As flower power waned in the ’70s and hippies traded sit-ins for corner offices, the disillusionment that followed fed a new kind of fury at lingering injustices and establishment neglect. The backlash of the ’80s was still change-oriented, but less naive: It gave us punk and industrial.
Enter KMFDM, the raging industrial, multinational rock and dance band from Hamburg, Germany, born in 1984 out of frontman Sascha Konietzko’s performance art mission to force humanity to look at itself without illusion. In a chat with PureHoney, Konietzko, aka Käpt’n K, says, “KMFDM is an art form, an aural mirror of societal events, a synthesized awareness, an acid trip unto itself.”
KMFDM Lucia Cifarelli photo by Bobby_Talamine
They’re a one-of-a-kind dark electro musical art project with a goth streak but not goth’s romantic self-absorption. The band’s initials, expanding to “Mehrheit Für Die Mitleid,” translate loosely to “no pity for the masses.” And pitiless they are toward a comfortable global consensus that licenses — often through passivity and silence — violence and oppression against vulnerable people.
If you can distill the KMFDM ethos down to a single track, it’s in the lyrics of “More & Faster,” from their 1989 album “UAIOE,”: “All you nations/Come and listen/The Truth is a mess and/The politics are pissin’/We need a revolution to rip the system.”
KMFDM Sascha Konietzko photo by Bobby_Talamine
Poverty, homelessness, corruption, consumerism — almost no conscious topic has escaped their notice in a discography spanning more than 38 years and 22 studio albums. (“Hyena” lands in September.) KMFDM are not above selling stuff, as a spin through their merch-minded Facebook feed shows, but they also use their platform to raise money for causes as varied as LGBTQIA+ rights and retiring medical debt for COVID-19 patients.
There is never a shortage of outrages for KMFDM to process through performance, and doing it so well for long has created a devoted, demanding fan base that will accept nothing less. “There are always high expectations,” Konietzko affirms, “and they will be met, if not exceeded.”
KMFDM perform 7pm Tuesday, Sept. 27 at Revolution Live in Fort Lauderdale.
kmfdm.bandcamp.com ~ Amanda E. Moore
