Antilopen Gang at SUMMER IN THE CITY 2025 at the Rheinbühne, Malakoff Terrace in Mainz
The Antilopen Gang usually regret their most sloganeering songs the most. Almost every ideologically suspect pose is followed by self-revision, every smash hit by a miserable antithesis - this has been the case for fifteen years now. Fifteen years of Antilopen, that also means fifteen years of Antilopen dialectics, fifteen years of a "cramped relationship to the we", fifteen years of music "for the few, we are becoming fewer and fewer". On the 28th anniversary of Tupac Shakur's death, a Friday the 13th to boot, this anniversary will be duly celebrated: With a half-rap-half-punk double album that is party-crashing in many respects and that dispenses with slogans more consistently than any other release in the Antilope legacy to date. "ALLES MUSS REPARIERT WERDEN" is an undogmatic manifesto against traditions and constancy, against dreaming, prettification and, last but not least, against all other bands - paradoxically coherent in itself and yet maximally two-faced. It combines what is for long stretches a lead-heavy and resigned, but nevertheless or precisely because of this great, at least seventh hip-hop album by a hip-hop crew that may have long since grown tired of hip-hop, with the youthful, unencumbered, no less great punk rock debut of a band that suddenly sounds like they've just found each other again.
The work begins with a remarkably stringent rap record - not least in its nihilism. Over the course of ten songs, Danger Dan, Koljah and Panik Panzer paint the devil on the wall - in the darkest colors and according to the motto: "There's nothing to save, it's like worshipping an ocean and hoping the waves will calm down". This world is fucked up and can't be fixed, "every utopia is dead", any optimism is simply misplaced - this is the central message of almost all the rap songs on "ALLES MUSS REPARIERT WERDEN". Whereas the Antilopes used to start their albums with triumphant representatives, "Nichts für immer" (Nothing Forever) is now a thoroughly devastating, sparsely instrumented song at the beginning of the tracklist - the following "Traumtänzer & Schönmaler" (Dream Dancer & Painter) sounds no less resigned, but noticeably more aggressive: "You're so committed, I'm planning to throw everything away - but first I'll turn the summer fairytale into a winter fairytale". And then? "October in Europe". This poignant statement on the Islamist massacre that shook Israel on October 7, 2023 and triggered a global wave of anti-Semitic violence. Sophie Hunger has now contributed two stirring vocal parts to the album version of the song, which was released back in April and had a huge impact. She is the only feature guest that the Antilopes have integrated into the "ALLES MUSS REPARIERT WERDEN" organism.
Like no other song, "Oktober in Europa" reflects the temporal and social context in which the album was created. "ALLES MUSS REPARIERT WERDEN" sounds - at least at the beginning - so hopeless and disillusioned because the Antilopes realized it at a time when world events were creating more hopelessness and disillusionment from day to day. And then Torsun Burkhardt, a long-time friend of the band, died in December 2023 - the deeply sad Egotronic reminiscence "Rannte der Sonne hinterher" is dedicated to him. It is only in the middle of the album that there is finally a restrained wink: in "Direct Comparison", Danger Dan, Koljah and Panik Panzer celebrate themselves as the best band of all time - which is no mean feat, however, as there is simply no good music anymore. Apart from that, only the smug "Sympathie für meine Hater", which follows later, can be considered a punchline track. "Das Leben ist schön", on the other hand, features very personal expressions of love that are by no means ironic and would probably have been avoided by the Antilopen Gang in their early years, as would "Für wenige", which is framed by gloomy, Rio Reiser-esque pathos - a sincere greeting to the ancestral circle, a track that feels like a ray of hope. The Antilopen Gang have by no means mellowed with age, but have at least partially grown up - this is also clear in a song like "Alter Wegbegleiter", in which they disgruntledly reflect on their relationship to intoxication. Ruthlessly honest lines such as "I won't fall off the wagon because I have a daughter who means so much to me that tears well up in my eyes just trying to express how I feel about her" would hardly have existed in the past.
At the end of the rap record, "Wenn das hier vorbei ist" is a song that unmistakably plays with the motif of farewell - significantly, something like a good mood almost arises at this point. If "Wenn das hier vorbei ist" were to mark the end of the double album, it would suggest that the last masses have been read and that the fifteenth year in Antilope's history could be the final one. If it weren't for this second album, this punk album, which breaks with everything that has gone before in typical Antilopen fashion. Because when the Antilopen Gang got back together in the studio in the late fall of 2023 - they had just recovered from the groundbreaking success story "Das ist alles von der Kunstfreiheit gedeckt" ("This is all covered by artistic freedom") - an album full of full-fledged punk rock crushers was created alongside misanthropic, over-the-top rap songs. It's been clear for fifteen years that there would have to be an Antilope record at some point, carried by strummed guitars: Danger Dan, Koljah and Panik Panzer have never been able or willing to choose between a New Era cap and a Sex Pistols shirt, have released hip-hop records on the Toten Hosen label for years and gathered together various punk legends on the bonus album "Atombombe auf Deutschland" in 2017.
Now an entire punk album, which is indispensable for the sole reason that it represents an escapist, loosening counterweight to the first part of the ambivalent structure "ALLES MUSS REPARIERT WERDEN". It begins with the snotty '77 punk number "Oberbürgermeister", which sets the tone for the second half of the double album, and not just because of its criticism of masculinity: Where there was despair a moment ago, there is now offensive repression tactics; where gags just seemed out of place, they are now in the foreground; where there was almost too much substance, platitudes are suddenly allowed; where beautiful-sounding, sinister samples rang out, suddenly thin, out-of-tune, analog-recorded guitars scrub in. Here Koljah sings - yes, he can do that all of a sudden - about the beautiful life that makes it impossible for him to help his friends move; there Danger Dan dedicates himself almost hymn-like to the phenomenon of fitness centers; there Panik Panzer comes out as an oat milk hipster, screaming like a spit. You'll search in vain for choleric political punk on "ALLES MUSS REPARIERT WERDEN" - instead, it's about a nice neighbor who turns out to be a killer one day. Or about a backward-looking clique of old men in leather jackets who go to a punk festival. Or the thesis that - keyword "incarnation of the incarnation" - nothing should be broken anymore. Punk within punk, so to speak. The breakout fantasy "Weg von hier" and the angry, Dead Kennedys-like "Muttertag" are the most likely to be taken at face value.
Danger Dan, Koljah and Panik Panzer have simply produced twelve stylish, timeless punk rock songs. That's the great strength of the Antilope punk rock debut: this record is credible, doesn't have to hide from the 'real' contemporary punk scene, is neither a clichéd parody nor a disdainful crossover experiment. Despite melodic pop episodes, it reflects the imaginative charm of primeval punk - because it sounds neither polished nor broad-legged. The Antilopen Gang have loosened up - and produced guitar music in the same way they jammed out their first rap songs fifteen years ago: Associative, largely concept-free, free of any pressure and carried by an unmistakable style of humor. "ALLES MUSS REPARIERT WERDEN" bundles - and it inevitably needed both halves - the complete essence of the Antilope cosmos that has grown over the last fifteen years. In its deadly serious and funny, its gentle and pointed, its political and silly, its loud and quiet moments. The double album will be released on September 13, 2024 on the band's own label Antilopen Geldwäsche.
This content has been machine translated.