In the realm of music, where genre lines blur and creativity knows no bounds, a noteworthy band has emerged from the German post–hardcore/math rock scene. FINTE, an audacious quartet, poses an intriguing quandary when asked to define their sound: “Something between post-hardcore, math-rock, or progressive rock – with German lyrics.” This statement, although seemingly ambiguous, offers a glimpse into the ambitious complexity and richness of their art.
The group’s latest offering, “Wie das Endliche Treibt,” released on May 19th, is a sonic exploration that strikes a delicate balance between chaos and harmony, brutality and beauty. This is an album that breaks conventional listening habits, offering listeners an array of composition styles while maintaining a cohesive narrative.
Each track on the album offers a distinct experience: from fierce, chaotic outbursts in “Zersetzung,” to the metal-esque epic “Herbst,” to the emotional despair captured in “Bastion.” The varied sonic landscape serves as a backdrop to the band’s persistent questioning of the world’s state. In a world marked by ecological crises and political unrest, the band probes the paradoxical nature of clear answers that lead us back into familiar patterns.
The album’s production process was a meticulously crafted journey, resulting in a distinct sound that resonates with an underlying rawness. In collaboration with Jochen Müller (ex-Dioramic), the album was recorded at Monkey Moon Recording in Dortmund, providing an authentic testament to FINTE‘s commitment to their vision.
Although comparisons can be drawn to the likes of At The Drive-In, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Glassjaw, or The Hirsch Effekt, FINTE is resolute in carving their own path, pushing their musical vision without compromise.
As we like to put it here on IDIOTEQ, this is not simply an album review, but rather an invitation to journey track-by-track into the dynamic universe of “Wie das Endliche Treibt,” an exploration that promises to leave a lasting mark on the progressive and post-music landscape.
Play it and let’s dive into it together.
Track by track commentary:
ENDE
ENDE was one of the last tracks that we finished for the album. We were considering IM LICHT as closer, and already had a song idea that was standing in line to be the album opener. However, we decided to drop this idea and instead use the end of IM LICHT to build a new intro song. We improvised most of the guitar layers during our recording of the demo. (CHRIS/GUITAR)
While we finished ENDE at a later stage, the lyrics actually came about quite some time ago. At the time, an extreme right-wing organization gained a weird amount of popularity in Germany, which concerned me a lot. When I showed it to the guys later on, I noticed that it could also be applied to other themes that occur on the album. (STEFFEN/VOCALS)
JAGD
JAGD, like ZAHLEN, represents our early Sturm und Drang phase, in which we wanted to fit as many ideas as possible into a song at all costs. Until the final version, we had to pare it down countless times, balancing catchiness and complexity again and again. The first draft of the lyrics was inspired by my personal experience of a spreading acceleration and excessive demands, but I entrusted them completely to Steffen in the course of time. And if anyone has noticed: the drum groove in the quiet bridge is rhythmically a direct quote from Sigur Rós’ »Brennisteinn«. (MARVIN/DRUMS)
Our producer Jochen accentuated the contrasts between the parts to make the song even more dramatic. The lyrical theme sets the tone for the album – acceleration and overload as central mentality in our society, a world, which paradoxically, suggests you all the freedoms, only to feel pressured to be everything all at once. (CHRIS/GUITAR)
SOMA
I remember we had a long discussion about the outro of SOMA, because the lead guitars are pretty obviously an homage to Thrice’s »For Miles«. In the end, we decided to keep them. By the way, for the snare in the outro we recorded a garbage can as an overdub and soaked it in reverb and distortion. (MARVIN/DRUMS)
Scrolling through Instagram one day, I stumbled upon an ad for sort of a fancy little personalized box for supplement pills you can take to optimize your health. This was so absurd to me that it immediately inspired me to start writing the lyrics to SOMA. (STEFFEN/VOCALS)
FÄHRTEN
FÄHRTEN was the last song that we finished for the album during the pandemic. Marvin came up with the basic idea and I jumped on it and threw in a bunch of tapping riffs and lines based on my obsession over Covet and Plini at the time.
I had the idea that this song might represent somewhat of a realization moment that “something” was wrong, yet being incapable of identifying it and finding a new path – and I wrote some first lines of lyrics, and then Steffen and Marvin continued from there. (CHRIS/GUITAR)
At some point during the album production, I started working on some story-style verses that became the spoken word parts in this song. For me, FÄHRTEN represents the journey towards an uncertain time and place while facing existential questions, be it internal hurdles in life or external worries such as the climate crisis. In the first spoken word part you can find a line similar to the first line of “The Dark Tower” books by Steven King, also a story about a person who takes on a monumental journey.
FÄHRTEN started out with the idea of becoming an almost exclusively instrumental song with very few lyrics, but we ended up adding more and more verses, some at the very last second in the recording booth. (STEFFEN/VOCALS)
BASTION
The first sketches for the song go back to early 2018, starting with a jam on the opening drum groove. The bass picking in the bridge, in turn, was brought by our bassist at the time, Ralf.
The lyrics to BASTION were some of the few lyrics on the album that were written in one day and remained almost unchanged. Probably because they came completely from my hand and I wrote it more as a poem. Also, because the text is ultimately a very personal thematization of suicide and I did not want to aestheticize or instrumentalize the memory of a particular person. Even more, I am surprised and proud until today, how Steffen manages to feel and sing these vocals. (MARVIN/DRUMS)
ASCHE
ASCHE was born in the time of the pandemic when most of our creative work was done remotely. We were in the middle of pre-production for the album when Chris built the basic framework of ASCHE with some looped tracks from FÄHRTEN—there still half-jokingly in a lo-fi variant with a beat in the style of Massive Attack. From there I tried to make a more serious beat exploring samples supposedly used by Burial.
In an earlier version, the track ended up being much more brute with glitch and noise effects—which certainly showed my affinity for bands like Nine Inch Nails. Surprisingly, the electronic interlude turned out to be an important breathing space between BASTION and ZERSETZUNG, so we toned it down a bit in the final version. The track got its essential atmosphere (and meaning for the story of the album) through the spoken words of Steffen. (MARVIN/DRUMS)
ZERSETZUNG
During the time where this song came about, I listened a lot to The Dillinger Escape Plan and had the urge to write something as far away as possible from our then current single, Helios. When we released ZERSETZUNG back in 2020, the song was pretty much a test balloon, as we wanted to check out a new recording environment, as well as how it would feel like to have a more aggressive sound. (CHRIS/GUITAR)
Much like ENDE, ZERSETZUNG’s lyrics originated from a time where I realized that certain views I thought were widely regarded as inacceptable by now are still deeply rooted in our society, eating away at its stability. At the time, someone in my close family was battling cancer, which serves as a metaphor here. (STEFFEN/VOCALS)
ZAHLEN
ZAHLEN is probably the most chaotic song on the album, and in retrospect, I cannot remember how we came up with the various structures. It marks a songwriting phase in which we threw together a wide variety of riff ideas in a wild way. For a long time the song was suffering from a kind of dragging chorus, which we completely rewrote in the last step. (MARVIN/DRUMS).
During my studies in media design, I had to attend a marketing class, which got me thinking about the ethics of predicting and controlling people’s needs and wishes and inspired me to start writing the lyrics to this song. I experimented a lot with the rhyme structures in the first verse and am pretty pleased with how it turned out. (STEFFEN/VOCALS)
HERBST
Originally, I introduced the main riff of HERBST in the rehearsal room, suggesting we could just jam out on this riff for two-three minutes and that is it. Funnily enough, HERBST then evolved into our longest song on the record. Shout to our producer Jochen Müller who contributed the killer guest solo and Simon alias Mood of Midas for his saxophone performance!
For me, the lyrics arrive at an understanding that one must exit the spiral of acceleration, hatred and competition by stopping and embarking on a new path, despite not knowing what lies ahead. The back and forth of the two parts represents the ongoing resistance against this new paradigm that crushes all attempts at change, yet, as the opening guitar in IM LICHT suggests, a seedling survives. (CHRIS/GUITAR)
HERBST might be the song I like most on the album, because it captures both our hope as well as despair towards the human condition (with the climate crisis playing a big part, being probably the most emotional topic for me). It always makes me somewhat sad when I listen to it in isolation, because in the end it is only humanity’s worst side that remains. (STEFFEN/VOCALS)
IM LICHT
IM LICHT is one of the oldest songs and one of the many song ideas that Marvin and I wrote back in 2014 when we were both studying abroad and communicated via Guitar Pro (a software to write and exchange musical notation) over the internet. Around 2017, we finally took the idea into the rehearsal room, where we changed many sections multiple times until it felt like an organic song.
ENDE and IM LICHT feel to me as somewhat of a philosophical bracket for the album, debating our need for more or less reason (and what kind of reason) to react to our ecological and political crises. It depicts the prevalence of instrumental reason over practical reason, in which we reflect the means, but not the ends of our actions. (CHRIS/GUITAR)
This song is still a mystery to me. Even though I wrote part of the lyrics, I myself still don’t really know what they mean, but at the same time I can definitely feel what they mean. (STEFFEN/VOCALS)
