Knorkator

Knorkator was a German band from Berlin that combined heavy metal with comical elements. They proclaimed themselves to be "Germany's most band in the world" (German: "Deutschlands meiste Band der Welt"), as the title "The best band in the world" was already taken by Die Ärzte. The band was founded in 1994 but only played in the Berlin / Brandenburg area until 1998.

Knorkator gained further fame (and some notoriety) in 2000 with their performance of Ick wer zun Schwein (sic; literally, in Berlin dialect, "I'm turning into a pig") in the German national qualification for the Eurovision Song Contest.

Knorkator announced the end of the band in a MySpace-Bulletin on June 14th 2008, the last concert was played on December 5th that year in Berlin. The official reason given for the band's breakup was that Alf Ator wanted to leave Germany to start a new life in Thailand.

Style

Knorkator's music can be largely classified as industrial metal, somewhat akin to White Zombie and Ministry. Knorkator, however, strongly features a comedic element. Most songs escalate into falsetto vocals and bombastic, over-the-top anthemic choruses, with crushing guitars and subtle samplers. Due to the amusing message, however, the band's considerable technical and artistic merit is sometimes overlooked.

Knorkator's lyrics are somewhat explicit, but always very humorous:

• "Ich lass mich klonen" ("I'll have myself cloned") deals with the advantages of cloning oneself, hence sparing the effort of masturbation
• "VIVA Buzz Dee" is a worship-anthem towards guitarist Buzz Dee
• "Wie weit ist es bis zum Horizont" ("How far to the horizon") wonders about the metaphor of the distance to the horizon, but continues to calculate it with equations
• "Komm wieder her" ("Come back") begins as a lament to a lost love, but later its hinted that the singer only abused this partner to do the chores.
• "Weg nach unten" ("The way down") describes a depressed person digging himself into the earth; what appears to be metaphorical at first is in the end revealed to be meant literally: "Dann kommt Licht und ein Känguruh, und ich weiß ich bin zu weit" ("Then there's light and a kangaroo, and I know I've gone too far")
• "Nur mal Angenommen" ("Just in case") is a monologue inside the singer's head, where he wonders what would happen if he was flexible enough to stick his head up into his anus. The main question he deals with is "Where would I come out?"
• The aptly named "A" only contains the lyrics "A / A / A / A", which are in fact four choruses of a lengthy distorted scream.
• "Aeger sum" ("I am ill") sounds like an ecclesiastic or gregorian choral in Latin, but if one translates the lyrics its basically an enumeration of technical terms of illnesses, taken from a medical dictionary.
• [Buchstabe] ("Letter"; properly titled with a novel letter), in which a "doctor of [German] philology" presents the results of his 30 years of research: a letter for the bilabial trill to add to the German alphabet.

Most of Knorkator's lyrics are in German; however, some songs also feature English ("beating around the bush", "Ma Baker", etc.), Thai ("Mai khao djai", "Khid tyng baan"), Latin ("Aeger sum"), or French ("Ma belle fêmme", "Franz Hose") lyrics - these songs are often extreme covers of previously well-known hit songs.

Live performances

Knorkator's wild stage shows and appearance are analogously chaotic: half of Stumpen's body is tattooed black, and he usually performs in his goofy underpants; Buzz Dee's appearance is often cited as being a clone of "Big" Jim Martin.

Knorkator were (in)famous for their wild stage shows. Alf Ator used to hit the audience with a big foam club, they also threw toast slices and wet autumn foliage at the crowd. A modified shredder was used to distribute shredded vegetables and fruit over the crowd, which was announced as "vegetarian airway-catering". In earlier shows, a lot of furniture pieces were placed on the stage which were then destroyed during the show by Alf or Stumpen, mostly with an axe or a baseball bat. Stumpen was also known for wearing almost nothing on stage except for a woman's bathing suit or underpants.

Origin of the name

The name "Knorkator" is, so it is generally assumed, derived from "knorke", a word used in Berlin and the Ruhr basin meaning "great" or "fabulous" that has, however, fallen into disuse and is somewhat dated (similar to the English slang word "swell"). The suffix -ator alludes to the endings of powerful and muscular superheroes like "terminator", "gladiator", "predator", etc. Thus an appropriate translation would be "Swellinator". As Knorkator state: "We wanted to become the best and finest music superheroes" (German: „Wir wollten also die besten und tollsten Musiksupermänner werden.“ - „Tarebuch“, January 15, 2006).

Members

• Stumpen (or Stumpennsylvania) - vocals
• Buzz Dee (or Buzz Deenemark) - guitar
• Alf Ator (or Alf Ghanistan) - vocals, keyboards, songwriting, arrangement
• Nick Aragua (or Nick Daniels) - drums
• Tim Buktu (or Tim Beam) - bass

Former members

• Kirk Thiele - guitar
• Chrish Chrash - drums

Discography

• A (EP) (1995)
• The Schlechtst of Knorkator (1998)
• Hasenchartbreaker (1999)
• Tribute to uns selbst (2000)
• High Mud Leader - die 1. (2002, as "High Mud Leader")
• Ich hasse Musik (2003)
• Zu alt, (2005; DVD+CD / CD+DVD)
• Das nächste Album aller Zeiten (2007)
• Kinderlied (2008) Single

Filmography

• Zu alt, DVD (November 11, 2005)
• Weg nach unten , DVD (September 19, 2008

Literature

• Knorkator: Des Wurzels Zweig. Berlin: Eulenspiegel, 2002. ISBN 3-359-01448-0.
• Knorkator: Am Anfang war das Am. Berlin: Eulenspiegel, 2004. ISBN 3-359-01609-2.

External links

• Official site