Pogendroblem are Benta, Georg, Lauritz and Frieder. It started for her in the tens, the first record was released in 2018, called “Education for Fatigue”. Time passed, a new drummer came along with Benta and Pogendroblem released a highly acclaimed scene documentary called “Searching for Utopia”.
Now her first album appears on a bigger label. Audiolith from Hamburg releases the record with the snake title “All I have left are my skills”. On it Pogendroblem for the Hauruck genre punk reveal quite a depth of reflection. But that shouldn’t turn this clever album into a sociology seminar with a Uffta-Uffta beat. At Pogendroblem, think of their wit and academic swag as an added value that puts the band ahead of many other current punk acts.
Fortunately, this plus does not have a negative effect on the energetic music. It still sounds raw, direct, hectic. At a live performance in Cologne, where the four of them opened up for Team Scheisse, I fell in love with their song “Wie täubst du dich?”. Since then, the desire to do an interview with this highly interesting band has flourished. This has now happened. Love my life or here an excerpt from the talk.
Your first record, “Education for Fatigue,” dates back to 2018. I noticed it at the time, but it left me rather cold. I thought you were one of many bands that fell into the Turbostaat barrel at some point – and whose way of lyrical and songwriting never really gets beyond that. This reservation has now completely dissolved for me. Even though you certainly haven’t turned 180 degrees musically, the magic is completely different for me now. How has the band developed?
FRIEDER: A big difference is, of course, that we are no longer forced to record the new record in our bassist’s basement.
GEORG: I could certainly draw a lengthy summary, but you’d better say it first, Benta…
BENTA: What can I say, I haven’t been there before. And all I can say is that I didn’t listen to the band before I got on.
There could have been a nasty surprise waiting for you.
BENTA: That’s right, but everything went ok in the end. [lacht] Anyway, my impression: Pogendroblem has gotten a little more trendy over time, maybe that’s also due to my influence.
GEORG: In the beginning it took us a lot of time to become part of a DIY punk scene, because we all come from the suburbs and only moved to Cologne to study. That was the time in which the rise of the AfD also took place, which certainly made us very politicized. But we were still very young and still exploring. For us it was a lot about driving around, about exchanging ideas with other bands and scenes. So there was still a lot of coincidence on the debut album “Education for Tiredness”. For me, the paradigm shift started when we finally decided to submit an application to the Music Initiative. They don’t have any influence on the music at all, but it’s inevitable that you define your own goals with something like that, that you build promo plans and then inevitably change your own approach to releasing music. The funding went hand in hand with professionalization, which has made us grow from a basement band to an act on the Audiolith label. And in terms of content, just as much has happened, we have opened our eyes to other topics – and the fact that Benta joined has also changed a lot.
A very central project is your documentary short film “In Search of Utopia”. A very courageous mosaic that asks about dreams in one’s own subculture. How did that happen?
GEORG: Back then, that was primarily the project of me and Lauritz [Bass] – and it came across as quite “conceptual”, so with attached educational material on the subject of utopia and such. I don’t even know exactly what the hook to all this is anymore. We’ve always been drawn to the punk scene and the cuteness of all those DIY spaces scattered around. At the time, utopia was quite a buzzword – and the film wanted to deal with the fact that the left, not the party, was accused of having no utopia anymore. Together with our record “I – Wir” we ended up with a fairly conceptual work.
And which utopias have stuck with you as a result of this project?
GEORG: I also made my master’s thesis on the matter at the time and therefore took a really close look at everything. My thesis is that punk can be a utopian practice. A practice that is good at playing and opening spaces so that you can learn a different way of feeling in them. This may sound emo, but I noticed that many respondents in the film used big terms like anarchism, communism or identity politics. But whenever more specific questions were asked about it, they were weighted and ultimately described emotions. Good vibes, a sense of empowerment and such. At best, DIY punk can create places that are low in discrimination and as far removed from everyday capitalist life as possible. In its form, punk can actually be utopian practice.
You released the song “Let your shirt on” beforehand – with the slogan “No freedom for new German men’s sweat”, among other things. Discussions about how shirtless hunks and non-violent spaces get in each other’s way are older in the autonomous punk scene. But your piece still kicked up a lot of dust. A lot of guys feel like they’ve been stepped on.
BENTA: The vehemence of the reactions also surprised us, because you realize again how much you live in bubbles. Then there are things that don’t need to be discussed and suddenly you go into “the real world” with such a topic and everyone gets incredibly upset.
GEORG: For us it is an important issue that consideration is given in front of the stage and that not only half-naked guys get a chance to pogo there. We also regularly make announcements at concerts, but at the risk of forgetting that, we wrote this song. You can anticipate that live. And because we didn’t think it would create such a resonance, the take of the song is also pretty goofy: Leave your shirt on so people can read the hot slogans on it? That already scratches past a dad joke and our concern in advance was that it wasn’t understood as radical enough. The wave that hit us now took us completely by surprise.
“Anger is also a form of attention,” Milhouse says on an episode of The Simpsons. Do you fan the PR boost that lies dormant in this outrage from many alt-punks or do you prefer to keep it small?
GEORG: On the Plastic Bomb page, where the video premiered, we also replied to many comment writers and made a collective post on Instagram with a selection of the best reactions to the piece. It’s certainly not our main concept to pour oil on the fire, but this exchange of blows on the net was just funny and not to be taken seriously. Of course there was also personal hate against me as a singer, but it didn’t really hit us in this form.
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“All I have left are my skills” by Pogendroblem was released by Audiolith on November 18, 2022. The most recent single release is the song “Wiedersehen” written jointly by the band.
“What’s coming now” (Valve Verlag)
You know, folks, pop music can be appreciated quite metaphysically at times. Just dance, let the beats flow through you or let your own mood intensify – be it euphoric or melancholic. Totally legitimate. But just between us: For me personally, lyrics are just fucking important. Especially when it comes to German acts, it’s also about listening and I get angry accordingly when a radio station says secretly that they only want to play songs whose lyrics don’t get in the way while ironing. I’ll tell you how it is: No honor, Radio-Ottos, if that’s your (automated) playlist practice. Because there are countless musicians whose words you just want to immerse yourself in, I’m really not saying anything new or revolutionary.
The pop-affine Ventil Verlag from Mainz is now trying to trigger this need with a new series of books. Hey, it definitely worked for me. After all, it’s primarily about poets from the highly productive indie segment and you don’t have to work through the complete works of, what do I know, Wolfgang Niedecken or Silbermond.
No, “Selected Songtexte” digs into the thriving niche in which secret stars like Bernd Begemann and Carsten Friedrichs (Superpunk, The League of Ordinary Gentlemen) are to be found. Or Christiane Rösinger, once Lassie Singers or Britta, or even solo. Her colourful, but never garish language is just as rich as the thousands of everyday topics from which Rösinger always knows how to wring a new emotion or original twist.
The accompanying book exhibits more than just wildly copied lyrics, you can hear Rösinger talk about her various band projects and a nerdy glossary deciphers various enigmatic phrases or allusions from the lyrics. For example, what is a “quarter life crisis” and what does Britta’s claim “I am two oil tanks” refer to?
In addition to Rösinger classics such as “My Future Ex-Friend” or “The Couple Lie”, there are of course many more pieces where you don’t immediately sing the refrain instead of reading it. To (re)discover them through their text and then listen to them – that is exactly what makes the compendium so appealing.
Anyone who is also interested in the concept Christmas interested, we would like to point out that this book is definitely a great gift. Make Rösinger fame (again)!
What happened until now? Here is an overview of all pop column texts.
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