I’m not really a lonely type of guy. I prefer to spend my time around people even if I don’t know them yet. But I do my best thinking when I’m alone. Except I’m only good for a while until boredom sets in. I’ve got to occupy my mind and focus on something. That something has always been music. I write, but I don’t do it to fight boredom. (I’ve always had to queue up six or seven CDs before my writing sessions.) Music keeps me busy, but most of all, it makes me feel like I’m not alone.

Part of not feeling alone means belonging to something bigger than yourself. A lot of people look to the church. In my late teens, I looked to punk music. I fell in love with a band called The Dropkick Murphys. To this day, I can pop in their live CD and seconds later, I’m in the bar, enjoying a pint of the good stuff, listening to them play with a raucous crowd around me. Is it the best music I’ve ever heard? Maybe, maybe not. My point is that is doesn’t matter – it makes me smile. It makes me feel something great.

When Greg told me he was checking out a band called Fiddler’s Green a while ago, I’d swore I’d heard of them. I mean, I had to. That was the sort of shit I listened to. He listened to Wumpscut while I skanked around the room next door. And as much as I love the stuff, a lot of punk (and Irish folk) bands sound the same when you remove the vocals. It’s easy for the mainstream music fan to brush aside this type of music as a rehash. I can’t tell you how many iPods I’ve seen with mislabeled tracks. To them, it’s just another band from Ireland. Except Fiddler’s Green isn’t from Ireland.

They’re a bunch of dudes from Germany, that for some reason, wanted to do something different. When I tried to find out via their website, I was faced with something I’ve seen a hundred times before. A press release covering their newest album instead of an actual history of the band or hell, just an explanation on why the fuck anyone in Germany would play Irish music. (Although, I’d say almost all of my Irish friends are actually half German, half Irish. Maybe two great tastes that go great together?) So, I did all I could do. I got my hands on their new album.

Drive Me Mad is fucking amazing. To start, I picked two tracks, Long Gone and Captain Song, at random. I didn’t even make it through both songs. I knew that I didn’t have to. I was already sitting there in that bar in my head listening to the band. And I had a magical pint of stout that never spilled when I danced amongst the crowd. Oh, Fiddler’s Green. You guys really know how to make me smile. The album is good to the last track. It’s got that diverse range you expect when you pop in a CD like this one. I won’t go into detail, but I will issue an apology. That aforementioned press release, while cheesy, was spot-fucking-on.

So, here’s the bad news: They’re another German band that isn’t on the road to US popularity. There are lots of bands over in the States that do what Fiddler’s Green does, if only a fraction as well. If I hand their CD to a friend (like I already have), I have to explain that we’ll never be able to see them in concert. And trust me, this is a band I can’t wait to see live. If their entire catalog is half as rocking as this new album, they could easily headline a bar tour over here in the US in an ideal world. But it’s a hard sell – try getting a bunch of Americans to listen to any German band. In that ideal world, you would Radio Raheem it and walk up the street with a boom box blasting Fiddler’s Green. But due to America’s public disturbance laws (drafted after New Kids on the Block rose to popularity), you can’t do that. You’ve got to find another way to spread the good word. And you should, as the guys of Fiddler’s Green have done all they needed to do by making a kick ass album. It’s time to… well, you know.

Bottom Line: Hand someone the CD and don’t tell them a damn thing about it until they’re smiling. (Which will be about one minute and thirty four seconds after they decide on a track.)

A god once told me that we’d have to start a war for the future of music – a nuclear war. I didn’t believe him and it’s probably because I missed all the warning shots. I was only months old when the PMRC spewed their bullshit forth from the Capital. In 1995, Headbangers Ball was canceled. I was only ten, clutching on to a Buddy Holly mix tape, and I had no idea what MTV was truly capable of. In my teens, I defended Metallica at the dinner table when my uncle said they were a bunch of brainless stooges. Just a bunch of kids who had no idea what was going on. (Despite James and the gang being in their late 30s at the time.) Whenever I tried to bring people to the place music had taken me, my wings got clipped. The war was over. The local rock station got turned to talk radio.

I met Greg my first semester at college. At that point, my idea of foreign music was Led Zeppelin. I was a big fan of Filter and Nine Inch Nails, but that’s as far as I explored into industrial. The closest thing to gothic metal I could imagine was The Misfits. That was five years ago. While I’ve expanded my tastes considerably since, I’m still, in a lot of ways, that same kid. If you asked me to give my opinion on European music, I’d stand on Greg’s bed and belt out a few lines of Laibach’s “Jesus Christ Superstar.” The only German music I’ve heard is either played at the local Oktoberfest or Rammstein. So, yeah – it’s odd that I decided to contribute to a blog called Germaniac.

My goal here is to provide a bridge between the Germaniacs of the world and the casual, American music fans like myself. In all the time I’ve known Greg, I’ve never really sought out this music on my own. So, I asked for a list of three bands a week. I’d listen to them and see what I could make of what I was hearing. Greg decided to start me off with a band called Umbra Et Imago. Their Wikipedia entry was suspiciously bare, so all I had to go by was their music.

- - -

Mea Culpa was all right, I guess. By the end of the album, I was struggling to get through it. I can’t see any non-fan sticking it out for the cover of “Rock Me Amadeus,” although I was glad I did. That song is disturbingly awesome. Things improved slightly with Dunkle Energie. Or maybe I was just getting used to Umbra’s style. Also, I think this is a good time to mention that German bands singing in English scares the crap out of me. I don’t mind the (apparently) time honored tradition of the token broad singing in English behind the German screaming, but count me out when the vocalist wants to whisper sweet, English nothings in my ear. Either way, Dunkle was definitely enough to keep me listening for another album.

Memento Mori sold me. I’m a huge movie dork, so I giggled about the name as I listened to the first few tracks. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’d call German an abrasive language, but I don’t really think of it as musical. Granted, Rammstein has been changing my opinion with every album. But I’m not fully there. Yet. I can definitely see how people get embraced by the vocals even when they don’t know what the hell the guy is rambling about. Maerchenland is a hell of a track. And Sagt Nein fucking rocks. While I was expecting a Pink Floyd cover with “Money,” I was still pleased with the track I got. All in all, that’s one CD I’m not about to toss out when I’m done writing this column.

Although I’ve got no idea what any of this says, I’m going to take a leap and guess that Motus Animi is a remix album. It sounds like all of the songs I just heard being played upstairs from a techno club in an early 90s action movie. After Mori, I skipped through a few of the tracks. I gave a listen to Ein Letztes Mal (Leaves Eyes Remix) and liked it. The Lieber Gott remix sounds like someone had been playing a little too much Goldeneye lately. Wumpscut scares me enough to keep me away from their stuff for at least another month. The practical uses of this remix album includes clearing out wedding reception halls and announcing a depth charge warning to the crew. I like techno, but I’d stick to Dunkle and Mori.

Seriously though, Umbra Et Imago is controversial gothic metal? If I didn’t know any better, I could hear a few of those songs being played on the local (now no longer talk) rock station. I wouldn’t go so far as to say Umbra is the next Van Halen, but they definitely deserve some play. And when you’ve got the choice between Fergalicious and something that rocks, it really doesn’t matter what language it’s in. Finally, don’t mention the goth part to anyone you pass this along to. While I don’t think the lyrics are about kittens, it’s not the crap I’ve come to accept as goth metal. I’m definitely going to fire off a few samples to friendly metal heads. Or at least anyone that’d put the umlaut in Motörhead.

Bottom line: If this is the Devil’s music then I am here to do the Devil’s work.

Germaniac.com has a new contributing writer, my good friend Joey. I’ve known him since we started college together 5 years ago. He has been subjected to my speakers blasting all kinds of German music while we were roommates, and he seems to have gotten hooked because now he wants to find some new bands to listen to. His column Let’s Start a Fire will give you somewhat of a newcomer’s perspective as he discovers various German bands and expresses his thoughts about them. I think you will really like his style, too, because unlike me, he’s actually a writer and I know he will definitely come up with some creative posts.

I gave Joey a few band names as a starting point, but I have no idea what he’s going to be writing about first. All I know is that his first post will come sometime in the next few days. I hope you find his contributions to be useful and entertaining.