Frank: DER ENDGEGNER, what is that actually?
King Kraut: A Destrukto-Swing band from Berlin.
No, THE Destrukto-Swing band from Berlin.
Frank: What is Destrukto-Swing?
King Kraut: Destrukto-Swing is a name we came up with to
not always have to say: “We make a mix of
punk and rock and trash metal and samba“ but in the end
we still have to say it.
And because all the names ending with “...core“ are now
a bit overused.
Frank: Otherwise, would you be doing punkcore?
King Kacke: Destrukto-Swing Core!
Our style is hard to describe. It always depends on the
song. Our style is broad and if you don’t label your music
with a style, then you’re not so stuck
in what you can do.
King Kraut: In the end, it comes down to, we make loud guitar music
and all of that has a place in Destrukto-Swing.
Frank: But it has nothing to do with swing?
King Kraut: Maybe it does.
Frank: You’ve been around for quite a while now. Give me a summary
of the band’s history for everyone who doesn’t know you.
Turbobot: I moved to Berlin in 2005. King Kraut heard that
I was moving to Berlin and someone told him I would
play drums, which wasn’t true at all back then.
I actually played guitar. King Kraut then asked me
if I wanted to play drums in his band. I said
“Yes, why not” and asked him what kind of band it was. King
Kraut then told me that we still had to form the band.
Yes, and then we did that. That was in 2006.
The first rehearsals took place in the “noisy rooms”.
King Kraut: “noisy rooms” is basically a short-stay hotel for bands.
So a rehearsal room center where you can rent a rehearsal room with
amplifiers.
Turbobot: Exactly. Then came our first concert.
That was at a backyard party. We had fun. Then
other musicians joined in from time to time and the style also
changed. In the early days, we were more experimental than today. Back then
we wanted to do cool things like surf music or reggae,
which never worked out. That was always bad.
King Kraut and I, we are the core of DER ENDGEGNER.
Over the years, there have been concerts we played.
At one of the concerts, we met KING KACKE.
KING KACKE has been with us since 2010.
Over time, we have recorded albums from time to time.
We recorded in various places and they mostly all sounded pretty bad. We recorded at SAE, for example...
King Kraut: ...SAE is a “sound engineering school” in Berlin.
Turbobot: Exactly, a “sound engineering school” where sound engineers are trained with rich
parents.
King Kraut: We always threw ourselves at people who
wanted to do the recordings for little to no money. That
didn’t always have a good effect on the professionalism
of our recordings.
Turbobot: Exactly, but that also fits us. We do everything for little
or no money. We prefer to play live.
And now a new album is coming!
King Kraut: It should also be said...I think you can say that something changed the moment
our first guitarist left and King Kacke joined.
King Kacke significantly changed and shaped our guitar sound.
Before that, it was a scrappy punk and rock sound. Since
Kacke has been with us, the sound has consolidated into a sound
that clearly fits us.
Frank: Zahnfee is a brand new band member with you, right?
Zahnfee: Well, not completely new...it’s probably been three months now,
but we’ve only rehearsed together twice so far.
Frank: How did you come to the band DER ENDGEGNER or did the
band come to you?
Zahnfee: I also play in another band (editor's note: Crosshill Rebels, http://crosshill-rebels.com/) and have
always looked to find another band and do a bit more. Then King Kacke and I met and I found out that DER ENDGEGNER
sounds cool. When two guitars play, it’s more varied.
Turbobot: Two guitars are cooler too.
Frank: So you’re not on the “Game Over ?!?“ album, but you will be
heard live?
Zahnfee: Yes, exactly.
King Kacke: I’ll just mention the recordings for the new album.
In January before Corona, I recorded the first pre-production track
from Turbobot. After that, not much happened and there was also Corona.
That gave me home office. But I couldn’t do much in home office. I
had nothing to do. I drove my then-girlfriend to work every morning and then went to the rehearsal room and
did the pre-production. After eight hours, I picked up my girlfriend again. That’s how my workdays looked. I did that every day for a few weeks. With all the time I had, a pretty cool pre-production came together. I was often alone in the rehearsal room and had a lot of time. Then you come up with one or another guitar track that you want to include more.
That’s how the idea developed to record the album with two guitars. That’s how it came about, also wanting to play live with two guitars.
Frank: The sound on "Game Over ?!?" is very, very fat.
Was that due to Corona, because you had a lot of time to
experiment? So did Corona have something positive?
King Kacke: The recordings of “Game Over ?!?“ differ from the
recordings of the last album (“Showdown“ from 2014).
For “Showdown“ we took five weekends.
We met on the weekends and recorded all the songs together. We wanted to capture the live
feeling with that. But that was difficult to do because it wasn’t live.
With “Game Over ?!?“, we approached it differently. We first did the complete pre-production and then recorded. That was actually much more time-consuming, but it was very worthwhile.
Turbobot: We recorded everything here in our well-equipped
rehearsal room.
Frank: Did you also do the mastering and mixing yourselves?
King Kacke: We only recorded in our rehearsal room. We did that consciously based on the experiences of the last recordings. I’m quite perfectionistic. I want a good recording to be even better, especially since we have good conditions here.
King Kraut: As a result, some songs also changed during the recordings.
By the way, each of us recorded our parts alone.
That was mainly due to the Corona precautions, as at first it wasn’t clear how high the infection risk was when meeting with several
people.
Each of us could thus make our recordings exactly when it suited us.
For example, I sang something on one day and then listened to the recordings the following week. Sometimes it turned out that it didn’t sound as I had hoped. Then I re-sang the entire song. I did that very often, so in the end, I had a lot of vocal tracks.
At the end of the recordings, something different stood than what we had thought at the beginning of the recordings.
Frank: Are you satisfied with the final recordings of “Game Over ?!?“ or have the songs also developed a bit after the recordings?
King Kacke: That’s always hard to say. You have several development processes during the recordings. In the pre-production, everything didn’t sound perfect yet. We recorded something so that we had something to listen to. It wasn’t about the sound yet, but about the way the music was, e.g., also about the length of the songs or who plays which part for how long and at what tempo. At the end of the pre-production, we were done with this process. The songs were set.
How the exact sound became, that came later,
especially during mixing and mastering.
By the way, were two songs also changed during the actual recordings?
King Kraut: That’s right, during the actual recordings, I completely rewrote two songs. During the pre-production, we heard that these two songs could be even cooler. It was very nice for me that we had enough time for the recordings because rewriting these two songs made them completely new songs. Now there is more life in the songs and the connection to what I wanted to bring in at that moment has worked much better.
Turbobot: It’s very hard to say when you’re really finally done.
If we were still working on the recordings, we would still find something that could be improved
and we would change the songs over and over again. You just have to find the point where it ends.
King Kraut: I think you have to force yourself to stop.
Frank: Let’s get specific about the new album and start with the
title. “Game Over ?!?“, does that mean it’s your farewell album
and DER ENDGEGNER is breaking up? Or does it mean that it’s over with the Earth?
King Kraut: That becomes clear when you see the cover of the album.
There are also question marks and exclamation marks behind “Game Over“.
It’s more of an open question. In conjunction with the cover, you can see that it’s actually the end of planet Earth.
The band DER ENDGEGNER is fortunately not on planet Earth, but in a spaceship from which it will destroy the planet.
Frank: On the album, you have named three songs after each band member. Why did you do that?
Turbobot: Actually, the idea was different. Originally, we had the idea to make a themed EP that reflects exactly this concept. For example, we wanted to design the song dedicated to the bassist so that his bass playing is in the foreground and he plays something special. The one to whom the song is dedicated should be in the foreground.
We never released this EP, but we adopted the idea of the songs for the album “Game Over ?!?“.
King Kraut: At the time of the recordings of "Game Over ?!?", those were also the three members of the band.
In the meantime, we are back to five, as our bassist, who left at the beginning of the recordings, is back.
Ronny Rammbock apparently finds us good enough to want to be back.
King Kacke: By the way, the trumpet on the song “Tanke, zehn nach vier!“ is from our old bassist, the one before Ronny Rammbock. He recorded the trumpet for us.
Frank: I often find the lyrics of the songs from “Game Over ?!?“ very
radical and presented in a very harsh language, like in the song “In mein Hirn!”......shit in my brain..., or...we think we can buy our freedom...in the song “Immer nur dein Ego!”. What drove you to write such lyrics?
King Kraut: Mmmh...what drove me to that...
The lyrics came about spontaneously, regarding your examples.
When making music, I wanted to express a feeling, anger and
hardness, and did that to fit the music.
After that, I thought about how I could build a text that could present my feelings and what I want to say more
coherently.
The lyrics should express my feelings.
Frank: So the songwriting was completely on you?
King Kraut: It’s more like...I would say the songwriting arises from
a collaboration between King Kacke and Turbobot.
The lyrics all come from me.
Turbobot: To make that clearer. King Kraut often arrives late for rehearsal. As a result, King Kacke and I have a lot of time in the rehearsal room. It inevitably happens that we start playing and come up with new ideas.
That actually works quite well in terms of division of labor.
For me, it’s like a good idea comes to me at home and I share it with the band. Then we try it out in the rehearsal room and if it fits, then we already have a part for a possible new song.
Sometimes it also takes months for me to come up with a new good idea, but sometimes the idea is so good that it becomes a new song within a rehearsal. If King Kraut then has a text idea, the whole thing quickly develops into a finished song.
King Kraut: That has also changed a lot for us. In the first phase of the band, up until around 2010, I wrote most of the songs. It should be said that I can’t play guitar well, and so most ideas ended up being a kind of Ramones songs.
Since King Kacke has been with us, the songs are much more based on his guitar ideas.
I have withdrawn a lot from songwriting. Of course, a text is also part of songwriting, but I come up with fewer ideas for the guitar. Now it’s the case that most songs start with King Kacke’s guitar and then develop further.
Frank: In the song “Schicksal -!-“ I read a certain disorientation from the lyrics. That might concern some people in general. Am I right with the interpretation?
How do you think this disorientation comes about? How did
the text come about?
King Kraut: I can probably only answer that.
Of course, the others can also answer in terms of what the text means to them.
For me, it’s an insight into a certain phase of my life where I felt that way. In that phase, I didn’t really know where I was going. Now I can, I think, say that it will probably always be that way.
I think there can always be a certain disorientation in life. So not really knowing which direction it’s going. Not having planned your life all the way to the end.
Frank: In the lyrics, I also read a great aversion to self-presentation and the greed of people and also against capitalism and the system we live in. What can each individual do against it, in your opinion?
Turbobot: Be open to diversity. Let go of your own prejudices and just do good.
King Kacke: Treat each other fairly.
King Kraut: Don’t be so greedy. Don’t be so vain.
So much nonsense is drilled into you, e.g., that you have to present yourself. That has simply been multiplied compared to the time before the internet. I find it fantastic what communication and wonderful expressions are available through the internet. I just don’t find it fantastic when it leads people to spend too much time worrying about what others think of them and trying to fit an image that doesn’t contribute to them feeling good about themselves.
Maybe those who massively present themselves on their social media profiles don’t feel good either. That doesn’t have to be.
Turbobot: I wouldn’t just associate that with the internet. This greed for self-presentation existed long before the internet age.
You shouldn’t prejudge people for how they present themselves and what they say. It’s good to engage in a discussion and be open.
King Kraut: If it makes you feel good, it’s okay for me too.
But there is still pressure on people to have to present something.
Turbobot: Yes, of course.
King Kraut: That’s also paradoxical. There’s pressure for individualism or as they say today, for a personal identity. You have to somehow create an identity for yourself. You can also look at it the other way around. I am who I am and how I feel is right. There are so many people on earth and many of them are almost just like me. These people buy the same things I do. These people listen to the same music I do, they speak the same language and they are interested in the same things I am. I can’t be as special as I would like to be, but I don’t have to make myself unhappy because this ideal of being unique is unattainable.
Frank: Do you see that in music too?
So for example, that one band is successful with a style and other bands want to copy that exactly because it’s successful and they want to benefit from it. So in the sense that it’s not really what they want to do from the heart, but if they play this style, they can go on tour more, play in bigger venues, and maybe even make a living from it.
Turbobot: Yes, I see that in music too.
Zahnfee: It would be better for one’s own well-being to think about oneself. To go within and see what one wants to be. To explore where one’s passion lies and then stick with it.
Turbobot: It also depends on the genre. If you’re in mainstream pop, then the songs aren’t written based on whether they’re cool, but how to make the most money with them. If the songs then sound exactly like songs from the 80s, I’m thinking of Dieter Bohlen, and just a different face is put in front of the microphone, then that’s just how it is.
With medium-sized bands, where you might think that too, like Beatsteaks...well, they probably have a certain pressure from their record label to do something, but in the end, they do what they want to do. Of course, if they make a living from it, if it’s their profession, it can lead to these questions, am I doing something out of passion or am I doing something to earn enough money.
Frank: I brought up the topic because you referred to the scene as
pretentious in your “band myth” or on the promo sheet for the CD. That might also have to do with the fact that people who find a style cool only find bands cool that play exactly that style and everything else is crap for them.
King Kraut: Mmmhh...yes...you can tell that certain styles of punk, rock, and metal come into fashion. I don’t want to assume that it always plays into a commercial interest. Maybe people just like it. But it’s clear that at the beginning, it’s easier to fit into a box. Then it’s easier to find an audience and easier to find stages to play on as a band.
Frank: What is your stance on the punk scene, in which you probably all move to a large extent?
King Kraut: We are mostly ignored.
Frank: To break the ignorance, you are playing a record release party on November 19, 2022, at Rockhaus in Berlin. Hopefully with confetti and streamers. Why should people go there?
King Kacke: Because of the confetti and the streamers!
It will definitely be worth it because it’s been a long time since we played with two guitarists.
Ronny Rambock, who now plays bass for us, played guitar for a total of three gigs with DER ENDGEGNER in his earlier time.
It’s our first gig in a long time where we will perform again with two guitars.
It’s going to be very cool!
King Kraut: It’s going to be very fat!
Zahnfee: When I heard you for the first time, I was completely impressed.
King Kraut: And maybe one more factor. The concert takes place in the Drugstore. The Drugstore has been a regular place for us since the beginning of our band history. Unfortunately, the Drugstore had to move out of the location in Schöneberg. Fortunately, the Drugstore has found a new place in Rockhaus. We are very happy to be playing in the Drugstore again, so to speak. The people from the Drugstore are great. There’s no entrance fee, so everyone can come. It’s going to be a great party, we stand by that with our good name!
Turbobot: Our new CD “Game Over ?!?“ can also be bought there.
King Kraut: And you can also kiss us at the record release party.
Frank: You have to go there! November 19, 2022, Rockhaus Berlin (Drugstore)!
What will happen after the concert with DER ENDGEGNER?
Turbobot: We hope to get a few concerts organized through the new album and a good record release concert. We all want to play live. Playing live is the most fun for us. Maybe it will spread. We also like to play support and of course also outside of Berlin. We are really looking forward to live action!
Frank: Are there areas in Germany where you have played before or
where you might even have some fans?
King Kacke: We have played outside of Berlin, but significantly less than in Berlin. We have the most fun away.
There we can meet new people and the people are not so saturated as here. The people are more grateful than in the big city.
Of course, concerts in Berlin are also great. We know everything here.
King Kraut: That’s true, the spoiled Berlin audience...
We once played in Lower Saxony, in Diepholz. That was a brilliant party. I always remember that fondly.
We were also in Dresden once, but that was ages ago.
We’ve also been to Aachen.
Turbobot: That’s right. Next year we want to play in Aachen again.
That’s where the two original founders of DER ENDGEGNER come from.
Frank: You could put together a nice little weekend tour. Play somewhere halfway on Friday and then in Aachen on Saturday.
That’s quite a ride from Berlin to Aachen, isn’t it?
Turbobot: Oh yes!
Zahnfee: That’s about 600 kilometers or so.
King Kraut: Then we’ll make the big trek west.
Frank: Thank you very much for the interview and for the time you took for it.
