2008’s new band number 100 here on Germaniac couldn’t possibly be anything else than what a lot of people most often associate with German music - industrial metal. And damn good industrial metal at that.

Seelenzorn really has realized how important it is to offer free tasters of its music during the four years it’s been active. Last November the band released their third free web-only EP titled Keine Angst, which contains a total of five fantastically dark, stomping industrial metal songs. Three are brand-new tracks and one is a Russian version of the title song featuring the singer Draw from the Russian gothic industrial band Otto Dix, whereas the final track is an acoustic version of the song Frei which was featured on Seelenzorn’s very first album, Töte alles. You can listen to and download each song here, the band’s also included the front and back covers there if you’re inclined to put the EP on a CD. You can also check out the music video for Keine Angst.

I’m afraid the previous two web-EPs /lebenszeichen and Schwarz und Schwer aren’t available anymore, although I guess (and hope) you can find the same songs on Seelenzorn’s albums Töte alles and Gnadenloser Zorn, which are both available on Amazon.de for 13,99 €. Amazon also has samples of every song on both albums, so if Keine Angst wasn’t enough, there’s your chance to hear some of their older material. The media section of Seelenzorn’s site also has some tracks for you to listen to, including another acoustic version of a song and remixes.

Seelenzorn - Keine Angst free web-EP tracklist
1. Keine Angst
2. Sexzess
3. Obsession
4. Keine Angst feat. Draw
5. Frei Akustik Version

Limbogott are quickly becoming industrial-shock-metal extraordinaires, but their first 2 albums were sung entirely in English, a language not native to this German group. It looks like things are changing, though… at least for “Haus der Lüge”, the song they teamed up with Chris Pohl of Blutengel to record. But “Haus der Lüge” is not just the band’s first song recorded in German. It is also the first single from their forthcoming third album Spit or Swallow. And now you can download it as an MP3 file for free!

Head over to e-junkie.com to download “Haus der Lüge”, Limbogott’s Christmas present to their fans. (Be sure to hurry, because it’s only available for free until December 31st.) The song is likely to be an indication about how Limbogott’s sound is progressing, but will the German lyrics make it over to the rest of the songs on Spit or Swallow? We’ll just have to wait and find out in the time leading up to it’s February 13th release date.

Thanks to Mikki for the tip

What I really like about Christmas music-wise is that a lot of bands suddenly get all generous and allow people to download stuff for free. So does Silbermond, who are giving away the title track off from their upcoming album Nichts passiert. Nichts passiert, which will be released sometime early next year, is the band’s third album, and expectations are high: the latest album Laut gedacht was a smash hit in 2006, grabbing the number one position of the official sales charts in Germany and Austria, as well as the third place in Switzerland. It seems Silbermond’s energetic pop-rock goes rather well down in their home country, as the album has sold over 800 000 copies, granting it quadruple platinum status. The band has definitely come far from their humble beginnings in the TEN SING music project of Germany’s YMCA, where the band members met each other in 1998.

You’ll be able to download the free song Nichts passiert starting tomorrow until 28th this month on Silbermond’s website in the audio section. Silbermond’s MySpace also has three full-length live tracks and their latest single song Das Ende vom Kreis for you to listen. Amazon.de has both of Silbermond’s albums for sale, the debut Verschwende deine Zeit for 16,95 € and Laut gedacht for 12,45 €.

Curse feat. Silbermond

In addition to preparing for the release of their own album next year, Silbermond recently collaborated with the German rapper Curse. The song Bis zum Schluss featuring Silbermond can be found on the critically lauded album Freiheit which was released three months ago on 26th September, or as a single. You can check out the video for Bis zum Schluss here, or listen to half the song on Curse’s MySpace, where you can also catch some other tracks if you’d like to get to know the rapper better. Bis zum Schluss is available at least on Amazon.de for for 3,95 € or 5,95 € for the premium edition.

Thanks to Jutta for reminding me about Silbermond!

Also, for my part, it’s happy holidays to every single one of you! Just a couple more left, we’ll make it…

Greifenkeil, who released their album Blood Mystery last May, have changed their name to GriffonVox. Along with the new name comes a boatload of new stuff:

Annual Christmas gift
It seems Greifenkeil/GriffonVox have made it their tradition to release a free Christmas song every year. Following last year’s NoChristmasSong, this year’s track is called White Christmas (Law of the Land), and it’s the very first release under the new band name. You can download the mp3 here, or if you fancy, a 45 MB .wav file here.

New style, new releases
Sometimes when a band changes their name, nothing else is different. This time, however, GriffonVox seems to be seeking to distance themselves from Greifenkeil’s “psycho-acoustic performance art”, as now GriffonVox’s sites tell us they’re an “electronic wave performance” act. Last time I checked, Greifenkeil’s music was a very interesting kind of ambient and psychedelic industrial, so it’ll be interesting to see just what this new direction means for the band. If the new Christmas song White Christmas is of any indication, the sound is a bit less crushing and industrial than before, and seems to have a touch of trance or something like that to it. Nevertheless, it’s really good.

To really drive home the fact that the band has changed, GriffonVox is releasing the album Blood Mystery again done entirely anew in the new style. According to their MySpace site, Blood Mystery - Electronic Wave Mix will be available for free for everyone who bought the original version of the album, or as Blood Mystery Kultbox which will have both the original Blood Mystery as well as the new version. Alongside the transformed original songs, the Electronic Wave Mix also boasts some older songs they performed during their shows, presumably played in the new style. Blood Mystery - Electronic Wave Mix will see the light of day at the Wave Gothik Treffen 2009 festival in early summer.

In WGT 2009 will also be released a brand new EP, She’s Lost Control. She’s Lost Control is a cover of Joy Division’s 1979 hit song, but the EP will have at least two other tracks as well. Whether these are remixes, other cover versions or completely new GriffonVox songs remains a secret. Also, not content with releasing this much stuff already, early spring 2009 something known only as Law of the Land will be available as a free download. I’m afraid there’s currently no information on this one. Keep your eyes peeled.

An introduction to Resonator

Resonator is a duo from Münster, Germany, who makes some of the most unique and creative music you can find. Kai typically writes music for theater and works on film soundtracks, while Anja is a formally trained musician who plays the accordion for the Resonator project. Ambient electronic music mixed with accordions is certainly not a common combination of sounds, but I can assure you it’s something very special when you hear it.

Enter the Red Room Diner

Red Room Diner is Resonator’s first full length album, originally released in 2003. It starts out with the mysterious sounding intro “Avis De Securite”. Coming in at under a minute in length, the song doesn’t really give you much of a clue about what you’re in for. This could be the introduction for anything, it’s very abstract. What’s to come? It might surprise you…

(more…)

Download the new Donots single for free

It’s becoming increasingly popular among bands to give away some of their music for free in exchange for a list of your friends’ email addresses. By doing this, a band amplifies the reach of their music so more people get to listen to it and it also helps them get in contact with more potential fans, so it seems like a win-win situation. We discovered Daloco’s incredible blues-rock album Mama Ist Entzückt this way and it proved to be pretty popular among readers. Now you can get the new Donots single “Stop The Clocks” this way, too. Will it prove to be just as popular?

Just head over to their e-card, type in some of your friends’ emails, and listen away. Sure, this is just a single, not an entire album, but by filling in the Donots e-card, you’ll also be entered to win tickets to one of 2 festivals the band will be playing at later in the year, a meet-and-greet with the band, and a voucher for the Donots Shop worth 100 Euros. Good luck, and as usual, let us know what you think in the comments.

Scooter ousts Madonna from the top of the UK album chart

The latest Scooter album Jumping All Over The World, which was originally released in Germany and several other countries in 2007, was just released on May 5th in the UK. It was the act’s first album release in the UK since 2003’s The Stadium Techno Experience, but they probably would have released more there if they had known how popular they would be with the Brits. Jumping All Over The World soared to the #1 spot on the UK album chart, surpassing even the “queen of pop” Madonna and her album Hard Candy. You can read the complete BBC article here. Thanks to Nadja for the tip.

Tour calendar finally created

I finally made a tour calendar for German bands that are coming to North America. It includes all bands that have already toured here so far in 2008 (including Ellen Allien which I just found out about, a few days too late) and plenty more that have yet to arrive. Check it out now, and check back often for updates. I hope you’ll find this helpful.

For the past half hour or so, I’ve been listening to a new album called Mama Ist Entzückt by the German blues-rock musician Daloco. Normally, this kind of music isn’t something I would be listening to, but something about the band intrigued me so I decided to listen to some of the music on their MySpace page. Then I noticed that the whole album is available to download as MP3s for free if you just share it with a few of your friends by email. So I did.

I’m glad I did because the musicianship is excellent. Regardless of your personal taste in music, there’s no denying it. Daloco and his fellow musician Bina are both very talented and you can just tell they are totally invested in their music. This is something I can really appreciate, it’s fantastic. So go and give the album a listen. You have nothing to lose.

Daloco - Mama Ist Entzückt tracklisting
01. Euch glaubt doch keiner mehr
02. Teufel in dir
03. Mama ist entzückt
04. Sag den Frauen (dass wir gehen)
05. Zeit für Frieden
06. Es wär einmal
07. Hotelzimmerfenster
08. High noon
09. Sowas wie ne Band
10. Danke, dass sie mich nicht erschossen haben

New demo from Down Below

Down Below has been hard at work on material for their next album and they’ve got a lot done so far. To give fans the first preview of their new album, the band has decided to upload a demo of their new song “Frei” on their fansite DownBelow-Fans.de on May 2nd. The only catch is you have to register for the site, but that’s not hard to do.

Free web album from Rozencrantz

I first wrote about Rozencrantz’s debut album Salvation in October, and I thought it was really great. Well it seems they created some music for an indie horror movie called Infekt and released it as a free web album some time after that, and I never noticed it until now. Go check it out on the Download page of their website. You can choose from either an MP3 of WAV file download, and you can get the artwork for it too.

More release dates added

I recently finished adding some more items to the 2008 release dates page, 17 in total. May is getting pretty filled up, and I will be working on June’s releases pretty soon.

The rockers of Dementi are the latest German band to embrace the Creative Commons license and offer their music as free downloads online. Both of the band’s albums, their 2003 debut Zweigefühl and 2005’s Für Heute Reichts, are now available to anyone as long as you don’t use them for any commercial purposes. So go ahead and download Dementi’s music, just visit the download page of their website where you will receive the songs bundled together in a zip file. If you like the music, please don’t forget to support the band for their work by making a donation at the bottom of the same page.

I recommend their second album Für Heute Reichts. It’s the harder one of their two albums and also mixes in some nice electronic elements, it’s really great. I would compare it to Treibhaus, maybe Eisenherz or Megaherz… Check it out.

Don’t forget, Dementi is also working on a new album which is supposed to be released sometime later this year. Not much about it has been announced and I don’t know if they plan to release it for free the same way, but I’ll be sure to bring you the details later on when more information has been announced.

First new Corvus Corax song online

Corvus Corax is still working on their next album Cantus Buranus II which is scheduled for release on August 1st, but they have already uploaded a new song on their MySpace page. It’s called “O Varium Fortune” and despite the fact that it’s only a 3-minute rough mix of the song, it’s still well worth a listen. It’s very nice, definitely Corvus Corax. I’m eagerly awaiting this album.

Seabound offers an exclusive MP3 download

During Seabound’s U.S. Alliance Tour, they performed the song “Watching Over You” as an encore with Iris’s singer Reagan Jones in certain cities. This duet was so well received by the crowds that the band decided to record it. Now it’s available as an exclusive MP3 download for fans of both bands to enjoy (or relive the experience, if you were there) over and over again. This particular recording was made at the March 29th concert in San Francisco. To download “Watching Over You” live, just head on over to Seabound.de or simply click here.

Udo Dirkschneider celebrates 20 years: Special concerts, DVD, South American tour

Udo Dirkschneider first met fame as the singer for Accept, but for the past 20 years he has been at the head of his own band U.D.O. To celebrate, the band has planned 2 special concerts in Germany, one of which will have an extra-long 3 hour set that will also include several Accept songs. This concert will also be filmed and turned into a DVD in the future for all U.D.O. fans who couldn’t get tickets for the sold out show.

U.D.O. is also booking concerts for South America and Mexico during the first half of June. For details, visit the tourdates page of U.D.O.’s website.

Schock’s “Making of Halt Still” video

As I reported a while ago, Schock is hard at work on their next album, Halt Still. But it looks like they are making a lot of progress on the album because they recently released a “making of Halt Still” video on their MySpace page. It’s in German, but even if you can’t understand any of it, there’s still plenty of music to listen to between segments of the members speaking and making random noises.