Die Krupps is one of the greatest and most important bands Germany has ever had. They were one of the earliest industrial bands way back in 1980, and later went on to create the industrial-metal sound in the early 90s. The band’s mastermind Jurgen Engler is often hailed as the godfather of industrial music and is easily one of the most important people in German music history. (Even before Die Krupps, he formed Male, the first punk band in Germany in 1976.) So it’s no surprise that the band reunited a couple years ago to celebrate their 25th anniversary. They’ve played several concerts and have been in the studio working on some new music, but the Die Krupps anthology release that they wanted to do hit some delays along the way. After many months of fighting to get everything together, it’s finally ready!

Too Much History is the name of the new Die Krupps anthology, featuring music that spans over a quarter century. Very appropriately, there are two discs, one for each of the band’s major eras. The first disc is The Electro Years and covers the first part of Die Krupps’ history, and The Metal Years sums up their harder sound on the second disc. In addition to all of the band’s best songs, Die Krupps has some new ones on the compilation as well. One of them, “5 Millionen”, is a new single that either was or will be released sometime this year (not sure yet…). There is also apparently a cover of the Pop Will Eat Itself song “Ich Bin Ein Auslander” which is new. “The Great Divide” seems to be new, too.

Both discs will be released individually on October 26th, but you can also get the version with both discs together which I would certainly recommend. To make their anthology even more mouth-watering, I think Die Krupps has remastered the songs. I haven’t read this anywhere, I’m just going by the samples I’ve heard on Infrarot.de (Electro disc here and Metal disc here) but some of them sound totally different from the originals.

And it just keeps getting better and better. Along with the few new tracks released here on Too Much History, Die Krupps has other new songs that they’ve played live over the past couple years. For example, “Der Amboss”. I’m just speculating at this point, but I think we may be seeing a new full-length Die Krupps album within a year or so. I certainly hope so.

Too Much History, Vol. 1 - The Electro Years
01. Machineries Of Joy
02. Für Einen Augenblick
03. Volle Kraft Voraus
04. Goldfinger
05. Gladiators
06. Der Amboss
07. Germaniac
08. Hi Tech Low Life
09. Alive
10. 5 Millionen
11. The Great Divide

Too Much History, Vol. 2 - The Metal Years
01. Metal Machine Music
02. The Dawning Of Doom
03. Crossfire
04. Fatherland
05. Bloodsuckers
06. To The Hilt
07. Isolation
08. Scent
09. Odyssey Of The Mind
10. Black Beauty White Heat
11. Ich Bin Ein Ausländer
12. The Great Divide