The Formative Years - Die Kreuzen
There are bands that you listen to once and they are etched into your brain forever.
I vividly remember when I first heard Die Kreuzen’s first album , which included their newly recorded versions of the tracks from their debut 7” Cows and Beer. It was during one of my regular phone calls with an older scenester, who I struck up a friendship with in my early teens to learn more about punk and hardcore. The record was playing in the background and I could not believe my ears. He was kind enough to record it on a cassette tape and mailed it to me.
I was hooked immediately by the velocity and tight delivery of the twenty-one songs, all of which are explosive in nature yet for the genre and its timely context they were recorded, i.e. 1984, it was insanely well-executed, crisply recorded and articulated. I had to get the vinyl and included it in my next order from Touch & Go Records.
Incorrectly named with the intention to be the Teutonic equivalent to “The Crosses”, Die Kreuzen sounded furious, raw and maniacal – it was a sonic whirlwind pressed onto vinyl, with the screamed, possessed sounding vitriolic vocals only adding to the appeal that the trebly distorted guitars and the off-kitler galloping drums laid out.
A perfect album with a sound that has inspired a myriad of iconic bands and provided pretty much the template and opened doors for bands like ABC Diabolo and Rorschach.
Having recently revisited Die Kreuzen’s discography, it was interesting to see the development to the second album, which saw them adapt a deliberately softer, new wavy conceptual sound, culminating in their third album, Century Days, which saw not only Butch Vig at the helm of production but had incorporate a piano and a horn section with the trademark screechy vocals being the only constant, before anticipating what would become grunge with their album Cement in 1991.
If there ever was a hardcore punk that was lightyears ahead of its time in the first half of the 1980s, Die Kreuzen would definitely be a contender with their thrashy energy, well-thought out song structures and on-point delivery
