Megalomaniax

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Megalomaniax
General information
origin Frankfurt am Main , Hessen , Germany
Genre (s) Crossover
founding 1987
resolution 1997 or later
Last occupation
Andreas "Andi" Wilda
Squad Kesek
Electric guitar
 Axel "Zoppo" Trapp
Gunnar "Gunnar I" "G-spot" calf
Electric guitar
 Gunnar "G 2" "Gunnar II" Pelshenke
Kayhan
former members
singing
 Tommy Beyert
initially electric bass, then vocals
 Bert Bera

Megalomaniax was a German crossover band from Frankfurt am Main , which was founded in 1987 and disbanded around 1997.

history

The band was founded in October 1987 as a side project by musicians from various Frankfurt groups. At Christmas 1987 there was the live debut in the Batschkapp club . Gradually, Megalomaniax established itself as a live act in the Frankfurt area. The reputation of the unconventional preceded the musicians and the radio play author Heiner Goebbels asked if they wanted to work on the recording of the latest Heiner Müller piece Wolokolamsker Chaussee , a joint production of several ARD broadcasters, in 1989 in the Frankfurt Unicorn Studio . The music and - as it then turned out - the musicians' personalities were very strange to Goebbels, but he went into the experiment. From a live recording, a long soundtrack was first put together like a collage , which the band then recorded in the studio in this new arrangement in one go, which was a challenge, because the individual structures of the original songs had been rehearsed and had to be broken up. The second part was composed especially for this purpose together with Goebbels. The production received the radio play award of the Berlin Academy of the Arts in 1989 and the Karl Sczuka award of the Donaueschinger Musiktage in 1990 .

Encouraged in this way, they did not want to shake the continuation of the band project. However, the singer Tommy Beyert resigned, after which the bassist Bert Bera took over this position. Andreas “Andi” Wilda joined Bera as bass player. A demo should be recorded that should sound more professional and look more eye-catching than the previous cassette demos. That is why the decision was made for a four-track CD, which was created in the Music Lab Studio in Berlin in the inexpensive 16-track studio. The interest of several major labels was thus aroused and increased at a Popkomm appearance in 1991, whereupon the audience was invited to a presentation concert in the Negativ nightclub on April 1, 1992. When the Phonogram offered , the band grabbed it. The contract started in June 1992. Since enough time had passed since the founding, the band wanted to put an official CD on the market quickly and was content with an EP . It was produced by Harris Johns , was released in 1992 and is called Information Overload .

After a tour with Tankard and Xentrix , the group returned to the Music Lab Berlin in the summer of 1993 to record their debut album Dreamland , which was released in autumn. At Christmas 1993 the band organized the Judgment Night Festival at Club Batschkapp, in whose basement the band had been rehearsing since it was founded, in which both metal and hip-hop artists took part. The band played together with Die Fantastischen Vier . Both then merged to form the band Megavier and released an album under the same name in 1994 via Sony Music Entertainment . The sound carrier was able to sell over 80,000 units. Despite this success, Megalomaniax lost her contract with Polygram. The band then recorded their self-financed album Hardcoriental . After the recordings, however, the singer Bera left the band due to personal differences with the other members. The vocals were then re-recorded by Kader Kesek . After the sound carrier was released in the summer of 1996 via We Bite Records , the band went on tour through Germany with Mad Cow disease . At the end of 1996 the band also played together with Cebris in Munich . In 1997, the band recorded more new songs, with Kayhan now as a DJ in the band. However, the band soon broke up.

style

According to Holger Stratmann in his Rock Hard Encyclopedia, the band play a mixture of “ post-punk , hardcore , American , thrash and hard rock elements”. Elements from hip-hop were also added later. Two songs in Turkish can also be heard on Hardcoriental . According to drummer Gunnar Kalb in the Metal Hammer interview with Martin Groß, the founding of the band was inspired by Stormtroopers of Death . The group wants to appeal to fans from all genres, rejects stereotyped thinking and also finds the term crossover to be inappropriate for their music. According to Groß, the band on Information Overload play a mixture of "dirty rock 'n' roll with punk - and sometimes speed sprinkles". According to Alex von Streit from Ox-Fanzine , Hardcoriental is rapping in both Turkish and German. A mixture of rap and hardcore punk can be heard on the album, which is comparable to the song Judgment Night by Biohazard and Onyx . Rock Hard's Buffo Schnädelbach compared the band to information overload with suicidal tendencies . His colleague Frank Albrecht characterized every single Dreamland song from “Speed-Kracher” to “Schunkel-Ballade” and attested Megalomaniax an “enormous variety”. Alexander Heitkamp said in the Sub Line that Megalomaniax said goodbye to the trash of the early days, on Dreamland you can find "pretty much everything that was ever published under the title 'Metal'".

Discography

  • 1991: Demo '91 (EP, in-house production)
  • 1992: Information Overload (EP, Phonogram )
  • 1993: Dreamland (Album, Phonogram)
  • 1996: Hardcoriental (album, We Bite Records )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Buffo [Schnädelbach]: Megalomaniax . Handcheese & Music. In: Rock Hard . No. 66 , November 1992, pp. 100 .
  2. ↑ Heiner Goebbels - audio pieces. In: discogs.com. Retrieved June 16, 2014 .
  3. ↑ Max Nyffeler: Who is speaking? Isabel Mundry and Heiner Goebbels on constellations of the ego. First conversation with Max Nyffeler. In: beckmesser.de. March 2003, accessed June 16, 2014 .
  4. ↑ a b Wolokolamsker Chaussee I - V. (No longer available online.) In: b-arena.de. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; Retrieved June 16, 2014 (unsigned comment by Bera). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.b-arena.de
  5. ^ Andreas Schöwe: Tankard Xentrix Megalo-maniax . Essen Colliery Carl. In: Metal Hammer . November 1992, p. 156 .
  6. ↑ Martin Groß: Megalomaniax Cebris . Munich celebration work . In: Metal Hammer . January 1997, p. 131 .
  7. ↑ a b Holger Stratmann: Rock Hard Encyclopedia . ROCK HARD GmbH, 1998, ISBN 3-9805171-0-1 , p. 243 .
  8. ↑ Martin Groß: Megalomani [a] x . Funny apples instead of deadly serious. In: Metal Hammer . November 1992, p. 144 .
  9. ↑ Martin Groß: Megalomaniax . Information overloard. In: Metal Hammer . October 1992, p. 63 .
  10. ↑ Alex von Streit: MEGALOMANIAX . Hardcoriental CD. In: Ox-Fanzine . No. 24 , 1996 ( online [accessed June 14, 2014]).
  11. ^ Buffo Schnädelbach: Megalomaniax . Information overload. In: Rock Hard . No. 64 , September 1992, pp. ? .
  12. ^ Frank Albrecht: Megalomaniax . Dreamland. In: Rock Hard . No. 76 , September 1993, 10 × dynamite, p. 76 .
  13. ↑ Alexander Heitkamp: Megalomaniax . Fun project? In: Sub Line . Indie-Progressive Rock & Pop Magazine. November 1993, p. 21 .