It has been four years since DER FEINE HERR SOUNDSO from Hamburg presented their first EP "Beweisstück A".... Four years that the four FEINEN HERREN have made very good use of....
Back then, I didn't like the singer's voice very much, and today it blows me away (“Puschen”? Do you know it? Others also call them slippers, pantofles, or house shoes), apparently there has been some work done on it over the four years, or the sound engineer did a great job.
The mixer has it anyway, even if the first song RAL 8019 (RAL stands for "Reichs Ausschuss für Lieferbedingungen", RAL is still a common term after over 80 years, and 8019 stands for gray-brown. The song is also about gray-brown shit, so the title fits perfectly) starts off a bit dull, but after 18 seconds it really kicks out of the speakers.
Lyrically, it continues with themes of bread & firecrackers, war, principles, sexism, refugee debates, past times & transformation, etc., until the album ends with the statement: "...the wind is slowly turning and brings rotten stench, and autumn follows summer, the storm is brewing and the impacts are getting closer, we see the lightning on the horizon and count seconds. And when the sun shines again, no one wants to be responsible for it". A great text at the end of a very good album.
At 41 seconds, "Karate" is the shortest song, but it also kicks really hard ;-) and "Firlefanz" at 4:17 minutes is the longest song. In total, "Wann, wenn nicht irgendwann?" has 13 songs or over 33 minutes of straightforward yet melodic punk rock, not new but also not stale. I wrote the latter four years ago, and nothing has changed....
DER FEINE HERR SOUNDSO are still 100% politically / critically engaged, and I like "Wann, wenn nicht irgendwann?" even better than "Beweisstück A", which was already good.
Still, one question remains for me: who is "Günther Stoll, the dead mystery superstar"?
Conclusion: With this album, DER FEINE HERR SOUNDSO can step into the big footsteps left by SLIME!
