If you want to know why our friendly reporter LIZAL has so little to say, this CD provides the reason. LIZAL is also on the road with her band, DIE DORKS, in addition to her work at ramtatta.de.
The current album is titled “Tyrannoplauzus Fett“. The name and cover are on the verge of silliness. The inner cover is also not particularly tasteful, but that's how we know our German punks. Always on the edge of taste, provoking through grossness. It’s actually nice, because German punk hardly changes at all. I can truly say that. If you grew up with Abstürzenden Brieftauben and have been around for 20 years, then that’s how it is. You get older, you might get more mature, but no matter what happens, German punk remains German punk.
Right from the first listen of this work of art with 17 songs, one thing stands out extremely positively. The sound is like it used to be. Back when not everything was digitally enhanced and recordings were still made on real tape machines with 16 tracks (or fewer). I don’t know how the band did it, but they deserve a big compliment for that. The cymbals crash like they did back in the youth club. That’s really a fine thing. The old guy writing these lines feels rejuvenated by years.
Musically, DIE DORKS are not a revelation, but that’s just not what German punk is about. They offer catchy, mostly quite simple melodies. The songs are played with passion and have exactly the energy that German punk must have. Things usually move along quite quickly, and Lizal's singing is more or less screechy, but you get used to her sound pretty quickly.
Lyrically, DIE DORKS are somewhere between puberty, Abstürzenden Brieftauben, and early Lokalmatadore. It’s about drinking, it’s about fun, but it also touches on politics and social criticism. The band makes it clear in “Dein Führer” that drinking is not everything. “Echte deutsche Wertarbeit” is a lyrically very radical song against the German (-national) bourgeois. The fear of the police's blindness in their right eye is expressed in “Druck ablassen”, while also showing that police officers are poor souls. This doesn’t excuse anything but perhaps explains it to some extent. Now, I don’t want to get into societal discussions, because I’m in the mood for beer and loud punk music. Did I already mention that the band sounds like the combos from back in the day? Influences from Daily Terror, Abstürzenden Brieftauben, Normahl, and some other bands can be heard.
By the third or fourth beer, songs like “Onanie in der Laubenkolonie”, “Nachschenken statt Nachdenken”, “Brauereiarschpogo”, and the excellently performed “Mia ham an Hois” in splendid Bavarian dialect really hit the spot.
The record is really fun. DIE DORKS are the new hope of German punk, especially since Abstürzenden Brieftauben are back in existence. Maybe this will be a new fun punk wave. DIE DORKS are ready to ride it with their board.
