Kanonenfieber – Die Urkatastrophe (Review)

It is certainly not an exaggeration to say that Kanonenfieber has steadily increased in popularity over the past two to three years. The project led by founder Noise, who also has two other musical projects, Non Est Deus and Leipa, has earned a good reputation in the music scene through festivals. With Die Urkatastrophe, the second studio album is now on the agenda after an album and three EPs. Roman reviewed their debut in 2021 and praised the quality of the record. Can album number 2 live up to it?

Fans of the first album will immediately notice after the first listen that there have been relatively few changes in the album’s structure, it has been further improved. Unlike the previous album, the intro is not incorporated into the first song in the tracklist but listed separately. The song “Ausblutungsschlacht” gains depth through the separately recited poem in “Verdun.” The album itself closes with “Als die Waffen kamen“, similarly melancholic through pure guitar playing, like in the previous “Verscharrt und Ungerühmt“.

The album has several highlights for me. The first single release, “Menschenmühle,” provides a rough overview of the situation in World War I from the start. Noise screams to us in hard riffs and hammered drums, which in context resemble machine gun and artillery fire, portraying the madness of war. In “Maulwurf,” we hear the story of a miner who slowly descends into madness in the tunnels beneath the front lines. Elements of Neue Deutsche Härte are added fittingly to the band’s familiar musical formulas.

For me, besides “Menschenmühle“, the best song on the album is “Waffenbrüder“: the content strongly resembles Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front,” as lifelong friends proudly go into battle, only to be torn apart forever in the end. The song is supported by Heaven Shall Burn guitarist Maik Weichert, who adds a heaviness that touches the listener. The combination of the poem “Verdun,” reflecting a soldier’s despair, with the song “Ausblutungsschlacht” about the most famous battle of World War I, should also be highlighted. The accusatory vocals and instruments hammer at the listener, repeatedly spitting out the cursed word “Verdun,” which had over 300,000 casualties.

Telling history through music is nothing new, and in metal, genre-spanning bands frequently attempt it. In my opinion, these projects often fail in quality because they frequently focus on the heroization of war, battles, and individuals. Kanonenfieber explicitly avoids this pitfall. The stories Noise tells, supported by his own interest in the subject matter and a historian friend, have no happy endings, heroes, but are filled with brutality, violence, and death. Even if songs begin heroically, they are literally destroyed in machine gun fire after selfish self-glorification later in the song. The senselessness of sacrificing and destroying human lives in battle is repeatedly emphasized; why kill needlessly, for what? And between the lines, one can feel that the war, killing, and experiences do not end for the soldiers afterward. Even though World War I has been over for over 100 years, the content remains shockingly relevant and has not lost any of its importance.

Die Urkatastrophe is on par with its predecessor Menschenmühle and fits seamlessly into Kanonfieber’s and Noise’s high-quality output. Kanonenfieber has found an appropriate style to the theme, Death and Black Metal, that stands out and has an impressive impact. Even if one or two songs do not quite appeal to me compared to all the others on the album, it does not diminish my overall impression of the album. The density of excellent songs, whether musically or lyrically, is simply too high. I highly recommend anyone who has not listened to the band yet to do so.