I will take you home... Feo's Stuff INDUSTRIAL
KMFDM PAGE STORY TIME FANBOY HORROR MOVIES CONVENTION NEWS HORRIBLE NEWS
FEED BACK?
NEWS? SUBMISSIONS?
Write Me:
Feo Amante

Be sure to write: Feo Reader in the subject line else you may be bounced like JunkeMail.
SUBMISSION
GUIDELINES
ARCHIVE NEWS
SITE BIO
SPECIAL REPORT ARCHIVE

HORROR
COMICS

HORROR
MOVIES
REVIEWS
INTERVIEWS
SCIENCE MOMENT
TOP TEN SCARY MOVIES
UNFAIR RACIAL CLICHÉ ALERT
RACIAL CLICHÉ RESPONSE
VARMINT

HORROR
CONS
ROAD TRIP TIPS

HORRIBLE NEWS
ARCHIVE
CHAT SNATCH

STORY TIME
FEO TALES
REVIEWS

SPONSOR


Link to us!
Feo Amante mini banner
If you would like to use the graphic above, just save the icon image to your server and link it back to feoamante.com!

Shadow Music Feo Amante Review by
E.C.McMullen Jr.
KMFDM: Retro
KMFDM: RETRO
Wax Trax Records/TVT Records

Good Website, put together by Sascha Konietzo himself.

This is the second release of KMFDM catalogue cuts this fall/winter (1998). That is usually a bad sign. When music companies start dumping Best of and Greatest Hits on us, it often means that the band is dead or soon will be. On the KMFDM website, there has been talk of ending the band or reforming. Considering that KMFDM has long been a soup of new musicians, this feels weird. You know that feeling you get when a long time favorite band breaks up? That's the feeling that I'm getting here. Still, fifteen years of music is nothing to sneeze at.

For those of you who might be hearing KMFDM for the first time, this is a pretty good sampler. It starts out with 1995's XTORT song POWER. A good rocking, danceable tune combined with KMFDM's typical humor. Like many of the KMFDM songs written by Sascha and Gunter Schulz, the song is little more than a diatribe of emotionally charged words without connection.
"UNDER A STONE / SKIN AND BONE / THE CHILDREN OF FEAR / ARE NOT ALONE / RIVERS OF TEARS / FLESH & BLOOD / AN EYE FOR AN EYE / THAT'S ALL WE GOT."
Still, what the words sometimes lack, the music makes up for, with catchy riffs and rhythms that energize you like few can. Techno pop is often worthless to listen to unless you can be doing something energetic while you are hearing it. Not so with KMFDM. I like to play it at work while I'm busy setting up new graphics on the computer all day.

RETRO starts out fine with POWER, JUKE-JOINT JEZEBEL, BRUTE, and right on through to VOGUE. After that comes GODLIKE-DOGLIKE which contains the overabused KMFDM "RIP THE SYSTEM" chant. Why they keep skipping on this line is anybody's guess. At this point I almost feel like it is prosyletizing, and I don't particularly like being preached to. This chant is repeated in the rap songs of MORE & FASTER and of course, RIP THE SYSTEM.

Overall this is a good representation of what KMFDM offered us over the course of their career. Between the two collections, I prefer AGOGO, but KMFDM: RETRO ain't bad.

Perplex SkullPerplex SkullPerplex Skull

This review copyright 1998 E.C.McMullen Jr.

Return to Shadow Music

CD


TRIVIA

Since this review was written in 1998, the April 1999 Columbine High School Massacre
in Littleton, Colorado occurred. Among the music that the two murderers were said to
enjoy,
Marilyn Manson and
KMFDM
topped the list. The two murderers also built bombs
in the house where they lived with their parents, and had so many guns in their
bedroom that they were unable to take them all to the school.

The U.S. media, largely chose to ignore the fact that both Marilyn Manson and KMFDM are anti-hate songs,
which fueled the hysteria fire for teen Copy Cat crimes across the U.S. and Canada.
Who knows how different things would have been if the U.S. news media had reported the incident with something resembling truth and responsibility?

If the two murderers had not had such easy access to illegally obtained firearms,
they would have undoubtedly set off their bombs, which would have killed many more people, possibly the entire school.
In the wake of anti-gun hysteria, this fact is also being currently
ignored by the media.

Feo Amante's Horror Home Page and feoamante.com are owned and copyright 1997 - 2008 by E.C.McMullen Jr.
All images and text belong to E.C.McMullen Jr. unless otherwise noted.
All fiction stories belong to their individual authors.
I Will Take you Home