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TotenmonD – Unter Knochen
Album | 2004 | Massacre Records
60:49 | 12 tracks | CD/Digital
Antifaschistische Neue Satanische Kunst
Backnang, Germany
Leaving the Realms of Punk
After releasing the album Auf dem Mond ein Feuer (2001) which featured cover versions of German Punk Rock and workers‘ songs, the members of TotenmonD focused on their private and work life until in 2004, they had gathered enough material for publishing another longplayer. Unter Knochen (German: Under Bones) is hence no concept or themed album. Instead, it is an honest and powerful display of the band’s latest development. TotenmonD were originally called Wermut when they were formed in 1984, and they played Punk Rock. Their fifth studio album, recorded by Chris von Rautenkranz and Sarah E. Andresen in Hamburgs Soundgarden Studio, is the release that marks TotenmonD’s disengagement from Punk Rock.
Antifascist New Satanic Art
From the original Demos in the early and mid-1990s until the (currently) latest release Der Letzte Mond Vor Dem Beil (2016), TotenmonD have always sounded like TotenmonD, and you will hardly find a proper category for the band’s sound. The Backnang-based band themselves speak of Antifascist New Satanic Art, and further attempts to describe TotenmonD are Progressive Death Metal with Punk influences (Encyclopaedia Metallum), or Kontrollierter Krach (German: Controlled Noise; source unknown). What this savage but eloquent mix of Crust, Doom, Black and Death Metal, and Soviet Rock is, it is magic!
Steamroller and Bonesaw
Unter Knochen is a merciless album, and although it rather marks a progress of the band than an actual new status, it is stunning. TotenmonD plow and mill forward and leave nothing behind but dust and steam. And since there have always been some neo-fascist idiots who did not understand which side TotenmonD were on, the jewelcase version contained two Gegen Nazis (German: Against Nazis) stickers.
In retrospect, Unter Knochen is the logical link between TotenmonD’s previous Metal Punk phase and the severely doomier later releases TonbergUrtod (2005) and Thronräuber (2008). Unter Knochen is thus not their strongest, but indeed a very important album for the band history of TotenmonD.
7/10 Mangoes
Next week in this series:
Reino Ermitaño – Conjuros de poder (2014, Ogro Records)
We will dance again
Mia Schem
