilsberg, owner of ZickZack Records. Many of these bands played experimental post-punk, often using synthesizers and computers. Among them were The Nina Hagen Band, as well as Fehlfarben and Abwärts,
from Hamburg. Both are still active, though they've changed their style
several times. In response to these developments, some bands played a
more aggressive style of punk rock, because they didn't consider the
experimental bands Punk.
1970s
Kreuzberg has historically been home to the Berlin punk movement as well as other alternative subcultures in Germany. The legendary SO36
club remains a fixture of the Berlin music scene, championing new
artists while staying true to its punk past. It originally featured
mainly punk music and was often frequented by Iggy Pop and David Bowie.
1980s
In the
1980s, lots of new punk bands became popular in the scene and developed
the so-called "Deutschpunk" style, which is not a generic term for
German punk rock, but an own style of punk music that included quite
primitive songwriting, very fast rhythms and politically radical
left-wing lyrics, mostly influenced by the Cold War. Probably the most important Deutschpunk band was Slime
from Hamburg, who were the first band whose LP was banned because of
political topics. Their songs "Deutschland", "Bullenschweine", and
"Polizei SA/SS" were banned, some of them are still banned today,
because they propagated the use of violence against the police or
compared the police to the SA and SS of Nazi Germany.
While they still had some English lyrics on their first, self-titled
LP, they have concentrated on German lyrics since their second LP
"Yankees raus" ("Yankees out", named after the anti-imperialist title
track). Other popular bands of this phase include Razzia from Hamburg, Toxoplasma from Neuwied, Canalterror from Bonn, and Normahl from Stuttgart. All of these bands released their records on one of the leading punk labels in West Germany: Weird System Recordings from Hamburg, Aggressive Rockproduktionen (AGR) from West Berlin, and Mülleimer Records ("Garbage Can Records") from Stuttgart. During this period also the band Die Toten Hosen from Düsseldorf was founded which is still active. Along with Die Ärzte they became the most successful German punk band to date and also gained international success.
During this period, many bands were influenced by U.S. hardcore punk with bands such as Black Flag and The Adolescents.
Those bands were also known for their extremely left-wing attitude and
aggression in their songs. Some of the most important German hardcore
punk bands, who are also often labeled "Deutschpunk", included Vorkriegsjugend from West Berlin, Chaos Z from Stuttgart, Inferno from Augsburg and Blut + Eisen from Hannover. Some bands tried a slower, more elaborate style, inspired by bands like The Wipers, the most popular ones being Torpedo Moskau from Hamburg and a number of singer Jens Rachut's bands, like Angeschissen (1986), Blumen am Arsch der Hölle (1992), Dackelblut (1994) and Oma Hans (2000), also from Hamburg.
Popular compilations of this period were "Keine Experimente!"
(Vol. 1-2) (Weird System Recordings) and "Soundtracks zum Untergang"
Vol. (1-2) (AGR).
In the mid-1980s, many of the former popular Deutschpunk bands
disbanded, which resulted in a new phase, when so-called "Fun punk" got
popular in Germany. Bands like Abstürzende Brieftauben from Hannover, Die Mimmi's from Bremen, Die Ärzte from West Berlin or Schließmuskel ("sphincter") from Hamminkeln
had a left-wing attitude, but had no (directly) political lyrics. Some
of them got popular outside the punk scene, but were often criticized by
the punk scene for being too trivial. Around the same time, more German
hardcore bands started singing in English and got popular outside of
Germany, like the Spermbirds from Kaiserslautern or Jingo de Lunch from West Berlin.
East Germany
Because of repressions by the state of East Germany, there was only a secret punk scene that could develop there. One of the most popular bands were probably Schleim-Keim, who also got popular in West Germany. Only in the last years of the German Democratic Republic, the government allowed some bands like Feeling B or Die Skeptiker from East Berlin, but those bands were criticized in the scene for cooperating with the government.
1990s
After the German reunification in 1990, the political situation in the east of Germany changed dramatically, and several groups of neo-nazis were founded. There were attacks against immigrants, like in Rostock-Lichtenhagen, Mölln or Solingen
in the west of Germany. This new wave of neo-Nazism in Germany led many
punk bands from the 1980s to reunite and release new albums, for
example Slime, who released their final LP "Schweineherbst" in 1994, of
which the title track is a furious rant against politicians and citizens
who ignore the new dangers of neo-Nazis in Germany. Other popular bands
like Toxoplasma also got active again, and newer political bands like WIZO or ...But Alive got popular, along with other "fun punk" influenced bands like Die Lokalmatadore from Mülheim an der Ruhr and Die Kassierer from Bochum. Also, many bands of eastern Germany got popular in the west.
In the following years, the punk scene stayed active in Germany and spawned many popular new bands like Terrorgruppe from Berlin or Knochenfabrik from Cologne. Some bands were influenced by heavy metal music, like Dritte Wahl from Rostock or Fahnenflucht. The most popular compilation of this period is probably "Schlachtrufe BRD" (Vol. 1-8).
Labels like Weird System are still active and release reissues of
classic German punk records. Weird System have made an attempt of
documenting the history of German punk with their compilation series
"Punk Rock BRD" (Vol. 1-3). Today, there are many punk rock concerts and
big festivals in Germany, like the "Force Attack" festival in Rostock, the "Punk im Pott" festival in Essen / Oberhausen or the "Punk and Disorderley" festival in Berlin. There are also a number of fanzines, for example "Plastic Bomb", "Trust" and "Ox".
A phenomenon of the punk scene in West Germany were the Chaostage
(chaos days), which took place in the mid-1980s in Hannover and Wuppertal and were meetings of punks from all over Germany. Along with those chaos days, the Anarchist Pogo Party of Germany
(APPD) was founded as a party for punks and "social parasites", but got
more popular in the 1990s, when the most legendary chaos days took
place in Hannover in 1994 and 1995 and resulted in huge riots and the
destruction of cars and buildings. A whole supermarket was depredated
and alcoholic beverages were stolen by punks. These chaos days were the
main topic of TV debates and newspapers for several weeks then. Popular
bands like WIZO spontaneously played a show there, and Terrorgruppe
wrote a classic song about it ("Wochenendticket", named after a train
ticket that most punks used in order to get to Hannover from all across
the country). The APPD participated in the Bundestag elections of 1998 and 2005, but although they had only regional successes, like in Hamburg-St. Pauli, they got famous for their advertising on TV, starring Wolfgang Wendland, singer of Die Kassierer.
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