After an eight-year break, Die Ärzte are returning to their roots with their new album "Hell".
Our record review.
It caused some emotional chaos when the best band in the world, as Die Ärzte like to call themselves, announced their new album "Hell".
On the one hand there was this childlike joy after eight years of dry spell on new medication from the punk corner, on burning balm for the soul in these strange times.
And on the other hand, the fear of having too high expectations that the heroes of the youth could only deliver lame placebo instead of infusions to strengthen the circulation.
Unfortunately, it wouldn't be the first time that the Berlin trio, now all men in their mid-50s, delivers rather inconsequential and cramped youthfulness - see the last album “Auch” from 2012.
So now “Hell” and - to hell - thank God Farin Urlaub, Bela B and Rodrigo Gonzalez are back!
With their cheeky lightness, irony and their cool music.
As if blown away, the impression that three aged professional rebels were trying to conjure up the youth once again.
The intro EVJMF is a bit scary: 1.43 minutes of trap music - cloudy electronic stuff full of sluggish rhythms and deep bass.
"Aha / Yeah, yeah mhh / Jo.
jo “, it says there.
And: “Our striving for beauty and perfection brings us back to the microphone.” Fortunately, the piece is only short.
But after that, the accounts are billed with legs apart and grinning: “Morgens Pauken”, for example, is a swan song for punk, which has meanwhile been reduced to the common good.
Doesn't everyone want to be a little rebel?
“Everything is just punk,” they warble in a good mood.
Of course, with heavy drums and snappy rock riffs.
Musically and in terms of content, the bandwidth is wide: "Attention: Bielefeld" celebrates laziness, even if it remains unclear what the song has to do with the city in North Rhine-Westphalia.
“The last song of the summer” is strongly reminiscent of the band's own sing-along hymn “Westerland” from 1988. Only this time the protagonist ponders the sea while unfortunately stuck in the diesel-stinking traffic jam.
With “Ich, am Strand”, occasional reggae quotes are flipped through an imaginary photo album - with a surprising ending.
Wonderfully grotesque the gap between sound and text in “Polyester”, which deals with flood of plastic and rubbish in pleasing pop.
And it gets almost cheesy with “Life Before Death”, which deals with the meaning or nonsense of existence and love.
Listening to every song is recommended, because behind some happy chinking sounds there is bitter social criticism.
The Doctors would not be Die Doctors if they did not position themselves clearly politically: Accompanied by chopped off, even threatening guitars, in “Fexxo Cigol” they neatly expose the strange ideas of the aluminum hat wearers.
But in the end they get bitter angry: In the song “Woodburger”, fast-paced in word and tone, they punish angry citizens, populists, Nazis and explicitly the AfD.
This is not for the faint-hearted word fetishists.
Well-known Farin Urlaub, Bela B. and Rodrigo Gonzalez, recently in an interview, almost broke up.
The air was out.
Then the idea for this 13th album called "Hell" arose.
Thank God!
And with success: the album immediately landed at number 1 in the German charts.