Somewhere between a small town near Offenbach and the basement venues of Frankfurt and Darmstadt, four people figured out that the scenes they grew up in were already fading by the time they arrived. La Petite Mort / Little Death — Steffen Smirny (guitar, vocals, synths), Paul Krupka (bass, synths), Jan Nelis Zomerdijk (drums, percussion, synths), and a revolving door of collaborators — have spent years sitting with that realization.
Their second full-length, “Disco II – Monomyth,” released February 13, 2026, doesn’t mourn it. It throws a party in the wreckage.
The Frankfurt- and Cologne-based band all come from Rodgau, and from there drifted into the music circles of Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Wiesbaden, and Mainz more or less simultaneously.
“What felt special was the diversity — the constant experimenting with subgenres of punk, screamo, pop, and things in between,” the band explains. “A lot of it was rooted in US and UK post-hardcore scenes, and everything felt intense and absorbing.” They name groups like Ichi Ichi, Angeschimmelt Youth Crew, Racoons, and Keep It a Secret as part of a local landscape where “something strange or unexpected was always happening.”
Photos by Amina Falah
That world shaped everything about how La Petite Mort / Little Death think about music. It taught them, as they put it, “how powerful it can be to make music that really comes from inside you, to notice how many different atmospheres and energies people carry with them. And also what it means to be seen through your music — that people can find something beautiful in it, no matter how drifting or unpolished it might be.”
So what does all that backstory sound like when it finally hits tape? “Disco II” sits at the intersection of sasscore, math rock, screamo, and dancepunk, and doesn’t try to consolidate any of it. The album was recorded in ten days at Echolux Studios in Leipzig with producer Magnus Wichmann (Blond, Leoniden, Neonschwarz), alongside guest vocalist Zooey Agro (13 Year Cicada, Rahel & Zooey) and synth contributions from Fabian Bremer (Aua, Velcros).
The production blends no-wave textures and hyperpop accents with the physical punch of post-hardcore. Drums shift between samples and skins, guitars swing from hyper-nervous math rock recalling the Blood Brothers to bittersweet slowcore in the vein of the Van Pelt to crushing skramz walls that nod toward Birds in Row. Paul’s bass alternates between melodic hooks and counter-movement, keeping the whole thing in motion even when the songs seem determined to derail themselves.
View this post on Instagram
“Die Welle war mein Leben” morphs freely through breaks and scene changes before resolving into a bittersweet, tinkling coda — and Steffen’s vocal performance here puts him in Cedric Bixler-Zavala territory, no small claim.
“L’Envie de Plonger” opens with a growling bassline and a hypnotic single-note flow before Zooey Agro’s casually delivered vocals slide across a dense mesh of staccato attacks and synths — loop and texture work that even Juana Molina might acknowledge. “Sirenhead” tricks you at first: stumbling lo-fi drums, deceptively cute, before Jan steers it into manic territory with rototoms. Driving, chaotic, free and tight at once.
The record deals honestly with the contradictions of DIY spaces. The band describes growing up inside screamo and hardcore communities that talked about emotional openness and safe spaces while often delivering something else entirely.
Aside from the people who genuinely tried to create caring places, a lot of it was simply a sadboy scene,” they write. “There was often talk of ‘safe spaces’ and ’emotional openness,’ while in reality it was frequently self-staging, full of sexism and with little diversity in many aspects.”
But “Disco II” doesn’t settle for bitterness. The album consciously refuses cynicism — it’s focused on closeness, community, and the fragile connections that live shows can actually produce when everything aligns.
The band sees the spaces disappearing, genres sorting themselves into narrower lanes, DIY culture becoming harder to sustain. “Burnout happens quickly in DIY scenes. And it’s hard to make DIY concert culture appealing ‘on paper’ to someone who isn’t already part of it.”
Still, they recognize something encouraging: “There are more diverse bands than ever, which is beautiful. Still, we’re afraid that the spaces are missing — the spaces that allow artists to make these experiences without high fees or big guarantees.”
There’s a specific weight to “Screamo Sucks,” a track that manages to say what it needs to almost without words — making the weird memories from that era felt rather than explained. The band is deliberate about that approach across the whole record. “We wanted to record songs that don’t need to be examined under a microscope — because it feels much nicer to simply be in the moment,” they say. “And because the songs are already packed full of parts and sounds.”
Written between 2019 and 2024, with some fragments dating back to 2016, “Disco II” was ultimately about rediscovering why any of this matters. “It was about finding joy in making music again. Letting go of a lot of things, and allowing ourselves to have fun — on our own and together with others.” The recording sessions with Wichmann, Agro, and Bremer made them, as they describe it, “genuinely happy.”
The album also touches on queerness and the friction that comes when it meets scenes that position themselves as progressive but remain narrowly defined. It addresses sad-boy aesthetics, performative sensitivity, the echo chambers of hardcore — all filtered through songs that refuse to sit still long enough to become a lecture.
Wyświetl ten post na Instagramie
Artwork by Vincent Leinweber, lyrics by Steffen Smirny (with Zooey Agro co-writing on “L’Envie de Plonger” and “Meine Tante im Rückspiegel”), lyric consultation by Paula Stiegler, and translation work from Giacomo Bressan round out a record that clearly took a village.
The band explains the whole thing with a kind of open-handed honesty: “I don’t really know where to begin. So many things exist at once and contradict each other, and I notice how that can be paralyzing. At the very least, I should be looking for people who also feel like starting something new — slowly, carefully, without having everything figured out.”
And maybe that’s the actual engine behind “Disco II – Monomyth.” Not longing for old stuff, not critique, but movement. “We deeply trust that something like this can create some atmosphere that invites people in and includes them,” the band writes. “We felt this with many bands in the past, and if we can pass even a small part of that feeling on, then we’re very happy kids.”
Sixteen tracks. Ten days of recording. Years of accumulated friction turned into something that wants you to move. “Disco II” is not an invitation to analysis — it’s an invitation to the party.
