COR from the island of Rügen have released a new album.
Two years after the release of “Lieber tot als Sklave“, which brought the band much recognition. This album was the first in five years to feature truly new songs and showed how COR had further improved in songwriting and music.
With “Leitkultur“, they pick up right where they left off.
The eleven songs are wrapped in the musical guise one expects from COR. Metal guitars, a powerful drum kit, and the distinctive vocals of Friedemann. The familiar attire is thrash, punk rock, hardcore, and rock’n’roll à la Motörhead.
Despite the familiar attire, the guys from Rügen also don a few new things. These new elements make the album extremely interesting, as it showcases what COR can now achieve musically. This variety is what makes many songs stand out. Nevertheless, the album is not cumbersome. On the contrary. The sound of the album is as harmonious as hardly any previous album from COR.
The band has placed not only a focus on the sound but an even greater emphasis on the lyrics, which are included in a small poster booklet with the CD.
The lyrics are quite harsh linguistically, sometimes very provocative, and in their nature, very radical.
COR exercises massive criticism of the system with this album. Criticism of the capitalist system. Criticism of consumer society. Criticism of humanity. This sometimes hurts deeply, as one feels not only addressed but caught. Particularly noteworthy is the song “Die Anderen“. It addresses the fact that it is always the others who do something. But who are the others? Are we not “The Others”? If we do not act, do the others then? And do they do it the way we wish? Instead of focusing on other people, we should start with ourselves, because the supposedly others, that is us!
“Gift” hits hard at almost every one of us. Where Dritte Wahl sang in “Rausch” the lyrics “Let’s try the intoxication together”, COR goes directly in the other
direction. We consume poison and filth to escape reality and then feel free or at least better, but what happens to us when we want more and more of it? Our center of life mutates into a colorful disc. Thus, the government and corporations have us finely under control. That’s not what protest looks like.
Somewhat metaphorically, it also goes against opinion-making (of the AfD and others), whose sources are never explicitly named. Here, “Propaganda” and the hardcore number “Vollkontakt” should be mentioned. Live, “Vollkontakt” will be an absolute breaker, I am convinced of that.
With “Mach mich Sauber”, COR brings a rather abstract song that can be understood in many ways.
Overall, the lyrics are a dark reckoning with humanity and the system in which we and many other people exist.
I would wish that in the future it goes more in the direction of “Vom Glück das alles endet”, a new beginning that is approached with the conviction of creating something better than “Gras”. Otherwise, grass will eventually grow over us and our cities, the wounds we have inflicted on the world will eventually heal....
However, by then we will have long since destroyed ourselves.
COR looks in a different direction with the title track “Leitkultur”, unlike many other bands that have commented on this topic. If people are already crying out for a culture that guides them, why not one that embodies peace, justice, and less hatred? Why always become meaner and harder? Because the world is like that? Perhaps, but exactly that disgusts many. We want to live differently, so why not start with that?
COR has written the soundtrack of this time with “Leitkultur”.
A soundtrack that carries little hope, much anger, and a lot of despair.
A recent interview by Mini from Kamikaze-Radio with Matze (bass) from COR can be heard here: http://www.ramtatta.de/s/interviews/f/details/id/8076/
