Far-right music

For a long time, far-right rock was exclusively associated with the extreme-right skinhead scene. But in the meantime, extreme-right tendencies seem to have established themselves in other subcultures as well.

Today’s far-right rock bands like »Landser« (Berlin) or »Noie Werte« (Stuttgart) are no longer made up only of extreme-right skinheads. For a long time now, young men who don’t feel bound to this subcultural style have been playing in bands like these. In the 20-year history of this music, both its content and style have changed. In the 1980s, standard extreme-right topics were »collective drinking«, football and violence, women and sex; after the so-called reunification, however, the lyrics usually focused on »Germany«.

Racist slogans became the norm and the general tone became more and more openly neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic. In the last few years, current political events are increasingly the subjects of far-right songs. The majority of German far-right rock bands still favour a mix of hard rock and raucous German-language singing. Clear qualitative improvements are mostly to be noticed in bands that have been around for years. Among others, far-right singer-songwriters like Frank Rennicke or his female counterpart, Annett Moeck, have contributed to a stylistic differentiation in this music genre, and the far-right subculture is composing its own ballads about national myths and heroes.

Taking their musical cue from hardcore or hatecore, as it’s played by American neo-Nazi bands like the »Blue Eyed Devils«, the music has become faster and more aggressive. Although this musical style developed from punk, they abandon punk’s emancipative and progressive approach in favour of extremely racist and anti-Semitic lyrics. The song, »We Believe«, recorded by the project, »Strength thru Blood«, comprising members of the English band, »Razor’s Edge« and the Bamberg group, »Hate Society«, begins, for example, with the declaration: »We believe in National Socialism. We believe in white supremacy. We believe we’ll smash Zion’s occupation.« NS black metal bands are just as explicit. Their musical style, however, is much more brutal and although they have the same reputation for glorifying violence and war, they are often deeply nihilistic and misanthropic. They contrast current social order with that of a pagan society which is inspired by Nordic mythology and which legitimates supposed laws of nature and the principle of »might is right«. »We are marching into a new age that will free us from Jews and Christians,« sings the NS black metal band, »Magog’s« (from Pirna in Saxony) in their song, »Feuer der Dunkelheit« (Fire of Darkness). This new age, according to the logic of this music scene, can only be brought about by the »total annihilation of the existing Jewish-Christian system.«
Although pagan themes like these can certainly be found in the »black scene« of dark wave, that sub-genre does not strike such openly neo-Nazi notes. More in keeping with the sophisticated pretensions of the far-right neo-folk subculture, bands like Markus Wolff’s »Waldteufel« prefer to address mythical and classically ethnic themes. »Der Blutharsch«, the band led by Albin Julius (legal name: Martinek) from Vienna, combines electronic sounds with rhythmic drums. Martial manliness prevails in this supposedly cultivated subculture and an old, military tone from the past World Wars dictate the song lyrics: »fight, victory or death!«.

Echos of neo-Nazism are spreading in parts of the techno scene, especially in the genres of gabba and hardcore techno. Music that has an extremely fast beat of at least 180 bpm (beats per minute) and is seen as left-wing in some places, has become a sort of romping place in the Ruhr for a developing right-wing techno-subculture. A development that was also found in the mid-1990s in the Netherlands, where Gabba was created. For a long time, the extreme right’s image was defined by a specific dress code. It wasn’t until 1996, when Hitler’s speeches were sampled by the Dutch DJ group, »88 A.D.R.«, that music started playing a role. Today’s German gabba DJs like »Kahlkopp« (now »WHIPO«) seem to have taken them as their role-model. In classic dancefloor, too, DJs with clever names like »DJ Adolf« have taken to sampling Hitler’s speeches.

In hip-hop, which until the mid-1990s was a pretty cosmopolitan genre, there are now also cases of racist rhyming and the use of metaphors that relativize the Holocaust. Just recently, »McPain« from Kiel (in northern Germany) rapped the following lyrics, which were propagated over the internet: »Turks are getting richer and richer, and Germans are getting poorer and poorer«. He fears conspiratorially that »it will go so far that a Turk will become chancellor here.« Even if messages like these are rare in hip-hop, or if the techno scene has more of a drug problem than a problem with right-wing extremism, these tendencies still show that a far-right Zeitgeist is gaining entry to various different musical genres. Just as racism has always been a social problem, it seems that it is unfortunately only a matter of time before racist and nationalist tendencies infiltrate other music scenes.

Jan Raabe and Christian Dornbusch are the editors of the recently published book, »RechtsRock. Bestandsaufnahme und Gegenstrategien« (Far-Right Rock. Stock-taking and Counter-measures). It was published in Hamburg by rat/Unrast Verlag in the spring of 2002, and has 400 pages. It costs 20.35 Euro.

This article first appeared in Der Rechte Rand, Volume 74 (January/February 2002). It was reprinted here with the kind approval of the editors.

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