originally written by Craig Hayes
Metal has cooked up plenty of hearty musical combinations over the years, and some of the most tempting have resulted from peppering the sonic stew with Krautrock. This year, Finnish black metal experimentalists Oranssi Pazuzu served up an extremely appetizing album of Kosmische raucousness in Valonielu, while in 2012, Aluk Todolo produced similarly delectable fare with Occult Rock. If you weren’t a fan of Krautrock already, you’d be excused for thinking its appearance at the feast was a case of quirky artists seasoning metal with a little-known genre for extra piquancy. However, the truth is, since Krautrock first emerged from Germany in the late ’60s, the scene has added a clearly discernible and sustained flavour to metal.
Of course, it wasn’t all Mad Max on the Autobahn straight away—Krautrock had its own distinct history before it first encountered the metal horde. Krautrock originally found its name thanks to a historical hangover, with the UK music press tagging the innovative music being produced in Germany in the late ’60s and ’70s with a derogatory snipe.
For many adventurous German musicians at the time, their response was a simple Fick dich! Chiefly because the majority of them were endeavoring to climb out of a post-World War II cultural ruin, seeking to rid themselves of the strictures of the past by forging new identities wrapped around an uncompromising and revolutionary artistic aesthetic.
The scene was born from creative ambitions that looked outside the parameters of the US and UK rock saturating the airwaves and clubs in Germany at the time. Krautrock artists often set out to merge technology with consciousness-expanding music—saying goodbye to mainstream structures of rock and pop in the process. Bands frequently favored abstract experiences, where the emphasis was on sound manipulation, minimalist shifts, and impressionistic and nontraditional free-form soundscapes.
In the main, Krautrock bands dismissed the notion of any straight-down-the-line rock ‘n’ roll, and the scene is most famed for its deconstructed motorik beat, outer-space synth, cut-and-paste techniques, and the pioneering work of producers such as Conny Plank. However, while Krautrock broadly defines a similarly minded scene—with artists ripping apart psychedelia and progressive rock, or twisting time on lengthy jaunts into infinity—the bands gathered under the banner were an eclectic bunch, with a raft of different musical visions.
Some explored political, existential, and astral themes, while others weren’t averse to mixing in odes to the joys of sex and drugs as well. What’s most evident in Krautrock, no matter the thematic focus, is a shared sense of wild-eyed adventurism. Groups like Tangerine Dream, Cluster, and Kraftwerk transformed from skewed psychedelic bands into painters of hugely influential electronic collages, introducing cosmic minimalism, trance, and varying modes and techniques of the electronic arts to the world in the process.
Amon Düül II took agit-folk into celestial realms with acid-soaked dirty guitars, while Agitation Free, Cosmic Jokers, Xhol Caravan, and Popol Vuh launched their own shamanic voyages to the stars. Bands such as La Düsseldorf, Brainticket, Embryo, Faust, Can, and Neu! gleefully tore down rock’s building blocks, slathering on the weirdness. The overall result was a slew of fascinating, if often little-heard, albums from a long list of truly original artists.
Still, as enthralling as those artists were, the audience for Krautrock was fairly limited. The scene’s heyday was gone in the blink of an eye, with the majority of bands worth listening to crammed into a decade (1968–78)—and you’d want to be extremely careful listening to much outside of that. What is less appreciated than Krautrock’s sonic signifiers (but is arguably just as important), is that the scene’s artistic autonomy inspired the birth of many independent record labels, pre-empting punk rock’s DIY revolution. Along with Krautrock’s fuck-you to musical conventions, this goes a long way to explaining why many punk rock pioneers poured scorn on the explorative rock of the day, but frequently held Krautrock bands in high regard.
Krautrock has an impressive legacy of its own, especially considering the obscurity of many of its best bands. The scene remains a dream destination for connoisseurs of the long-forgotten, but Krautrock’s methodology and temper continues on, strong as ever, to this day.
The scene’s influence on post-punk, electronica, and generations of experimental rock artists is undeniable. Diverse bands such as Autechre, Tortoise, The Fall, Sonic Youth, Radiohead, Swans, Rammstein, Tim Hecker, Nurse With Wound, Porcupine Tree, The Mars Volta, and Queens of the Stone Age all rightly cite Krautrock as crucial to their makeup.
However, as far as metal is concerned, Krautrock has been working its hypnotic magic on the genre since the early ’70s. Harder rockers such as Epitaph, Nosferatu, Grobschnitt, Night Sun, Jane, Necronomicon, Birth Control, and German Oak, all began injecting proto-metal into Krautrock’s foundations early on—and it’s worth pointing out that the debut recordings from both Scorpions and Accept were released on noted Krautrock label Brain Records, too.
Krautrock has gone on to influence both stylistic techniques and philosophic perspectives in metal. It’s easy to recognize Krautrock hovering over the miscreants shaping black metal’s malevolent synthscapes, and its use of cyclical tension is certainly evident in the ratcheting gyre of many a black metal band’s riffs.
Mayhem famously tipped its hat to Krautrock on debut, plucking a track (“Silvester Anfang”) from former Tangerine Dream member Conrad Schnitzler to begin its Deathcrush EP. Darkthrone‘s Fenriz paid direct homage to the work of Krautrock’s synth pioneers with the sequencer atmospherics of his Neptune Towers project, and black-hearted fiends such as Total Negation, God Seed, Code, Lunar Aurora, Paysage d’Hiver, Darkspace, Circle of Ouroborus, and Angst Skvadron all explicitly draw from Krautrock’s arsenal.
Of course, that’s merely the tip of the comet. The further you head into metal’s avant-garde realms, the stronger Krautrock’s presence becomes; and the DNA of key Krautrock progenitors is clearly heard in bands like Horseback, Locrian, Ulver, Sunn O))) and Sutekh Hexen.
Outside of the outré, you could argue that the trampling sonics of Motörhead, or even High on Fire, are propelled by a maximal version of Krautrock’s minimalist cadence. Sleep certainly took Krautrock’s outer-limits repetitive mesmerism to the nth degree on Dopesmoker. Bands like OM, Bong, Saturnalia Temple, Ufomammut, and Monster Magnet (and all their hypno-weed and psych-fueled brethren) clearly nod to Krautrock’s mantric musicality. Neurosis, and band side-projects like Tribes of Neurot and Harvestman, are indebted to Krautrock’s rythmic rituals, while in doomier pastures many of those lengthy instrumental passages we all love have been fertilized by Krautrock as much as by any progressive rock.
Throw a ‘post-‘ prefix on metal and you’ve a good chance of hearing, at the very least, an echo of Krautrock’s desire to keep searching beyond the limits of genre restrictions. But, for all of Krautrock’s influence on metal, the scene doesn’t get the credit it deserves for what it has brought, either directly or by osmosis.
Partly that’s because Krautrock was and remains a niche scene, no matter its rediscovery since the ’90s. While bands like Kraftwerk, Faust, Tangerine Dream, and Can had their share of fans, most Krautrock groups released only a few albums before disappearing into the mists of time.
Also, a sniff of a spacey strum frequently sees Hawkwind mentioned as an immediate influence before any Krautrock band, and an ambient wash sees Brian Eno’s name dropped wantonly too. Both are, of course, significantly influential artists, but Hawkwind and Eno were both also heavily influenced by Krautrock’s exploits. Alternatively, when a drawl and drone turns up, The Velvet Underground gets credited with somehow inventing that, too, when Krautrock bands aplenty were traversing that same route at the very same time.
Finally, it has to be said, there’s been much chin-stroking about Krautrock over the years, and that’s understandably been a turn-off for many. It’s contributed to misunderstandings about what Krautrock really brings to the table, because while the scene boiled with radical concepts, and was clearly influenced by avant-garde composers like La Monte Young and Karlheinz Stockhausen, it’d be wrong to suggest it was all high-flauting intellectualism at play. For many Krautrock bands, it was simply about smoking spliffs and/or dropping tabs, and then riding a riff or surfing the waves of synth—the end goal simply being to get loaded and experiment with tunes and tones, to see where such journeys would lead.
Ultimately, to truly gauge Krautrock’s influence on metal, you really only need to run through a cursory list of the scene’s predominant features:
1. Heavy psychedelic incantations, meditative drones, or melancholic doom (check)
2. Lugubrious atmospherics, amp-exploding instrumental epics, and bizarre electronic and riff collisions (check)
3. Layers of freakiness and ferocity, provided by feral musicians (check)
4. Astral projections, progressiveness bent by dementedness, feedback mania, acid-soaked balladry, and rip-snorting garage rock and blues (check!).
That all sound familiar?
Of course, Krautrock isn’t metal, but the entire Krautrock scene is totally metal. Like metal, Krautrock requires dedication to dig deep into the vaults to find the true classics, and you’ll need to sort the wheat from the chaff while you’re at it. Pick the wrong Krautrock band to start with, and you’ll be left scratching your head about the allure. Because Krautrock is filled with stubborn-headed musicians who never cared about popular appeal or accessibility—many making deliberately challenging music to kick down sonic boundaries for the sheer unrestrained pleasure of it.
That all sound familiar too?
Krautrock comprises a core part of the genetic makeup of many a metal band, and you only need have your mind drilled out by the sonic procedures of Spektr, Deathspell Omega, or Fell Voices to note that while some contemporary brute is obviously wielding the instrumentation, Krautrock’s there to plug the tools in. The early work of Earth, Melvins, and Kyuss all relied on the dirge and daze state that many a Krautock band first entered. Monarch, Thou and innumerable bands do the very same today. Or take outfits like Shooting Guns, Boris, or Sólstafir. All are engaged in different psychedelic battles, bombarding with riffage that’ll sauté the subconscious, and all of that is set atop pyres lit in part by Krautrockin’ trailblazers.
Spotting Krautrock’s boot print in metal isn’t difficult at all, but I’m not going to try to sell you any further on the scene by looking at bands mixing Krautrock and metal, or by delving into the scene’s first wave of artists (who you should definitely explore, if you’re not already).
Instead, in part two of this Mad Max on the Autobahn rant, I’ll pitch a few bands that are keeping Krautrock’s high-octane guitar wig-outs and/or cosmic wanderings alive and well. Bands that aren’t metal per se, but that bridge the gap between Krautrock and metal—featuring elements, and often the spirit, of both.
Until then, Auf Wiedersehen, mein Freund…
