Beauty from ambivalence: Indie rock that cries and laughs.
Hardly any band where there is such a gap between the live concert and the album experience. If this gap were paved with asphalt, it would be enough for a hardware store parking lot on the outskirts of town. Kapelle Petra are an escalating indie rock party live, with a noticeable amount of liquor in the punch and even voluntary costumes by the band and audience. The music, on the other hand, is finely crafted pop craftsmanship with always more than just a tear in the eye.
The new album HAMM also wants to confirm that the otherwise casual live fun is once again wearing black. But it is precisely this contrast that makes the records of the dark fun birds so interesting. The song “Auf Null,” for example, looks at the omnipresent 90s nostalgia as it fluctuates uncontrollably between retro and regressive.
The text by Guido “Grandpa” Scholz does not spare itself – and works on both illuminated levels: firstly as a self-assertion anchored in the now against the excessive sentiment of pop culture – but also as an amplifier of it. Hardly any band that knows how to create as much beauty out of ambivalence as Kapelle Petra. You know that theater symbol with the mask that cries and laughs at the same time – HAMM is its equivalent in contemporary indie rock.