Nachtmahr should be forbidden. Say those who have always gone with the flow, always under the radar of a cruel and subjugating society. And yet the antidote to this submissive behaviour comes from Thomas Rainer himself: His creature Nachtmahr has been on a campaign against conformity since 2007. With hard-hitting industrial hymns to the wolf in man, with manifestos of non-conformity, blood sacrifices to lust, desire and the forbidden, Thomas Rainer has long since earned a reputation as a provocative conductor of our darkest desires. He is the bogeyman of a scene that is only superficially unconventional but quickly nips any revolutionary spirit in the bud. He was hated, he was condemned, he was put down, he was discredited. His head is bloody, but unbowed. He never gave in. Let them hate him as long as they fear him. The new Nachtmahr-opus “Verboten!” (“Forbidden!”) shows why they fear him in a merciless fashion only this band can pull off.
This new testament is a relentlessly pounding techno-industrial leviathan, hopelessly superior to the rest of the scene, dripping with delusions of victory and remorseless against anything that stands in its way. “Verboten!” unleashes the same force as a first strike, paired with 17 years of experience and fuelled by years of fighting against everyone who stood in Thomas Rainer’s way. Who tried in vain to cancel him. And that was practically everyone, mind you. This time deliberately raw and additionally reinforced by punishing walls of guitars, this monster that rises from the depths within us all has only become stronger. Hungrier. No compromise, with them or against the wall.
Everything is war. Life is war, art is war, sex is war. The greatest war of all, however, rages in our heads. All these conflicts fuel Thomas Rainer’s inspiration, causing these feverish hymns of resistance to burst out of him in long dark nights of the soul. Each track is both battle and triumph, is a blow against uniformity, dreariness and the whole rotten bourgeoisie. It takes courage to face all this the way Thomas Rainer has done. The stakes are high, but the reward is even higher: “Verboten!” promises a way out of the constraints of society, out of the conformity of the masses. Anyone who joins Nachtmahr will experience headwinds. Gale-force headwinds. But we must never forget one thing: Thomas Rainer bought our freedom with his blood and forgave us all our sins. That’s a quote from the Bible, yes. But you can’t shake off the impression that it was written for the general of the Industrial Revolution. Forward march!
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