For 19 years now, SAMSAS TRAUM have been confronting us with their extraordinary music and interesting lyrics. Over the last two decades, the band centred around the controversial, charismatic and much-discussed frontman ALEXANDER KASCHTE have had a fling with just about every musical style imaginable. They are one of the last remaining German bands who still know how to spring a surprise in this dying and inconsequential, unimaginative musical landscape - both qualitatively and in terms of content.
‘Poesie - Friedrichs Geschichte' is just such a surprise: a quantum leap that deals with difficult issues, is more bombastic than ever before and which nevertheless retains SAMSAS TRAUM's lack of compromise in terms of its sound. An hour of musical artistry that you won't forget in a hurry! As the title suggests, at least to German speakers, this is the story of Friedrich; the story of a lad who grew up in the Nazi era and whose great passion was writing poetry. Regarded by his peer group as maladjusted, and labelled as schizophrenic by doctors, the fate of countless other disabled and mentally ill people befell him. That is to say, his life was ended in the most terrible manner in the Nazi death camp Hadamar, in the name of ‘euthanasia'.
In recent years, KASCHTE's music and lyrics have increasingly dealt with political and ethical issues. With ‘Poesie - Friedrichs Geschichte', he bids farewell to the nebulous, egocentric and meanwhile almost nauseatingly meaningless world of musical subcultures; a departure that has long since been overdue. KASCHTE always strives to not just entertain his audience, but to convey knowledge to them and educate them. He has finally reached the place that best suits him; a place that only a few are able to bear themselves: reality. The crystal clear production, thanks to Principal Studios (Unheilig, H-Blockx, Die Toten Hosen, Kreator), serves to illustrate the developments on ‘Poesie - Friedrichs Geschichte' to extraordinary effect, and much to the album's credit.
This article is the STANDARD edition:
- CD in jewelcase
- 28-page booklet
