Friday, November 14, 2003 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Forging Ahead

KMFDM continues to create political music despite recent criticism

The serious, but not humorless, industrial band KMFDM -- whose letters supposedly represent a German phrase for "No Pity for the Masses" -- are not the "communist krauts" that some people think they are.

The Columbine killers were fans of the hard-charging, industrial-rock music of KMFDM, even though the band opposes violence in lyrics and in interviews. But KMFDM did get pointed out as a scapegoat in the first hours after the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School.

Such fingerpointing seems like ancient history now, and the band couldn't be happier about that, Sascha Konietzko, who produces, mixes, performs in and writes for KMFDM.

At one point early on in the Columbine story, he says, one of his German, ex-band members asked Konietzko for advice: Should he go on TV to respond?

"I said, 'Look man,' " Konietzko remembers saying to the guy, " `go ahead. They surely need, like, a six-five tall, bald, German skinhead with, like, a heavy accent that mumbles. If you want to commit suicide, be my guest.' "

Konietzko remembers journalists saying that, because KMFDM was "a German band, they must be Nazis, and therefore the shooters were Nazis, and that's why they did it."

Even so, Konietzko predicted to bandmates that KMFDM's supposed inspiration would be quickly forgotten, he says.

"I said: 'Wait 48 hours. This whole thing will be completely blown over us, and they will make Marilyn Manson responsible for it,' even though the shooter kids didn't really like or expressly dislike Marilyn Manson -- but were expressly KMFDM fans. It was so true. My theory was that the media is not gonna pursue a story that has," he says, "a scapegoat that nobody knows."

Since then, Konietzko has experienced one initial reaction whenever a school shooting is reported: "There's that sort of moment -- 'Oh no, I hope they weren't KMFDM fans.' "

Konietzko -- who grew up in West Germany and who has lived in Seattle off and on for more than a decade of residence in the United States -- says some people wrongly judge the group to be just a bunch of "communist krauts."

On the band's new album's title track, "WW III," Konietzko sings, "I declare war on the axis of morons ... war on big brother, warmongers and profiteers, war on your dogma Dubya, Armageddon's engineers." He goes on to declare war against "so-called civilization," MTV, CNN, McDonald's, Eminem, violent unilaterality, the moral majority, mindlessly bumbling stupidity and police-state terrorism.

KMFDM -- the letters are said to refer to German words that translate into "No Pity for the Masses" -- isn't just on some rant. Lyrics tend to include cheeky stuff (at least in punk-rock terms) and a sense of humor about the band.

The song, "Moron" -- "I'm out of my mind" -- is about Konietzko, he claims with a chuckle, and not so much about President Bush. (But is he kidding? It's hard to say, really.)

The band has done well as an inspiration, taking off in the 1980s underground scene after moving from Germany to Chicago. Depeche Mode always did better commercially. (Rumors still claimed that KMFDM stands for "Kill Mother (Expletive) Depeche Mode.") But KMFDM's industrial-dance crunch was spun in industrial nightclubs in cities, and the music prepared the world for more commercially successful stuff by Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails.

Influential or not, Konietzko says the band manages all of its own affairs and earns "very, very little" money. It even picks up side work. The band just turned in eight new songs to the videogame makers of "Spider-Man 2," set to come out in 2004.

"If we were doing this for money, we wouldn't be doing KMFDM. It's the love of the life," Konietzko says.

He doesn't care that the masses -- for which the band has no pity for, remember -- never caught on.

"In the early '90s, there was an expectation in the air at major (music) labels that industrial would fill the void after grunge happened. But it never really happened. I don't know why," he says. "Whether the mainstream exists, or a broomstick falls in China, it's all inessential to us."

What's the problem with the masses' musical taste?

"The majority cannot develop taste, because the majority gets their information from taste-makers" in the mainstream media, which gets paid by corporations to promote flash-in-the-pan musicians, he says.

"Look at Linkin Park," he says of the modern-rock band. "I'm not bashing them. It just seems to be one of those phenomenons that is over as fast as it comes on."

Konietzko says when he listens to KMFDM's early music, he can hear that it is "kind of silly." But that was by design.

"It was intended to be silly when we made it, and it still comes across as funny and out of context, against the grain, and often times naive -- not very serious about anything, but playful," he says.

And just because he criticizes things that go on in America doesn't mean he dislikes the States.

"I expected to really not like it here" after moving first to Chicago, he says. "And I completely fell in love with the country."

In the 1980s, industrial bands such as his had to scrape to create an industrial sound.

"Back in the day, it was all about tape machines," he says. "When we started, you had to go to studios, and there was all this ominous stuff going on in there, and you didn't know how to set up a microphone.

"Nowadays, you can do it all on a portable computer. What's great about it is, everybody basically makes their own records. If you're inspired, you can afford to do it."

Konietzko says the band doesn't care how the media judges the new disc (which it's getting good reviews).

"The first couple of interviews I gave were to European journalists. Especially the French and the Germans really loved the record for what they interpreted as anti-America. But it's not anti-American at all. It's maybe anti-this particular government," he says.

Konietzko does think, though, that musicians must make political music, despite certain "imperialist" Americans with "a false sense of patriotism" who react vehemently to those who speak against the sitting government.

"It seems that people are kind of looking at artists and musicians -- and especially artists like KMFDM that are suspected of being on the 'edgy' end of things -- to finally say something. And I guess we're just one of the first to come out with a fully charged, fully political album."

So, what is Konietzko's own idea of utopia for the United States? He wants cleaner air and water. He thinks communities could manage their own energy sources, in the way that some European communities control their own windmills. Fewer people ought to get locked up for minor offenses, he says. More Americans should feel connected to the rest of the world. And America should decentralize into four to eight-state regions:

"It (c)ould be broken up into several larger states, instead of centrally governed. I feel that a country like this is just way too big. It's a dinosaur in its own structure," he says. "Have a president, say, for the Pacific states. ... Maybe you could identify more with leaders, instead of everybody taking choices between two diseases."