If I understand correctly, Stephan Mensger used to be a member of German indie rock band Guilty Guitars, but releases music also under his alter ego Freispiel where he consistently refuses to adhere to a single genre. There was pop, kraut rock, punk and much more happening throughout his many albums. Flamme, Durst und Schrei is his eighth longplayer in only nine years!

And again, he does something unprecedented. Inspired by Menschheitsdämmerung, an important anthology of German expressionist poetry, he pays tribute to this publication which was very influential during the 1920s but then banned and burned in Nazi Germany a few years later.

What we get is a threefold process that starts with Stephan Mensger recording hours and hours of noisy guitar feedback orgies full of effect pedals and ear-piercing distortion. Meanwhile, eleven voice artists – authors and musicians – record selected poems from the anthology. I only have tangential knowledge of German expressionism, so I am not familiar with most authors, but their anguished words, underlined by many tragic fates, feel like broad brush strokes on a gritty canvas. Finally, the recorded poems are arranged to fit with the very un-musical sounding guitar work.

I must admit that I have never heard anything like this, but if Einstürzende Neubauten’s Blixa Bargeld teamed up with Sunn O)))’s Stephen O'Malley, we might get something possibly similar. Flamme, Durst und Schrei is not the kind of album that you play at a party, except if you really want the people to stop dancing. The seventeen songs – sixteen poems and one instrumental – don’t even make it to forty minutes, but this is still an intense and harrowing listening experience that should appeal to German literature students and avantgarde music aficionados alike.

17 songs

37:04 minutes

***** ***

Genre: experimental / noise / spoken word

Label: Fidel Bastro

Released: 22^nd November 2024

Artist pages:
Bandcamp
YouTube