I’m not sure how to classify Rosenkopf. I don’t know if anyone really is. Do a quick google search and you’ll find blogspot after blogspot debating on how to properly tag this band. Is it industrial Crust? Power Electronics Goth? Death Concrete? Harsh Power Crustdustrial? the portmanteaus are endless I suppose, and truth be told it doesn’t matter one bit because Rosenkopf is going to tear your jaw from your fucking face, hand it to you, and then calmly and politely ask you to plunge into their dark steel soundscape. You’d do well to oblige. Come to the slums after the jump
RØSENKØPF – RØSENKØPF – 01 BURNING SPIRITS.mp3
If that lovely lady in the middle looks familiar (which she should if you frequent these parts), it’s because that’s Saira Huff of the immaculate and completely neccessary Detestation, AKA the hardest band your crust punk girlfriend used to cry to for some reason. Rosenkopf definitely have not forgone their crust roots, Soren lets off cries and howls that sound like a mythical creature’s death throes from witin cave. The bass lights the way while the guitar creeps and ebbs around Emil Bognarnasdor’s drumming, making itself scarcely known till it swirls into view miasmatically. Their combination of Goth, Industrial, Psych and Crust keeps you feeling as lost and astrayed as is intended. Emerging from some decrepit tenement to a lightless city, your head spinning and your eyes unfocused, colors shifting and dissolving around you in an aspray of white noise. How do you disconnect from a white noise planet?
What first drew me to Rosenkopf was their hard ass Anarcho-punk aesthetic, before I even realized Saira was in QUESTION and Detestation and Soren was in Thriller, I strongly admired these kids for sticking with an obviously highly influential aesthete even if the music didn’t necessarily fit.
Currently Rosenkopf is on the tear, they’re touring the west coast, and playing the Chaos In Tejas Fest at the end of this month. They’ll playing in Portland with Cvltnation affiliate King Dude (TJ Cowgill of Actual Pain for the 6 of you who don’t know), and then heading home to BKLYN and playing a few shows there. They just released their debut LP which is out on Wierd in limited Green vinyl and will probably next retreat back into whichever cyberpunk relm they stepped from the work on new material. If you can locate the Dispirtulized Tape or the First Demos tape I would highly advocate hearing the infantile Rosenkopf. The B-side to Dispirtualized is a 12 minute bruiser-bad-acid-trip-at-a-crust-rave-L.E.S.-1993 rendition of Burning Spirits, with life literally screaming in your ear. It’s blistering and virile and a complete necessity.
Tye,D
May 30, 2012 at 3:55 pm
Being from PDX, I got to see Detestation a bunch of times and Saira has always been a Crust Goddess and a total bad ass. Rosenkopf is so fucking far out that I gotta love it. You just cant classify this shit.
SeanFitz
May 29, 2012 at 2:12 am
Didn’t know what to make of the song listening to the opening tune but fuck they are fantastic.