Kind Kaputt – Endlich wieder (EP)

Have Kind Kaputt just woken up from a nightmare or is it simply real life itself that needs sorting? In their new songs, the band from Leipzig clears up the destructiveness and has the courage to pointedly point fingers. A step with which the quartet not only thematically gains a new clarity, but also finds a completely new sound in the beating out of the thicket of life. Analogous to the more straightforward lyricism, the new Kind-Kaputt sound is downright straightforward and at the same time more independent than ever. Music that can not erase the burdens of everyday life, but gives you a hand when it seems hopeless.

Released in 2019, Kind-Kaputt’s debut album “Zerfall” was a visually stunning monolith whose title alone underscores its destructive streak. In twelve conceptually cohesive songs, the band led by singer Johannes Prautzsch, drummer Mathis Kerscher, guitarist Konstantin Cajkin and videographer Fabian Willi Simon formulated the story of an entire generation searching for footing. The feeling of shorelessness was buried in massive post-hardcore artworks that reflected the overwhelming demands of everyday life through helplessness. But how do you move on after a record that unerringly summed up the woes of a fragile reality of life, but barely looked for ways out? Perhaps due to the after-effects of a massive record like “Zerfall”, Kind Kaputt sound on their new songs as if they had rediscovered themselves all over again.

Because suddenly you think you can find some contour in the world-weariness in the songs again. Kind Kaputt have radically cleaned up their sound and achieved the feat of not drifting into banality. The gigantic walls of sound give way to structured, forward-pointing alternative melodies, which are all the more stirring because of their engaging melodicism. In an attic converted into a recording studio, instead of a large-scale concept work, many individual songs are created, which can bring their messages all the more pointedly to the point. At the same time, Kind Kaputt do not give up their penchant for wonderful imagery, but package their messages with even more courage to name them clearly. “The time after the album was difficult,” Mathis recalls. “We all fell into quite a hole and didn’t know how to continue for a long time. It wasn’t until three quarters of a year later that we started writing songs again. We wanted to write them differently: more straightforward, more direct, more clear.”

With their unmistakable language, the new Kind Kaputt songs prove to be music with an emblematic edge to cling to. In the tracks is the pulsating ductus of the German post-punk school, but seeks in this not the grueling self-destruction, but the quest to see through the fog of emotions. Kind Kaputt always find the saving melody or the open-armed alternative hymn in the fire of the rotating bass and guitar riffs and the mercilessly pushing drums, which makes the songs not only understandable, but also inviting. That the band reminds in some elements of the late Heisskalt, should hardly be a coincidence – after all, their singer Mathias Bloech has been active on many of the tracks as a producer and has locked up with the band on a few scalding hot summer days to record.
The approach of the resulting individual pieces also plays into the cards of band member Fabian Willi Simon, who is solely responsible for the visual production of Kind Kaputt and who has designed a distinctive video for each of the new songs. The manifold range of these clips clearly underlines how much more deeply Kind Kaputt can also elaborate the uniqueness of individual works of art through their working methods. For example, the song “Gründe” is accompanied by an intricate performance video, “Bleiben” featuring Heisskalt frontman Mathias Bloech translates the flower metaphor of the lyrics into the very visual scenario of a greenhouse, and the sprawling footage for “Zeit” was even shot entirely in Microsoft Flight Simulator.

It speaks for Kind Kaputt’s foresight that their new songs, despite their distilled sharpness, do not lose sight of the essential. Because of course the world is not suddenly all right after the “disintegration”, maybe it is even worse than ever. But perhaps clever reflection sometimes has a stronger effect than self-destruction. This music is just what it needs – especially when the reality around it seems so much more restless.