KER is a post metal / doom quartet from Konstanz, Southern Germany. These guys formed in 2013 and are developing a specific dark, organic and burdensome atmosphere with monotone, spherical and heavy riffs. The lyrics describe feelings, thoughts, moments and the band’s philosophy of life. I am honored to give you the exclusive hearing of their self-titled demo tape, put out in collaboration with Dark Omen Records on January 24th!
Both tracks were recorded at Daya Recordings in 2014. This demo is limited to 50 handnumbered copies, each one with unique handmade paper-inserts.
KER is working on more material for a full length release this year. They also plan to play some live shows during 2015. Check out more details in my conversation with the band’s vocalist/guitarist Alex – the full interview is available below.
Hi there! Thanks for taking some time with IDIOTEQ reader! How are things with you today?
Hey there and thanks for the interest in our project. This is my very first music related interview ever so I’ll try my best to speak for the whole band.
Tell us more about Konstanz and your local music scene.
Konstanz is a pretty place by Germanys biggest sea the ‘Bodensee’. It used to have a pretty active Hardcore scene in formal times. There were many concerts going on but it changed from time to time, long before KER. Now i get the feeling the underground scene in Konstanz is shrinking. Mike our guitar dude and Jan-Marc our drummer live around there I am actually not from Konstanz myself. Me (guitar and vocals) and our bass player Johnny are living in the Black Forest around 80 kilometers northern. It’s a beautiful place here, i like the countrified atmosphere around here. Mostly it’s quiet and there is actually no real music scene around here.
How did you become involved with these specific dark metal aesthetics? What grabbed your attention?
Well it’s hard to tell. It just felt right to us doing this type of music. We all also listen to a lot of other music genres but we feel very confortable making such unconfortable music. Yes, I think ‘unconfortable’ describes our sound pretty well.
What’s the story behind the forming of KER? How did you come to understanding of what musical form KER will function in?
KER has a long story behind it. There were a few people coming and going in the projects before KER itself. It took a long time to find the right constellation to make it possible. But since we found together it’s a process guided by feeling. No big science behind that. We are just some dudes playing what feels good to us.
Photo by Fritzografie, Maximilian Borchardt.
Do you consider yourselves post metallers? Does the term doom metal still apply? How do you feel about labeling music?
I don’t like labeling KER with some sort of genre. It must be a common problem for many bands but since you have to give people an idea about what kind of music you produce I mostly use ‘post metal’ as a description.
How do you try to distinguish KER from other bands? Is it even a worthwhile goal for you guys?
We never thought about that a lot. I think it’s not our main archivement to be totally different from everything you’ve heard so far. We just make music we like our way.
Is this new demo tape your only record so far? Are there already some plans to release more music?
This is our very first physical release. We plan to release more this year but for now we concentrate on writing songs and working on our live set.
Tell us more about the labels you’ve teamed up with for this release.
‘Dark Omen Records’ is a small core label featuring cool underground stuff. We are happy to release our first tape with Jonas the mind behind DOR and we are looking forward to work with him in the future. I also should name ‘Daya Recordings’ which made our tracks sound the way we wanted to and finally ‘Guud Vibes’ for mastering our stuff. Of course Max from ‘Fritzografie’ should be mentioned for capturing the atmosphere of our songs in photos.
How does the creative process work to get the ideas from your heads and transform them into musical patterns?
First of all we just jam around and see where it leads us. Just playing together is fun for us so we try to turn what feels the best into track fragments. With no pressure. But in the end each song is a very long process because we always want to make sure to transmit the right feeling in every second of the track.
Are you a live band, as well? Have you already played some live gigs?
We haven’t played any live shows as KER yet but we will this year. So yes we definetly are looking forward to play live a lot.
How about the upcoming months? Any shows you’d like to promote here?
Not yet but keep your eyes on our online sites. We definetly will.
Ok guys. Anything else you’d like to add?
Thank you for reading all the shit above.
Good luck in your future work! Cheers!
Cheers dude and keep up the good work with this page.
