Nachtmahr (band)
| Nightmare | |
|---|---|
 Nachtmahr at the Nocturnal Culture Night Festival 2015 in Deutzen, Germany |
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| General information | |
| Genre (s) |
Aggrotech , Techno , Neofolk (2020) |
| founding | 2007 |
| Website | www.nachtmahr.at |
| Founding members | |
| Thomas Rainer | |
Nachtmahr is a project by the Austrian musician Thomas Rainer , who also operates under the pseudonym MechanicMind and has worked on the projects L'Âme Immortelle and Siechtum , among others . The history of the project is accompanied by ongoing discussions about the aesthetic orientation perceived as a totality.
Band history
Thomas Rainer began his music career in 1996 with the L'Âme Immortelle project. In 2007 Rainer founded the Nachtmahr project and released the EP Kunst ist Krieg , limited to 2000 copies , which contains remixes by Xotox , Endif, FabrikC and XPQ 21 . In June 2008 the debut album Feuer Frei was released , the song Katharsis of which reached number 3 in the DAC Singles Charts. Various appearances at festivals such as the Wave-Gotik-Treffen and the Amphi Festival , and concerts in the United States followed. The Katharsis EP , limited to 1,999 copies , was released on September 19, 2008. In 2010, the EP Girls in Uniform , which includes the Falco cover Titanic , was released. Further publications and appearances, mainly in German-speaking countries, followed.
In January 2020, the acoustic album Flamme was released , which differed stylistically from previous works. The album presents re-recordings of earlier pieces as Neofolk interpretations. In May of the same year another EP was released with Funke , which contained two more new recordings in the same style.
Style and concept
Conceptually, the project is geared towards the topics of war and uniform fetishism. Both topoi are formative for the music, the sound carrier design and the performances of the project.
At concerts, dancers dressed as “girls in uniform” appear with elements of a BDSM performance. Video sequences are also used as a supplement that mix "cartoon-like propaganda and harrowing war scenarios with military equipment and bombed-out landscapes in 1940s black and white chic". The “girls in uniform” as well as the recourse to a totalitarian aesthetic of the first half of the 20th century are present in the illustrations on the sound carriers.
Rainer calls Nachtmahr's music, with reference to the industrial , stylized as a super term in the black scene , as "Imperial Austrian Industrial". Musically, the project is now based on the Aggrotech . Reviewers point to a clear combination of electronic harshness, texts that are perceived as aggressive, and melody. The music is considered to be danceable and disco-compatible. For a comparative comparison, a review written for Metal.de refers to the artists Chainreactor and X-Rx . The conceptual war theme is taken up in the pieces of music through lyrical references, marching rhythms and samples . With a few exceptions, such as the English-language title I Believe (in Blood) , a contribution to the soundtrack of the film Saw IV , the songs are in German. According to Rainer, Nachtmahr texts are deliberately "written in a harder language, since the music demands it, but the topics dealt with in the texts are far less" drastic "than one might assume at first glance".
"Speech samples, monotonous and pounding beats, distorted vocals and always a touch of melody that actually gives the songs a recognition value."
In 2020 Nachtmahr published new recordings of his own well-known works in a style based on Neofolk with Flamme und Spark .
criticism
The project plays with a military and totalitarian aesthetic that Laibach introduced to the scene at the latest , and has been sharply criticized for this aesthetic. The critical examination of Nachtmahr draws on the discourse that has been going on for decades about the black scene in the field of tension between right-wing ideologies .
Marcus Stiglegger sees Nachtmahr with her martial and military appearance in a tradition of the term “Nazi chic” he coined. The aim of this aesthetic self-presentation, in the audience as well as on the stage, be it "to be sexy, [...] to stand out from the rest [...] and [...] to pay homage to a certain band [.]". Nachtmahr would be offensive and unreflective living out the “totalitarianism of pop”. In an interview in 2017, Oswald Henke von Goethe's heirs also attested to Nachtmahr as having “ambiguous aesthetics” which he, however, “viewed as cabaret .” The problem in dealing with the project is less the impetus of Rainer than the inherent ambiguity of the chosen aesthetic. So the “terrifying [...] that there are people who take things at face value. And you have to be aware of how far you can incite the masses. ”Like Stiglegger, Henke refers to the use of the“ mechanisms of fascism ”as a mere stylistic device. Similarly, Rainer himself refers to aesthetic and erotic points of reference. The cover of the EP from 2010 Girls in Uniform is borrowed from the poster for the film Der Nachtportier . With regard to the image used and the title of the album, Rainer emphasized the erotic component. He explained the title as "dealing with a small taboo in society, namely that uniforms not only exude authority for us, but also have a strong sexual attraction."
The criticism related to Nachtmahr led to direct confrontations in 2012 and 2020 in the course of concerts. During a joint concert with Combichrist and Ad · ver · sary in 2012, Jairus Kahn from Ad · ver · sary used part of his performance time to admonish the appearance of Nachtmahr as sexist and fascistoid . Rainer stated that he respected Kahn's opinion, but assessed his project differently. He described military clothing as a sexual fetish , which he lived out on stage and in his recordings. He countered the accusations of glorifying fascism and National Socialism that, as an Austrian patriot, he had no ideological connection to National Socialism. In February 2020, a local Antifa group physically attacked visitors to a Nachtmahr concert in Basel. This was done on the assumption that it was a band from the right spectrum. Rainer denied this political classification and accused the group of having "completely wrong [...] facts".
Discography
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Albums
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EPs
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Compilations
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Web links
- Official website
- Nachtmahr at Discogs (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Rogge vessels: Nightmare Defiance tour. Rye catcher, accessed July 23, 2020 .
- ↑ a b Toby: Nachtmahr 'Feuer Frei!' (Interview). In: Metalglory. June 9, 2008, accessed July 17, 2020 .
- ↑ a b c Alex: Nachtmahr: All lust wants eternity. Metal.de, accessed on July 22, 2020 .
- ↑ a b michi: Nachtmahr: Ready to fight. Amboss Mag, accessed July 22, 2020 .
- ↑ Robert: Interview about Nazi Aesthetics with Dr. Marcus Stiglegger. Spontis, accessed September 12, 2016 .
- ↑ Karsten Kriesel: Audiences are always a risk. Leipziger Volkszeitung, accessed on July 23, 2020 .
- ↑ Michael Stollmann: Nachtmahr: Interview on "Girls in Uniform". (No longer available online.) Radio.meanvariation.de, January 20, 2010, archived from the original on September 20, 2016 ; accessed on September 12, 2016 .
- ^ I Die, You Die: An Interview with Thomas Rainer of Nachtmahr. I Die, You Die, accessed September 12, 2016 .
- ^ Stefan Frühauf: Attack before Nachtmahr concert. Dark Festivals, accessed February 27, 2020 .
- ↑ Rebekka Affolter: Antifa demonstrators beat up fans of the band Nachtmah. Nau.ch, accessed on February 26, 2020 .