If you took the time to read Part One of this Mad Max on the Autobahn feature (and danke schön! if you did), then you’ll be aware that part two won’t continue the tale of metal and Krautrock’s filthy little affair, per se. In fact, it’s mostly about bands that aren’t really burly metal combatants at all. Instead, most of the following bands bridge the gap between metal and Krautrock, with elements that might well appeal to both camps—at least in spirit.
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KOSMOS
Voivod has never been shy about broadcasting its love for progressive peculiarities, and in 2007, band drummer Michel Langevin laid his adoration of Germanic unorthodoxy bare by forming Kosmos with a crew of like-minded souls. Endeared to the notion that Krautrock’s nucleus was due a kickstart, Kosmos produced an eponymous debut that was so thoroughly retro it could have been recorded in ’76. With abundant synth, fat dollops of organ, and venturous psychedelic and space-rockin’ guitar lines snaking about, Kosmos injected the spirit of Krautrock into ’70s progressive rock à la Nectar, Eloy, or Focus, with a dash of Deep Purple’s muscle added on for good measure. Kosmos made little impact on release, but it’s an electric and eclectic album, well worth tracking down for some rock-solid revisionist reverence.
MUGSTAR
Mugstar is a four-piece based in Liverpool (by way of Jupiter) that has issued five mesmeric full-lengths and a stack of limited vinyl releases. The band’s recordings combine the hypnotic beat of Neu!, the automotive chug of Trans Am, and acid-rock deluges, all set within a framework of galaxy-gazing awe. Mugstar was the last band to ever record a Peel Session, and you can’t go wrong with any of its full-lengths, especially if you’re a fan of motorik rhythms weaving through walls of sounds and propelling themselves into varying orbits. Krautrock is here in the drums, organ, and recurrent riffery, but outside of that, Mugstar’s trajectory encompasses the sweep of cinemascapes, dives into minimalist drones, and grinds out all manner of katzenjammer jaunts to other dimensions.
CAVE
Krautrock gets cited for a lot of things, but bringing the funk isn’t usually one of them. However, bands like Can or Faust often barrel along on pulsating flight paths, and that’s something Chicago-based instrumental outfit Cave has taken to heart. The band tours the constellations like everyone else on this list, but like the cyclical trips into infinity provided by Endless Boogie, Cave continually mainlines the vibes. Motorik repetitiveness plays a strong role in Cave’s compositions, but there are also quivers, quasars, and interweaving guitars stomping on buzzing pedals where needed. The band works groovy riffs over and over (and over again) before shifting to the next meditative phase, and like many Krautrockers of old, Cave’s interstellar drift and avant detours can get pretty peculiar.
EARTHLESS
The latest album from San Diego power trio Earthless, 2013’s From the Ages, is one of this year’s best releases; at least, it is if you enjoy drawn-out acid-rock instrumentals that grab ahold of a comet’s tail before circling back to slam into your third eye. Earthless has been waving the hemp-woven freak-rock banner since 2001, and of all the bands on this list, Earthless sits closest to metal. With speed-Kraut swiftness, and cellular sizzling energy, the band rips through heady eternal jams like a mind-boggling fusion of blues-rockers from San Francisco, Berlin, and Tokyo, circa ’73. Throw in a Sabbathian undercurrent and Hendrix-like extemporizations, and Earthless shred, shred, and shred, until the eyeballs melt. If the idea of uber-ecstatic and protracted psychedelic wailing through flaming amps sounds awful, then you’ll fucking hate this. For everyone else though, Earthless provides some of the best tuning-in and dropping-out mayhem around.
ELECTRIC ORANGE
Germany’s Electric Orange began life in the early ’90s when, like all good Krautrock aficionados, keyboardist Dirk Jan Müller and guitarist Dirk Bittner got together to explore lengthy instrumental improvisations. Since then, Electric Orange has produced a mammoth run of releases on CD, CD-R, vinyl and tape. All take Ash Ra Tempel, Popol Vuh, and Amon Düül II as starting blocks for trippy mellotron and six-string pilgrimages. And while Electric Orange is certainly guilty of skipping through some cringe-worthy pastures, the band has released great albums—including 2010’s Krautrock from Hell and 2013’s Live at Roadburn. Definitely a band for those who aren’t averse to floaty flutters and hypnotic beats. If you enjoy free-flowing spacey effects, all the better.
GNOD
Aside from the musical madness, Krautrock also brought a rabble-rousing sense of communal disobedience, and that’s all there in UK psychedelic noise cabal, Gnod. The band has dispensed a substantial amount of sludgy psych since forming in 2007, with much that would prove attractive for those predisposed to sitting and stewing in dense derangement. At Gnod’s heart, it’s Krautrock driving the chameleonic chaos. But stoner rock rumbles collide with crueler and dirtier riffs, and far, far, far-out galaxy wanderings lock into motorik grooves. No two songs are the same. You’ll find Can drowning in Merzbow and Pink Floyd being battered by The Stooges, but it’s just as likely that some wah-wah freak-out will develop into a howling blackened storm. At a stretch, you could call it some form of boiling Kraut and psychedelic trance, albeit one that kicks you in the head repeatedly before taking a gentle stroll about the fields.
CIRCLE
Calling Finland’s Circle a Krautrock group is obviously somewhat inaccurate, given that the extremely prolific band seemingly changes its sound with each and every release. However, Krautrock is certainly a mainstay for the band, sitting there as Circle throws everything into the blender: From musique concrète to folk, from hearty progressive rock to ambient doodling, from New Wave of Finnish Heavy Metal to jazz, glam, avant, art-rock…and then dusting all that in distinct Nordic insanity. There aren’t many other bands that’d be willing to ‘loan’ their name to a whole other crew of musicians—but Circle did just that while it explored cosmic AOR as Falcon this year. Given Circle’s dedicated capriciousness throughout its career, recommending somewhere to start with the band is near impossible, although you could try 2007’s Katapult, 2002’s Sunrise, and 2003’s Guillotine for a triple dose of unconventionality if you’ve not checked in on the band before. Circle has never met a genre it hasn’t re-composed, and the band’s wilful defiance speaks volumes about its ties with Krautrock’s original wayward wanders.
MOTHER SUSURRUS
You could dump every band off this list, solely concentrate on Circle’s record label Ektro Records, and you’d still be able to come up with a hearty catalogue of groups that exhibit Krautrock’s impact on stoner rock and metal. That, in part, comes down to the proclivities of Jussi Lehtisalo—founder of Circle and Ektro Records and contributor to numerous other bands, including the mighty Pharaoh Overlord, Steel Mammoth, and Split Cranium. Another Ektro Records wizard of space and time, and one less out on a limb than Circle, is Mother Susurrus. The Finnish five-piece deals in “heavy nitro-hydrochloric acid rock”, or analog tunes that twist and pummel with sludgy cosmic metal boiling at their baseline. Like Ufomammut (Italy’s maestro of similarly alchemical magic), Mother Susurrus mixes the mellow and mystical, with mantric dirges and drones building to combustible and overdriven crescendos. The band’s debut full-length, Maahaavaa, released earlier this year, provides equal parts hypnotic and hulking riffage, and it’s well worth tracking down if you’re a fan of dramatic voyages to the heart of the sun.
THE HEADS
Bristol, UK-based The Heads belong in that category of bands who thought Black Sabbath sounded pretty damn good, but might sound even better if Pink Floyd, MC5, Amon Düül II and Neu! all simultaneously jammed with the band. Alongside acts like White Hills, The Warlocks, and Wooden Shjips, The Heads ply tunes for those who might enjoy a toke…or twenty. The band’s been making blistering garage/stoner/psych rock since 1991, but its been a cult act at best, never finding the fame of other high rollers and rockers. Like seemingly every other acid-dunked outfit, The Heads have a ridiculously extensive discography, but unlike a lot of others, pretty much all of it is solid gold. The band enthusiastically leaps into the kaleidoscopic driving seat of Krautrock, before navigating lengthy tracks of fuzzed-out ferocity, cut with blissful digressions. Where to start? Anywhere, man. But 2005’s Dead in the Water is 80 minutes of riotous stoner stonk worth hunting down, and the album has a great big shark on the cover. Can’t go wrong with that.
SYLVESTER ANFANG II
As evil as black metal gets, there’s really nothing in the sub-genre that can compare to malevolence and sinisterness plucked from an acoustic guitar by a cursed artiste. Blues and folk is where it’s at for real down-home Satan spotting, and the Belgian troubadour of exceedingly grim tidings, Silvester Anfang II, mimicked Amon Düül II’s step into the darkness by adding those II’s on in 2007. Becoming more beastly in the process, and taking inspiration from the commune crazies of Krautrock’s past, Silvester Anfang II reshaped its droning free-folk with more funereal acoustics and worshiping of iniquitous spirits, all channeled through “Flemish voodoo boogie”. Long-form improvised jams stir the Krautrock cauldron on the band’s occult-heavy 2009 self-titled full-length, which features the diabolic delights of “The Devil Always Shits in the Same Graves” Parts 1 & 2 (twenty minutes of hell-bound, hallucinogenic, and lava-lamp boiling dementedness, all delivered via analog devilry).
THE COSMIC DEAD
Glaswegian psychedelic warlord (or “psychonautal cosmodelic quartet”) The Cosmic Dead have released a swag of albums on various formats since 2010. The band found instant favour with fans of distorted Komische reverberations and overdriven space-rock oscillations, seeing its underground status rise rapidly. The four band members have collaborated with Can legend Damo Suzuki (acting as his improvising “soundcarriers”), and while the band describes itself, rather humorously, as “Scotland’s foremost Hawkwind tribute band”, The Cosmic Dead really takes the likes of Neu!, Amon Düül II, and Loop further out into tripped-and-tranced-out pan-dimensional realms. The Cosmic Dead’s full-lengths are stacked with free-roaming heavy-blues, fusing the stratospheric and subsonic into a stew of spellbinding hyperbolic riffing that goes on and on to the point at which the past and the future are irrelevant. There’s just the now. And endless psychotropic riffs. Planetoid-sized ones.
E-MUSIKGRUPPE LUX OHR
A lot of metal artists talk up their love of Krautrock, name-dropping Ash Ra Tempel or Popul Vuh as inspirational, if only in attitudinal terms. However, Kimi Kärki, founder of doom titans Reverend Bizarre and Lord Vicar, took things a step further with E-Musikgruppe Lux Ohr, forming a band that’s 1,000% Krautrock. The band’s self-titled debut, released this year, travels the galactic highways of yore, with ambient synthscapes, sci-fi effects, and psychedelic flashes illuminating the alien landscapes first explored by Germany’s electronic pioneers. The notable facet of E-Musikgruppe Lux Ohr’s extraterrestrial odyssey is that the band doesn’t just draw from Krautrock’s best years—it continues on to pluck inspiration from the ’80s too. That’s a risky manoeuvre, one fraught with the danger of encountering Krautrock sounds that transform into cheesier New Age dross. However, E-Musikgruppe Lux Ohr avoids that disaster, and the purr of Jean Michel Jarre, Klaus Schulze, and Conrad Schnitzler emerge on an album that is a blissful sequencer journey into the firmamental.
AQUA NEBULA OSCILLATOR
Founded and fronted by David Spher’OS (guitar, sitar, voices, and “oscillations”), Parisian band Aqua Nebula Oscillator specialize in all things other-worldly. Alien visitations, Salvador Dali, Hieronymus Bosch, voodoo, cult horror films, parallel dimensions, and celestial observations all turn up thematically—and musically, it’s all exactly as you’d expect. Long-form improvised performances are apparently what goes down when the band performs live, and on LP it’s Amon Düül II, MC5, and Sun Ra getting down and dirty in the grottos with Agitation Free and Silver Apples. Aqua Nebula Oscillator’s 2012 album, Third, was a blast of interstellar diabolism, filled with filthy rock ‘n’ roll that was cult and crazed in equal measure. This year’s Spiritus Mundi album was somewhat different. No less phantasmagorically psychedelic, but certainly less swampy, the album had its fill of space and rough-necked garage rock. But really, if you’re angling for the lysergic lunacy, then Third is the album to check out first and foremost.
ZOMBI
Space-synth duo Zombi is well known for its multi-layered keyboard expeditions that draw from the likes of Goblin, John Carpenter, and Giorgio Moroder. However, the remnants of Krautrock icons such as Tangerine Dream and Popol Vuh are all over Zombi’s oeuvre too. The band’s multi-instrumentalists, Steve Moore and AE Paterra, have released solo projects (the latter under the alias Majeure) easily on par with Zombi’s best work, but Zombi’s slinky and looping symphonic synth is rhythmically and aesthetically indebted to the sci-fi and dystopian electronica of Krautrock. Zombi falls into many a metal fan’s orbit due to the band’s love of horror soundtracks, and its Rush-like sense of propulsive progression. Albums such as 2006’s Surface to Air, 2009’s Spirit Animal, and 2011’s Escape Velocity sit alongside the work of other contemporary synth-lords as the crème de la crème of ratcheting atmospherics and melodies that soothe and slaughter.
TEETH OF THE SEA
Psychedelia sits at the front of London quartet Teeth of the Sea’s sound, but it’s swathed in sonic tapestries of variegated colour and design. Krautrock provides the backbone and much of the impetus, but ambient drone, noise, and progressive and art-rock feature as well. The band’s desire to “forge forth in search of oblivion” sees it rummage in whatever genre suits, surging into thundering riff onslaughts, or drifting more leisurely down rivers of electro melancholy. Teeth of the Sea is clearly enamored with diversity, and its broad range of influences sees it combine dissonance and harmony, and electronics and anthemic riffing, like no one else—at least, no one from these days. Historically, of course, that’s another story. Because while Teeth of the Sea piles on the post-this-and-that pandemonium, the resulting mix is highly reminiscent of Krautrock’s original premise: go further than anyone else, all of the time.
