Kadavar

What is still missing, really, before the Apocalypse? Fire falling from the sky? Locusts? Oceans of blood? Otherwise, everything is already here. Obviously, this isn’t new: as early as 2017, Kadavar was already traversing its own end-of-the-world scenario with ‘Rough Times’. Eight years later, the verdict is unequivocal: everything has become worse. Once again, the Berlin rock band answers this reality with music, delivering a sound decidedly rougher, heavier, more compact and darker than on its latest releases: ‘K.A.D.A.V.A.R.’ is like a second first album, a new landmark work that marries the obsession with riffs from their early days to the cosmic creativity of their new four-piece lineup.

Only a few months ago, Kadavar signaled a new beginning with the space-rock journey ‘I Just Want To Be A Sound’. This renewal was necessary: Lupus Lindemann, Tiger Bartelt, Jascha Kreft and Simon Bouteloup had reached the end of their rope. Tired of touring to every corner of the globe. Perhaps even tired of themselves. But what to do with all that has been built? How to continue a career that had made Kadavar an international ambassador of German vintage rock, when it suddenly became burdensome? Stop everything? Carry on as before? No. Tear it all down.

Alongside producer Max Rieger (Die Nerven), Kadavar sets out to find its own identity. With ‘I Just Want To Be A Sound’, the band crafts an album that becomes the new bedrock of its sonic universe. A base on which everything can be rebuilt. And which finally shatters the last blockages: just a few months after this reset, Kadavar returns to the source of its original fuzz power. And the band sounds more free, more unleashed than it has in years.

‘K.A.D.A.V.A.R.’ is an album like the old days, but seen through the prism of the previous one. ‘In fact, this album was already germinating in the previous one,’ explains Tiger Bartelt. ‘It’s like the negative.’ Where the previous record explored more meanderings, this one recovers the groove. Where airy atmospheres once dominated, the riff takes back the power. ‘We are deliberately returning to our fundamentals,’ adds Lupus Lindemann. ‘We wanted to recover big riffs, we wanted to recreate a heavy, massive hard rock.’

That also naturally includes the sound. Like almost all their previous albums, ‘K.A.D.A.V.A.R.’ was again produced by Tiger Bartelt. ‘We recorded directly to tape, and I also pulled out my old acrylic drum kit for the studio,’ he recalls. That sparked something in Kadavar. ‘All uncertainties, all doubts disappeared. And what can I say? This analog sound suits us perfectly. Over the years, we have understood that it isn’t always about sounding different, but about taking pleasure. This time, we found it again with something familiar. Making this album gave us a special feeling. Like coming home.’

But a return after a decisive journey: without ‘I Just Want To Be A Sound’, without the experimental ‘Isolation Tapes’ recorded during Covid, without the collaborative album with Elder, without the new four-piece configuration with Jascha Kreft, and even without the writing work for Die Fantastischen Vier, none of this would have happened. ‘Our projects from that period could hardly have been more distant from one another,’ Lupus jokes. ‘But they were indispensable, because they showed us everything Kadavar could be. Everything the band had the right to be. That’s why ‘K.A.D.A.V.A.R.’ is the complete opposite of a backward step. It’s a step forward, nourished by the group’s rawest roots.’ ‘The circle is complete,’ agrees Tiger. ‘Since our first album, we have continually broadened our definition of rock. With all that experience, with all these new sonic colors, we simply created a new rock album like in the old days.’

Without the path of these recent years, everyone is convinced the band would not exist today. The new member Jascha Kreft (Odd Couple) now also plays an essential role in Kadavar’s sound. Without him, this music would be very different today. The end of the classic power trio forced Kadavar to radically rethink its music and head toward new horizons. ‘For years, we were a perfectly oiled machine,’ explains Lindemann. ‘One riff, one rhythm, one vocal line on top, and that was it,’ sums up the singer, intentionally a little caricatural to describe their former way of working. ‘With Jascha, we finally had access to all the possibilities.’