Saturday, April 9, 2016

KMFDM - "Opium" [1984]

Artist: KMFDM
Title: Opium
Genre: Industrial
Country: Germany
Release date: 1984

Track List: 
  1. Fix Me Up
  2. Splatter
  3. The Smell
  4. Helmut Mein Helmut
  5. Warp'd
  6. Penetration
  7. Entschuldigung
  8. Cuntboy
  9. Raf OK
  10. Mating Sounds Of Helicopters
Here's the very first cassette released by one of my all-time industrial rock favourites (and the most played band on my last.fm account as well). Some purists even call it "the only truly industrial album of KMFDM". While I don't subscribe to the notions like "the industrial scene ceased to exist after Throbbing Grisle split up, everything past that should be called post-industrial etc.", I like this album much more than the rest of 80's KMFDM albums. Note also that the album cover doesn't feature the classic KMFDM logo and the usual cover art by Brute.

"Opium" was re-released by KMFDM records in 2002, and later by Metropolis Records. According to the release notes:

"...Opium is what some believe to be the debut album by KMFDM, originally released in 1984.

It is not that, however, it is so much more.

Opium was originally circulated among a group of fellow-patrons in the underground scene of Hamburg in 1984 as a home taped run of a handful of cassette-tapes. There never existed any actual master tapes, let alone any professional equipment to record the album. In the early 90's, one of the original cassette tapes, sharing a sealed leaden box with a rotting sausage, was salvaged from a WWII air-raid-shelter, flooded with sewage during the aftermath of a fire which had ravaged the building above. The tape, though not in perfect condition, contained everything that Opium would be, the "missing link to 'Where did KMFDM even come from in the first place?'," which Sascha Konietzko said, would be missed out on, if a new listener to KMFDM began with What Do You Know, Deutschland?.

Opium shows the roots of KMFDM, from the bold experimentation and dissonant sound effects, but contained within these tracks is the wellspring from which the KMFDM "ultra heavy beat” was born..."

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