Attak

Is there any such thing as a bad KMFDM record? It is sort of like Mexican food though, it's all the same ingredients just put together in a different way. But I keep coming back for more!

great album

awsome

I was stoked to see a new KMFDM album! KMFDM is by far one of my favorite bands, largely because I can listen to their albums literally dozens of times in a row and hear something different every time. Their music is so interwoven with different rhythms and sounds it takes a long time to sort them all out.At first listen I felt kind of ripped off. A commercialized metal album was coming out of my speakers! Not the typical mass of tangled sound. Had I written this review after my first listen this album would have received 2 stars for being such a let down.First thing you will notice is a lot of heavy distorted guitar and a more regular drum kit in your face. This is where my commercial rip-off came in. Has KMFDM lost their mind and gone commercial metal? Fortunately I continued listening to the album in the background while I did some other stuff and I began to mentally throw away the in your face guitar and drums and see more of the old school KMFDM riding the background.The alluring female vocals are still there, and the synthesizer work is still there. Yeah, some of the songs are a little too repetitive, but after I got used to the more commercial feel that's in your face I started to like this album a lot! It's got enough good tunes to make a worthy buy.

Current favorite album!

Nothing will beat the KMFDM prior to their break-up. But I would say Attak is probably their best work since reforming after MDFMK. It has taken a long time, but after listening to Attak, WWIII, Hau Ruck, Tohuvabohu, Blitz, and WTF?!, I still find myself listening to Attak most often. All the others simply do not have as many good songs. But for Attak, I seem to like the majority of the songs instead of 2 or 3 like later albums. Perhaps it was Skolds contributions that put the album over the top. I cant quite put my finger on it, I guess it comes down to personal preference.

I have been looking forward to the new KMFDM for the past couple of months now. I immediately bought "Attak" the same day it was released. It was definitely well worth the wait. Unlike "Symbols" and "Nihil", I had to listen to "Attak" a few times before the music started to sink into my head. I noticed on the first listen that "Attak" had a slightly different sound, particularly on songs such as "Superhero" and "Sleep". I got the impression that Sascha Konietzko had been listening to drum & bass during the band's alleged break up and after the tour with MDFMK. The drum and bass influences is quite evident in "Superhero" and "Sleep" but not necessarily in a bad way, just interesting that drum and bass would be incorporated into the band's abrasive, caustic industrial sound. Definitely light on the metal this time around. My two personal favorite songs on this album are "Save Me" and "Risen". "Save Me" in some weird way sounds as if it would have been perfect for the "Symbols" album. It reminded me a bit like my personal favorite KMFDM song "Anarchy" with Skold's vocals. "Risen" is just a killer song with that loud thunderous industrial beats that needs to be played at top volume. Now while I can't say "Attak" is better than "Nihil" or "Symbols", I definitely have to rank "Attak" next to those two albums as my favorite KMFDM album of all time.

...because it appropriately describes KMFDM's new album, ATTAK. It seems that when Sascha and Company ran out of real five-letter words (Attak?), they ran out of ideas for good music as well. What used to be a staple of the industrial music genre is now nothing more than contrived mush with few noteworthy highlights. Overall, ATTAK seems to suffer from Michael Jordan Syndrome: go out with a bang and retire (KMFDM with ADIOS, Jordan with his third championship), decide to play baseball for a few years (or start up a sub-par side-project called MDFMK), then come back to much overly-hyped fanfare only to disappoint (the Bulls were eliminated in the playoffs the first year Jordan came back, in much the same manner that this album stumbles). Perhaps it's a poor analogy, but ATTAK truly is a lack-luster album, even for someone who has been a huge fan of the band since the early nineties.The main problems with this album, in no particular order:1) Tim Skold. I really don't like this guy's voice or his lyrics. I know that some people do, but I have never felt like he really fit in with KMFDM. He's whiney, annoying, and ALL of the songs he sings have cliched lyrics. If there is any publisher that makes a Cliche Dictionary, I'm sure that Skold has already purchased it. Granted, much of KMFDM's lyrics have never been THAT original, but this guy truly takes the cake for lame songs.2) No Gunter Schulz or En Esch. Pivitol members of the old KMFDM, and without them, this album clearly suffers. Skold and Sascha seem to be desperately trying to make up for the lack of Schulz's distinctive guitar work, to no avail. And without En Esch on background vocals and adding his talents to the songs, there's not much to work with here.3) Overall unoriginality. Everything on this album feels like a rehash of a retread: nothing new or exciting. "Attak/Reload" sounds like a leftover MDFMK song that never made it on that album, "Skurk" makes me yawn with Skold's complaining about how people make him mad, "Dirty", even though it features Raymond Watts, can't be saved because all it is is another KMFDM anthem; "Save Me" is a pathetic Skold whine-fest that made me cry crocodile tears before I switched to the next track, and the list goes on. The album ends with "Sleep", a song that has an overall feeling of being so rushed and thrown together that you wonder why it exists at all.But for all its problems, there are a few songs that are worthwhile. The clear-cut best song on the album is "Preach/Pervert", which is ironically written and sung by Raymond Watts, not KMFDM's oringal founder (the song reminds one of NIHIL, probably the band's best album). Unfortunately, the bad far outweigh the good, making this album a true disappointment. It's the only KMFDM album that I have ever played through only a few times and then placed on the shelf. And the worst part is that I had to force myself to play it a third, fourth, fifth time just to see if I could make anything grow on me. It didn't.Maybe like Michael Jordan's first comeback, this is only a test-run before another Three-Peat. But I tend to doubt it. As long as Skold is a member of the band, they aren't going anywhere but down. Raymond Watts should distance himself from this tripe and focus on Pig, because he seems to be the only one in the group left with any talent for music-making. Do yourself a favor: pick up the far superior album by Slick Idiot ..., the new band formed by the aformentioned En Esch and Gunter Schulz. That release doesn't disappoint at all, and its superiority makes you wonder where the REAL talent in KMFDM probably was during all the great albums of the nineties.