On May 19, 2021, the Aachen band Pale announced in an obituary on Facebook that their guitarist and founding member Christian Dang-anh passed away. A brain tumor was discovered about a year and a half ago.
They described him as “the level-headed among all hotheads, the funniest among 5 chaotic people, the only real musician in the band and at the same time the most sincere, loyal and simply greatest person that a band of friends could wish for.“
Now the indie band, which actually long since dissolved, has declared its penultimate official act: at the end of November 2022, almost exactly three years after they found out about Christian Dang-anh’s diagnosis, Pale want to release their very last album. They decided to record after that message. Among other things, they write on Facebook: “Knowing that we had nothing to lose, we asked everyone who was once part of the group to contribute something, asked for guest appearances from people with whom we had always wanted to make music and worked together more than two years on every song, every note and every syllable as if it were the last time. Just because we knew it was exactly that. Even after Christian’s death last year, we decided to move on and finish the songs we had already recorded.”
Read the full statement here:
The first two singles “Bigger Than Life” and “Man of 20 Lives” are to be heard on Thursday, pre-orders and “pre-saves” are already possible. Additionally, Pale are planning “a big show” in early 2023, early next year.
Pale was founded by Holger Kochs, Christian Dang-anh and Stephan Kochs in September 1993. Shortly thereafter, Philipp Breuer, the first bass player in the band’s history, joined the band. In the summer of 1994, the four recorded and released their first CD, entitled KRUSTY TAG EP, on their own label, Soda Records.
Their breakthrough on a national and international level came in 2000 with the album RAZZMATAZZ (THE ARTS AT THE SANDS), which was released on the German emo, screamo, post-hardcore and indie rock label Defiance Records. Winner of album of the month in several music magazines, this is a self-contained concept album in the vein of The Whos “quadrophenia“.
Their last album was released in 2006 under the name BROTHER, SISTER, BORES! on Grand Hotel Van Cleef.