Stahlmann – Quecksilber (2012)

Stahlmann is a German band that performs in such styles as Neue Deutsche Härte, Industrial, EBM, in their songs the band connects the hard guitar sound and deep vocal. A distinctive feature of musicians is their appearance, before each performance they cover themselves with silver paint to match the band name. Stahlmann have long been a hallmark in the German rock scene, not only because of their unique appearance. They represent a new era in German-language rock music. The band creates hard industrial sounds, driving metal rhythms and catchy, intense gothic melodies. On this album they wanted to become even more danceable than they have been.

In 2009, the debut EP of young and promising German band from Göttingen enters the top twenty of the German alternative charts and firmly grounded in its lines as much as much as four weeks. With such a meteoric rise in his first tour of the country musicians performed on the same stage with popular German bands such as Saltatio Mortis, In Extremo and Doro. In 2010, inspired by their successes the band members go on their own tour, organized by the magazine Zillo. With two new members, the drummer and the bassist, the band recorded their first single Hass Mich … Lieb Mich, and two weeks later the first full-length album Stahlmann was released.

What is a music that is performed by our heroes and that won the hearts of thousands of fans around the world? It is a tough and rhythmic, but also very melodic NDH. Stahlmann brings nothing new into this style, but perform rather perfectly and we can see it in the second full-length album Quecksilber. On January 20, 2012, the long-awaited second studio album was released on the lable AFM, which was titled Quecksilber. “We wanted to make this album more danceable than our previous one,” commented a frontman Mart. “The main idea was to combine the guitar dance metal with EBM and emphasize the electronic elements of the sound, but at the same time to remain true to ourselves.”Compared with its predecessor, the new band’s work is more flat and at the same time less intense and emotional. This music is well suited for workout in a gym, but for it does not touch the soul. After listening to this album, it becomes clear that having set the bar too high at the start, the band is not so good even on the second album. Perhaps it is only a temporary failure, but I’m worried that they will not listen to the opinion of critics and will continue to release albums that differ from each other only in name and year of release.