At the end we go to “heaven”. But it just threatens to fall on your head, and while the beats wave like they’re packed in cotton wool, Ez Kamil sings: “I swear I’m not an ass, I swear I’m just high.” At least for almost four minutes there is a musical lightness, otherwise the music on MOHNWIESEN draws dark streaks and the trap sinks into heavy gothic clouds.
Ez Kamil, who grew up in a suburb of Munich in a house that stands next to a highway that gave his name to last year’s EP A96, reports in mumbled but intense tracks about everyday racism (“Bengalos”) and life in “social housing next to condominiums” (“Interlude/ Stille”), generally loses himself in dark thoughts (“FOMO”) and especially in the feeling of losing a friend to drugs (“Conny Kramer”).
They play a big role in other ways too, and it’s been a long time since anyone has described the eternal waiting situation in the small town as accurately as in “Bengalos”: Everyone wants to leave, but only those at least make their way. And then even in “heaven” you only find the same monotony: “Everything here is as it always was.”
This review appears in Musikexpress 1/2026.