Thuringian Pagan Madness
| Thuringian Pagan Madness | ||||
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| Demo album by Absurd | ||||
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Publication |
1995 |
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| Label (s) | Capricornus Prod. | |||
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Title (number) |
5 |
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running time |
15:07 min |
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| occupation |
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Thuringian Pagan Madness is a 1995 EP , released demo of German NSBM band Absurd . The first publication attracted particular attention in the German media because it has a photograph of the tombstone of Sandro Beyer, who was murdered by the band in 1993, on the cover.
Creation and publication
The songs were recorded by the band in May and June 1995 while they were in prison and smuggled out of prison. Möbus stated about the creation of the EP:
"The circumstances of captivity never prevented us from being further active in music, or politics either, but some material was recorded during a few months. A couple of weeks after our trial, we created the first output of this second period, a rehearsal with “unplugged” songs, named Out of the Dungeon . It was a sign of life, that it didn't matter that we had been sentenced just a few weeks earlier. In the summer of '95, our comrade Capricornus released the long announced Thuringian Pagan Madness EP on his small label. We did this release as an homage to the idea of Grand Germania , including the East German Gau territory (under Polish occupation since '45). "
Hendrik Möbus had originally announced that Thuringian Pagan Madness would be released in 1994 as a 7 "EP on the Darker Than Black Records label; the label was founded especially for this release. For financial reasons, Thuringian Pagan Madness was released in 1995 as a licensed release on the Capricornus label Prod. Of the Graveland member at the time Capricornus (Maciej Dabrowski) and bears the release name “NS 02” on the back. All rights are reserved according to the inlay text Darker than Black Records, the joint label of Hendrik and Ronald Möbus . Distribution took place among other things via the label No Colors Records .
The EP was re-released several times by other labels and is also included on the album Facta Loquuntur , where the intro to Werwolf was omitted and Mourning Soul was re-recorded. The live version can be found as a bonus on the new Digipak edition of Facta Loquuntur by WTC Productions, which was released in 2006.
A record version of the EP, which was released by the American label Black Sun Records, was indexed at the end of September 2007 by the Federal Testing Office for Media Harmful to Young People because of its content glorifying violence and National Socialist , but after a statement by the band it was removed from the index a month later. This version shows instead of Beyer's grave the work The Battle of Thor with the Snake of Midgard by the Swiss-Hungarian painter Johann Heinrich Füssli, completed in 1788 .
content
There are five tracks on the cassette, including a live recording of Mourning Soul , which was recorded on video in June 1995 in the Ichtershausen correctional facility . According to Hendrik Möbus, both the music and the lyrics are from Sebastian Schauseil. Except for Pesttanz and Mourning Soul , all pieces have already been published on previous Absurd recordings. The EP begins with a quote from a news item that deals with the murder of Sandro Beyer, which ends with the words of the Sondershausen pastor Jürgen Hauskeller: “The preoccupation with this inhuman ideology, where killing people is part of the program, simply has the youngsters involved enables ... “and goes straight into the first chords of the song Werwolf .
style
Texts
The band itself characterizes their music in the cover supplement with the note: "ABSURD plays True archaic German Black Metal in a political incorrect sense exclusively." However, the lyrics do not deal with Satanism as the ideological basis of Black Metal (in the supplement of the previous one Demos Out of the Dungeon had written the band: "Don't be stupid Satanists - Be luciferian pagans!"); only the song The Gates of Heaven deals with the apocalyptic struggle between good and evil, while the werewolf and plague dance contain morbid themes and statements. Plague dance is a praise of the plague as a cleansing force, werewolf is about a serial killer on the prowl. The lyrics of these two songs are in German and already show the first signs of the band's political views. The remaining songs are in English and describe emotional states, The Gates of Heaven and Mourning Soul are kept melancholy.
music
The music is not based on the pioneers of the first wave or the bands of the second wave of Black Metal at that time, the recording quality is poor depending on the situation. The Webzine FinalWar characterizes the style of the early absurd publications as “Melange Black Metal / Oi / Horrorpunk ” with “basement sound”, in the book Unheilige Allianzen the music is described as “amateurish and primitive”. In a magazine close to the NSBM, the music was described as a mixture of hardcore punk and heavy metal . The pieces are “like a drunk who rumbles into a room and searches with every argument” and show “an emotional balance between passionate belief and a childlike expression of dissatisfaction and the desire to attract attention”.
Track list
- Werewolf - 02:57
- The Gates of Heaven - 03:11
- Plague Dance - 02:43
- Eternal Winter - 04:11
- Mourning Soul (live) - 02:05
Cover insert
The inlay of the cassette cover shows a photograph of the grave of Sandro Beyer, who was murdered in 1993 by the then members of the band, as a cover graphic. Inside is the addition “The cover shows the grave of Sandro B. murdered by horde ABSURD on 04/29/93 AB . "As well as the note" ABSURD plays true archaic German Black Metal in a political incorrect sense exclusively. ", With which the band characterizes its own style. Information on the band line-up and contact address was deliberately omitted (“No line up / No contact-address.”).
In addition, the inlay contains the poem Boldly Stand Erect from the book Might Is Right , published in 1896 under the pseudonym Ragnar Redbeard, the title of the book is given as the only source of reference. There is also a dedication to “ Volksdeutsche Comrades in Schlesien and Pomerania” in English, which propagates an “eternal unity of the Greater Germanic Empire ” and conjures up the “great spirit of the Führer Adolf Hitler ”. The dedication ends with the words “One day the world will know that Adolf Hitler was right, and that will be the day of our final victory. HATE IS OUR PRAYER - REVENGE IS OUR BATTLECRY. "
Media presence
Because of the cover design and the fact that the musical material could obviously be recorded in prison, the publication of the tape aroused the interest of some German media, for example in the Berliner Zeitung and in Spiegel .
The design of the demo and its mention in mainstream media also contributed to the band's popularity in the black metal scene. The two songs werewolf and plague dance are among the most famous songs of the band. The song Werwolf (“In the forest nobody hears the victims cry […]”) was put into context by the media with the murder of Beyer , whose body was tried to be disposed of in the forest, although it was published months before the murder.
Möbus' statement: "I don't know whether you would have been punished during the Nazi era if you had made pests harmless." Was the trigger for a criminal trial for disparaging the memory of deceased at the Tiergarten district court, which sentenced him to one and a half years in prison.
Others
Since 2008, the Absurd label Nebelklang and related music distributors on the Internet have been selling a T-shirt with “Thuringian Pagan Madness” on the back, and the band's original logo with a Petrus Cross and an inverted pentagram on the front .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Information on the date of the songs in the supplement to the WTC pressing of Facta Loquuntur .
- ↑ a b Information on "IN CHAINS - Live at the JVA Ichtershausen" ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on band camp .
- ↑ a b Michael Moynihan , Didrik Søderlind: Lords of Chaos . Extended and revised edition. Index Verlag, 2007, ISBN 978-3-936878-00-4 , p. 310
- ↑ Michael Moynihan, Didrik Søderlind: Lords of Chaos , First Edition. Feral House, 1998, ISBN 0-922915-48-2 , p. 258.
- ^ Christian Dornbusch, Hans-Peter Killguss: Unheilige Alliances . Black Metal between Satanism, Paganism and Neo-Nazism . Münster, Unrast Verlag, 2005, p. 151.
- ↑ Darker Than Black Records .
- ↑ a b c Absurd (Deu) - Thuringian Pagan Madness (demo). (No longer available online.) In: Cultmetal.com . Archived from the original on February 24, 2016 ; accessed on February 28, 2011 (English, cover images). 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.
- ^ Thuringian Pagan Madness. (No longer available online.) Cult Metal, archived from the original on September 14, 2009 ; Retrieved September 10, 2009 . 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.
- ↑ A-blaze , No. 4, published June 4, 2008, p. 19
- ↑ Absurd reviews ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at FinalWar
- ^ Christian Dornbusch , Hans-Peter Killguss: Unheilige Alliances. Black Metal between Satanism, Paganism and Neo-Nazism . Unrast Verlag, Münster 2005, ISBN 978-3-89771-817-3 , p. 148
- ↑ Absurd - Thuringian Pagan Madness. (No longer available online.) Anus.com, archived from the original on June 17, 2008 ; accessed on September 12, 2009 . 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.
- ↑ AB means here anno bastardi , in German "In the year of the bastard"
- ^ Ragnar Redbeard: Might is Right, or The Survival of The Fittest . Lulu.com, 2006, ISBN 978-1-4116-9858-1 ( limited preview in Google Book Search). The poem can be found at the end of the Iconoclastic chapter on page 48.
- ↑ Frank Nordhausen , Liane von Billerbeck : These are things where you can get a certain sense of self-worth . In: Berliner Zeitung , December 1, 1998; Interview with Hendrik Möbus.
- ↑ Thilo Thielke: Killing for Wotan . In: Der Spiegel . No. 38 , 2000, pp. 134 ( online ).
- ↑ a b Satan murderer Hendrik Möbus: "A true National Socialist" . mirror TV
- ^ Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke : Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity . New York University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-8147-3155-4 , p. 206.
- ↑ Self-reported on album The Fifteen Years War
- ↑ Sabine Deckwerth: Trial for denigration of a dead person . In: Berliner Zeitung , November 11, 1999
