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Local Domination: Munich, Germany

12/03/10 || Habakuk

Outside of Germany, Bavaria is mostly seen as the archetype of all things German. Which is obviously bullshit, but the image of Lederhosen-wearing beerdrinkers and hellraisers appears to be too good to be given up on. It doesn’t go too badly with typical metal stereotypes, as this video should be able to convey. All the way in the south of Germany, relatively rich and ruled by conservatives since 1962, Bavaria isn’t exactly a metal haven.

Ze German city

Germany as a whole might have spawned the mighty Teutonic Thrashers, “Black Metal ist Krieg”-ers, a few more well-known deathcore acts and whatnot, but Bavaria? Things look pretty dim over here, I’d say. Munich, Bavaria’s capital isn’t quite your “alternative” city, or as the singer from Japanische Kampfhörspiele once put it: Munich’s the only city where punks call the police if they see a Nazi at their show. Talk about a safe city, eh? Not exactly metal, though, probably. It has some other things going for it, such as, you guessed it, Oktoberfest, beer gardens, beer, the persistent will to remain a giant village forever, and a nicely arrogant attitude to go with it.

On the metal side of things, actually not everything’s lost, as local promoters like the diligent guys at Chaos Squad 420 fly the underground flag high and keep a more or less constant flow of good bands coming by. Apart from that, once you start scratching the surface a little, there actually are a couple of promising local acts that mostly won’t make it big, but deserve your attention nonetheless.

Ahab:

Ahab Technically, these guys only partly hail from Munich and I don’t know the exact details, but one thing’s fo’ damn sure: Ahab fucken kill and deserve way more attention than a little feature on GD could possibly deliver. I used to ignore Doom Metal as a whole until one day, Ahab’s debut, “The call of the wretched sea” entered my sonar range. I don’t know why the guys chose their nautic theme, as Munich (and other parts of south Germany that they originate from), is about as far from any ocean as you can get within Germany, and there’s not much whale-hunting happening in the surrounding lakes, but they sure know a thing about or two about Father Sea.

Ahab’s heavy-as-shit Funeral Doom spawned my interest in the genre and, at least to these ears, is still unsurpassed thanks to the almost catchy and dare I say “accessible” nature of their songs. Don’t get me wrong, this is all-out Funeral Doom – it’s just that its done by a bunch of really talented songwriters that can keep things interesting for 10 minutes plus, regardless of the fact that they stay within the limited range the genre allows for. The second album, “The divinity of oceans” made it to my Top 5 of 2009, so needless to say I consider it a high-class output as well, but be aware that they’ve expanded their style by adding in clean chants. Which work mighty fine, but take some getting used to. Bottomline: If you don’t know Ahab yet, change that.

Wrath:

Wrath I don’t know much about this band, but what they have on their MySpace sure as fuck keeps me checking back. Listening to “Wastelands of man” I am getting some serious Angel Corpse vibes despite the use of a drum computer. And that, as you should know, is a fucken good thing. From what I gather, the band consists of basically one guy and is more or less on hold, with material for an album written yet not recorded. What a fucken waste. Bassists, drummers, 2nd guitarists and singers, move to Munich and help out!

The Cromptons:

Back when I used to play in a band, these guys were one of the acts that we shared the stage with a couple of times and I hand out props for being still around. The Cromptons recently opened for Entombed and soundwise, I can see a connection. While not exactly sounding Swedish, their southern (how fitting) sounding Death ‘n’ Roll should appeal to fans of the respective Entombed era just as much as it does to me. Their debut album has been on my shelf for years now and I’m still not getting tired of it. Great band that you should definitely check out.

Per Capita:

Yes, Munich too has a crust outfit, namely Per Capita . What’s special about them? They call their own genre Stenchcrust. Does it make a difference? Nope. The play crust and they do it fine, and live they should be able to kick some ass. It looks like they still need some bookings for their upcoming Scandinavian tour, so get to work, Swedes.

Commander:

These death metallers have been around for more than 10 years and released their latest album, “The enemies we create” in 2008. Their sound should appeal to Swedish death metal fans as well as to most other people with a remote interest in mid-paced death metal in general. Apparently doomed to be overlooked, Commander are a competent band that doesn’t need to shy away from many bigger acts and definitely deserve that you give ‘em a chance.

So yeah, what do we learn, in the end? Your city has no excuse whatsoever to not host decent metal bands. If Munich can do it, any city can. Bring on the Local Domination features!

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