In a world of political divisiveness, AI technology replacing humans, and an irreparable war, it seems like holding onto hope in the modern age is useless. However, for KMFDM’s Sascha Konietzko, he is finding hope in the abrasive art he is making, passing down the musical torch to his daughter, and spreading his message of unequivocal individuality and authenticity to anyone who will listen.
The Germany-based industrial rock project, KMFDM, has been consistently fighting against the powers at be through their cutting-edge music for over 40 years, giving a voice to the voiceless especially in unprecedented times. The latest album, Enemy, cements KMFDM’s legacy as they point a mirror at the world reinforcing their beliefs of questioning authority figures, fighting against capitalistic ideals, and pursuing individual happiness as a means of rebellion.
Mxdwn had the chance to chat with Konietzko about the latest album, Enemy, how KMFDM’s music has transcended generations, and the headspace Konietzko has been in as he continues to write new music.
mxdwn: Without getting into too much detail, I know that you had a back out of a couple of shows and festival gigs. How are you feeling now and are you ready to get back on the road soon to celebrate this incredible new album, Enemy?
SK: Yeah, I’m, I’m ready to go. The newest scenario as it presents itself is diesel costs and flights are really expensive because some fucking idiot over there has, you know, started a stupid frigging war. What are you going to do, right? What are you going to do?
mxdwn: I know, yeah. But we’re excited to see whatever you have coming up next. And now that you bring that up, the last time you talked with mxdwn, it was the day of the US presidential election. And I feel like ever since that day, the world has gotten a lot darker and kind of scary more than we could ever imagined. Do you feel like the way that you express your message through your music has changed since the last album and this album? And how has your perspective on the world changed since the last time you chatted with us?
SK: Well, of course, the message has changed. The last album, Let Go, was recorded in a somewhat up-economy kind of time. And now we’re facing this whole scenario, which, as if touring wouldn’t be hard enough in and by itself, now we’re just facing new hurdles and new disadvantages. The question really asks itself, why should we even do this anymore? There’s no point, really.
It’s kind of like, you know, the albums, the message that we convey through our music might just have to be enough in these times because it’s become so cumbersome to really think about work visas and flights and this, the other. It’s just really disheartening.
mxdwn: Do you feel like art is kind of like a tool for like it’s kind of like a necessary tool for you to express yourself no matter what the difficult times are in the world?
SK: Well, it used to be, yeah, sure. It used to be that there was an alternating cycle of making albums and then going out on the road. It’s like the joke about the musician that goes to the doctor and the doctor says, “You only have six months to live.” And the musician says, “From what?” I mean, obviously there’s a dark motivation, whether this begins at renaming cultural institutions or destroying memorials to minorities or civil rights movements or something. Or just making it impossible for people like us, you know, bands, to really come out and around and about and shout our messages out.
There’s some mechanisms under ways that are really not good and I don’t know where this begins. It certainly does not begin with Project 2025. I’m telling you that there’s a… And I’m not a conspiracy theorist at all, but there’s something going on that’s just like, wow. Wow. And this is why we called our latest album Enemy because obviously all of us, people, probably you and definitely me, and everyone that’s somehow living and enjoying underground culture or let’s just say sort of nuts, sort of the beaten past type of stuff, they’re making it really, really hard for us to get our message across. And it’s not, for KMFDM, it’s not so much to get the message across because we’ve done that for 42 years.
Our message is simple as it gets. It’s just, open your eyes, open your ears, don’t believe the bullshit and think for yourself and make your decisions based on stuff. Educate yourself. Education is hard work. In your country, it’s actually expensive to get educated. Over here, it’s still free. But you know, just boom.
mxdwn: As a musician who’s been consistently vocal about the current state of the world for over 40 years, do you feel like there’s still any hope to even hold on to in times like these?
SK: There’s always hope, yeah. I mean, I’m never one to look back, never one to look or rest upon the laurels, so to speak. The future will always be better. And I am full of hope. And that’s why I have begun writing a new album. (Laughs)
mxdwn: Wow, look at that! What’s your headspace now when you’re writing for this new album now?
SK: It’s good. I mean, I had a bit of a scare with some cancer diagnosis and shit, but it looks good. For now I’m free and clear, my head is good, and I have lots of ideas for sure. And turning on the television every day just gives me heaps and heaps more ideas on what to write and what to say.
mxdwn: Well, congratulations. That’s a huge accomplishment already. Definitely want to keep having you around because you do have so many things to say. But I really want to go back to the first track on the album, which is “Enemy.” I really do love the repetitive, “We are the enemy,” almost in a victorious chant. I want to ask, do you think a lot of the hurtful rhetoric being spread throughout the media is a result of people being unable to reflect on themselves and kind of internalize that maybe we are the problem rather than whoever they’re trying to blame?
SK: Well, we’re being told that we’re the problem pretty much every day. I mean, because the rights of people like us are being further and further cut down. There is an active campaign going on that is aimed at silencing critical voices. The more that kind of stuff goes on, the louder we have to get. We have to basically shout over the din and really make our point clear.
What’s really shocking to me is that there are so few artists that really speak out very directly. A lot of people, some of them I know personally, some I don’t, they say, “Oh yeah, we’re so political.” But yeah, what the fuck are you doing? You’re not doing anything. You’re just sitting there and shoving your head in the sand. And why should I, a native German, why should I have to tell how it is?
I guess because in my culture and in my past, I used to grow up about 25 miles from the Iron Curtain. Russian warheads were stationed 25 miles from where I grew up. So I know this daily, not so much fear, but this sort of prospect of something might happen just within any given moment that you have no control over. And that said, I mean, that sort of space of mind was probably why so many incredible bands and noisemakers come out of this part of the world because we were literally living in a world that, to us as young adults, we had no future. So we express ourselves in the loudest and most obnoxious possible ways. And here we go, you know? So 42 years later, the spirit is the same. It’s just a new challenge pretty much every day.
mxdwn: I love that. So it’s essentially, artists from Germany, they just never felt like they had a strong enough voice. So I feel like you’re just saying whatever you could and whoever happened to listen was being told this message that they haven’t really heard in other places in the world.
SK: It’s interesting, at least.
mxdwn: I was going through the interview that we did with you a couple of years ago, but as a person who believes that violence against violence is never the answer, there is a lot of imagery on the album that also alludes to guns and bullets and stuff. What do you think is the importance of using such strong symbolism in art, especially in a political climate that we are living in today?
SK: Well, it’s not really… it’s not really that we’re thinking about so much of how to say things. KMFDM not being a band, but more like a loose, a partnership between a few creative minds. It just more often than not turns out that we all think along the same ways. So, one of us starts an idea and it goes around and the echo is just so, “Wow. Everybody in this circle gets it.” Even my 18 year old daughter, she is now compelled to chime in and go like, “Yeah, this, this stuff is important and I want to be a part of that too.”
Of course, we have a lot of stuff to say. An album of 40 minutes length is a small window into the mindset of this conglomerate of people. And other than maybe some bands that take three, four, five years to come to terms with an album. For KMFDM, it’s very important to create output because we feel that life goes by so quickly and so fast that we feel it important to give our fans and followers these recurring snapshots. This album is the year in family pictures, so to speak. On your phone, sometimes you get these things where it shows you like a trip that you took five years ago, you know? This is the way I see a KMFGM album. It’s like a trip that you take. The most recent album is the most recent trip that you took in the past 6, 12, months.
There’s an urge behind the method really. And there’s also this conceptual continuity that we always hearken back on. So we love to pick apart sometimes things that we’ve done in the past and go like, “Oh, look at that. Take this little ingredient and put it there. And how interesting and how funny is that?” And then a couple of months later, when an album gets released, people will say, “Oh, it’s so cool. KMFDM are reusing this or that sound.” And so for the long time fans, they always get these little tidbits and things that they can relate to and they tie in on.
Very interesting as well is the fact that in recent years, our audiences have rejuvenated massively. I want to say about 12, 15 years ago, we were playing to crowds of people, say, from early 30s to late 50s. And in the last six, seven, eight years, we’re seeing like kids in the front rows knowing every line of every song. I’m talking kids. 13, 14, 16, 18 years old. That to me is incredible. But it seems to be an indicator that there’s something here that transports over time. This is not like, “Let’s go to a Deep Purple concert because we grew up on that stuff.” Nothing against Deep Purple.
But I’m just saying if I look on TikTok feeds, there’s KMFDM songs that people are doing the strangest dances to. And they speed them up, they slow them down, and they do these memes and whatever people on TikTok do. But it seems like KMFDM is resounding even with that kind of generation, which to me, as an old-timer, is fantastic. I think this is so great and so interesting. And I’m still trying to get my head around where this is all coming from, but I’m enjoying the ride every day, so it’s great.
mxdwn: That’s really cool. It sounds like KMFDM is definitely transcending generations, and it’s bridging younger audiences with older audiences, and I think that’s really beautiful. That’s just a testament to what your message is through your music, and very much a testament to the energy that you bring from your art and it’s really cool.
SK: It was one of the early ideas that were floating around in my mind, thinking… I never expected KMFDM to be around for this long. But I always thought about what if a band, and I always thought about the Frank Zappa family. Frank died in, what, 1991 or 1992? I thought it would be so cool if his kids would be playing his stuff and continue his legacy onward. It’s just because I’m a huge Frank Zappa fan.
But I had this idea of a band, not necessarily KMFDM, but going into a second or even a third generation. Where you could say, “KMFDM was around for 120 years.” Like Mozart or Beethoven. I mean, obviously Mozart or Beethoven weren’t around physically, but their music has been around for nearly 200 years and it’s still mesmerizing and getting people out of their seats, and it speaks to most people anyways. And Mozart and Beethoven are just a couple of examples. Fill in The Rolling Stones or Tchaikovsky or whatever.
mxdwn: Sometimes it’s just like the artist itself is just kind of like the idea, but their music just continues to live on no matter how late they pass.
SK: You can always dream, Greg, right? (Laughs)
mxdwn: Of course. I mean, now that we’re talking about TikTok and the current state of music. I am interested to know what your opinion is on the rise of AI and how it’s used to generate different styles of music. Do you feel like there is some room for AI to exist in this creative field?
SK: I can’t really say that I’m spending too much time exploring these avenues. Sometimes I listen to something and I have a feeling this cannot be made by real people because there’s just so much convolution going on. It’s so mathematically maybe perfect in a way that It can’t be real. And I appreciate science and math and all those things. But in terms of music, if it doesn’t touch me on an emotional level then it doesn’t resound with me. And this kind of music, though some of it may be really funny or, “ha-ha.” Kind of like a party gag and you play it for someone and you go, “Hey, what do you think of that?” And they’re like, “It’s AI, come on.” I don’t know, what are we all going to become like terminators here? It’s like fuck that shit.
mxdwn: It’s possible. I mean, who knows what the future holds. I think that the idea about technology, even though it is scary to think about, especially in the creative fields, it’s not going anywhere which is the scariest part. But I still have a lot of hope that there’s always going to be that human desire for human connection throughout art. And there really is no replicating that feeling. And I think that especially with the music you make too, there’s always so much humanity in it. So I think we’ll be okay, at least for a couple more years.
SK: You know, I think an example of someone that’s contemporary, maybe Nick Cave. He’s someone that, even though maybe I’m not necessarily a huge fan of his current output. But throughout his workings, he strikes me as a guy that puts a ton of thought into the stuff he does and how it resounds kind of spiritually within him. And he thinks about how it connects with his audience. And I think as long as we have people that do not make industrial music paint by numbers style, as long as we have people that put their intellect and intelligence into the art, whether it’s painting or music or sculpture or architecture or whatever, design. I’m not afraid of the day that AI might overtake the world. I don’t think that’s really something I worry about much. I think AI is very useful. You can turn your lights on and it can write your kids’ essays in grade school. But I’m striving further than that. This is just like the basic stuff.
I come from a time where we didn’t have cell phones, where we did not have computers. Where as a kid, I woke up and the day was long and bright. And if you wanted to see people, you just go by the house. You didn’t text them like, “Are you there?” I’m seeing my kid sitting in a room with three other kids and they’re all texting each other. I’m like, “Why don’t you speak to one another?” This is crazy. It’s because that’s how we are. I can totally appreciate that but at some point I think it’s important to develop the skills of communicating to each other and discussions.
God, I miss going to a movie and talking to people like, “How was your experience?” We watched movies day in, day out, I wake up in the middle of the night, I turn on Netflix to make myself go back to sleep. And I watched some crap. And I’m like, “Wow. Did that make me better? Did I feel like I was enriched by this?” No, it’s just information, information, information. The more information you suck in, the more you stay up at night because you have more to process. Which maybe at my age is not a bad idea to stay up at night. So you don’t fucking die from… I don’t know.
mxdwn: I mean, I think it’s just there’s so much coming at you nowadays. It’s coming from every direction so it’s hard to just sit still with anything these days.
SK: It’s still up to everyone to uphold some sort of filtration system and go like, “OK, this is good. This is useful. Or this is just useless crap.” I mean, do we need to re-watch every late night show with David Letterman? It can be fun, but it can become obsessive.
mxdwn: Yeah. It’s trying to find that balance between what’s good and what’s bad or being able to appreciate the nostalgia but also keep up with current time. So yeah, it’s a lot to keep up with.
SK: It’s a choice. It’s really a choice for everyone individually where to direct one’s attention and how to design that little slice of time that’s your life. It’s, it’s yours and it’s your choice what you make with it and what you make of it. And I chose to be prolific and write songs and help other people with remixing and producing their stuff and giving back some of the good luck and good fortune that I’ve experienced. Sometimes younger people ask me, “What did you do to be around for so long?” And I have to say there was so much luck, good fortune, coincidence happening to be somewhere at the right time at the right place, and sheer chance.
If Ministry hadn’t invited KMFDM to open for them back in ‘89 on one of their biggest tours ever, we wouldn’t be sitting here talking to one another. KMFDM became from a totally obscure German noise outfit into a household name in the industrial households of the United States pretty much in the course of two or three months. That was not something I deserve or I strive for. It just fell in my lap. But I took the opportunity and I went to a bank and I said, “I need a credit, I need a loan.” And they said, “For what?” And I said, “I have a band and I need to take them to America.” And they were like, “Oh, come on, man. Alright. Here’s your loan.”
So how did I do it? I don’t know. I must have been earnest, convincing my appearance to the banker must have been in such a way that they were like, alright, we’ll put a tiny little bit of trust in that man. And I paid them back the loan within two or three months and it was fine. But man, when you get a chance, go grab it. When people ask me, “What does it take to become like you?” I’m like, well, you don’t have to know how to sing. You don’t have to know how to play an instrument. You just have to be really confident that what you’re doing is good and good enough and then jump at every chance you can get. Just go get it, go get it, go get it.
mxdwn: Yeah. I feel like the world, just life in general is just way too short not to pursue something that you’re passionate about. So I feel like that’s a really good message.
SK: I’ve seen so many people that have stuff dropped in their lap and they were too lazy or maybe too blind to realize here’s a chance. And they didn’t jump at it.
mxdwn: I do want to jump back into the last song on the album really quick. But it’s one of my favorite songs on the album, “The Second Coming.” Obviously there’s some religious tones to it, but I feel like overall there’s this collective mindset about the world and kind of accepting of the fate that we’ve created for ourselves. What do you hope listeners take away from the final moments of this album? And is there any call to action you’d like to encourage people to pursue?
SK: Well, it’s not so much what I hope that people take away from it. I can only hope that I’m making myself clear enough for me to be understood because it would be devastating if what I say falls on deaf ears and people would go like, “What does he mean?” I know there’s a lot of bands that are very successful singing about love and stuff that you write in your diary. “Dear diary, I hurt myself today.”
But for KMFDM, we’re coming from a very punk rock kind of tradition. You don’t write about la-di-da stuff. You write about the stuff that angers you right now, right here, right today, and you make a song out of it, and you perform it with a certain attitude. For me, music and lyrics have to be in your face, really direct. There’s not much beating around the bush because we’re not making ambient albums where you get tweedled away for 15 minutes with atmospheric soundscapes. This is rock and roll in the end.
And KMFDM is often lumped into the industrial rock kind of corner. Which to me, A, is not an identifiable genre, and B, KMFDM’s range spans from dub music, reggae, to speed metal, and covers pretty much a lot of stuff in the middle. And so in a way, even when at first we arrived in America, I felt like we were a little bit misunderstood in terms of like, “Yeah, you guys are industrial rock.” I think a lot of people have gotten the idea and have come to love that KMFDM can offer so much from funky to groovy to really dark and dystopian and everything in the middle. That to me or the appreciation of that is really satisfying because obviously we’re not making music to please people. We’re making music to rouse people. And the more the rebel rouses, the more we understand that we’ve reached our target.
mxdwn: Do you feel like the message that you try to convey is more just encouraging people to use their voices too in times, just in any time that they can to speak out against the powers at be?
SK: It’s really simple: “Wake up! The alarm bells are ringing! Wake up!”
mxdwn: So you’re just trying to be loud enough for people to hear?
SK: The word alarm comes from Spanish. “Al armas,” to the weapons. KMFDM is and always was meant as a cry to rally, to go against the establishment. But to go against the nebulous bullshit they feed you on TV. It goes against this whole pop culture, for money, and it goes against superstars, and it goes for the freedom of the individual to just clear your mind and make your own choices. Don’t believe the hype. You don’t need to drive a Volkswagen to be cool. You can drive a fucking buggy or something. Kidding aside, it’s about, “Wake up. Be yourself.” That’s really what KMFDM stands for.
mxdwn: I love that. That’s really powerful because I feel like not that there aren’t other people who are saying that message, but I feel like the way that you’re going about it is really from a raw and authentic place. And I feel like people need that more in art these days.
SK: I agree. It goes to show that the numbers of listeners on all these modern types of streaming devices. I would never listen to streams. If I want to listen to music, I put on a record or maybe a CD. But the numbers of people that are monthly listeners to KMFDM has been going through the roof in the last couple of years. And I’m not really sure why that is, but the fact that it is so tells me that we’re reaching people’s ears. Our message arrives. It’s not sort of fizzling out in the ether. It actually hits people’s minds and brains and ears, and that’s good.
mxdwn: It is really exciting to hear that your music is reaching new generations of people because they definitely need this kind of music more than ever nowadays. I do have one more question. Even though the future is very uncertain right now, I hope that you are able to look back on your work with KMFDM with so much pride that you brought so much beauty into this world for over 40 years. Do you feel like there will ever be a definitive end to your work as an artist? Or do you think that you’ll always have something to say?
SK: I don’t think there will be a definitive end to my mouse working. I think I’ll probably drop dead on stage or in the studio. And I hope that my mates, Lucia and Annabella and Andy and Teeter, they will pick up from there and will seamlessly continue to carry the torch. Obviously, they have to. This thing has to go on. KMFDM stands so strongly against the mediocrity. One of our slogans that I really love is “The future of music and art shall not belong to the mediocre.” So let’s always be the ones that bring thoughtfulness and riot to the minds of people. And I don’t mean riot in the sense of violence. KMFDM is totally not about being violent. It’s about being intelligent. To beat your opponents with wit, sarcasm maybe, but most of all, intelligence. And then go alright, “KMFDM: 1. Opponent: 0.”
To keep up with the latest KMFDM news, check out their website. And make sure to listen to the latest album, Enemy, available now.
Photo Credit: Raymond Flotat
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