Knorkator

Knorkator was a German band from Berlin that combined heavy metal with comical elements. They proclaimed themselves to be "Germany's most band in the world" (German: "Deutschlands meiste Band der Welt"), as the title "The best band in the world" was already taken by Die ?rzte. The band was founded in 1994 but only played in the Berlin / Brandenburg area until 1998.

Knorkator gained further fame (and some notoriety) in 2000 with their performance of Ick wer zun Schwein (sic; literally, in Berlin dialect, "I'm turning into a pig") in the German national qualification for the Eurovision Song Contest.

Knorkator announced the end of the band in a MySpace-Bulletin on June 14th. The last concert was played December 5th in Berlin. The official reason given for the band's breakup is that Alf Ator wants to leave Germany to begin a new life in Thailand.

Style

Knorkator's music can be largely classified as industrial metal, somewhat akin to White Zombie and Ministry; Knorkator, however, strongly features a comedic element. Most songs escalate into falsetto vocals and bombastic, over-the-top anthemic choruses, with crushing guitars and subtle samplers. Due to the amusing message, however, the band's considerable technical and artistic merit is sometimes overlooked.

Knorkator's lyrics are somewhat explicit, but always very humorous:

"Ich lass mich klonen" deals with the advantages of cloning oneself, hence sparing the effort of masturbation
"VIVA Buzz Dee" is a worship-anthem towards guitarist Buzz Dee
"Wie weit ist es bis zum Horizont" wonders about the metaphor of the distance to the horizon, but continues to calculate it with equations
"Komm wieder her" begins as a lament to a lost love, but later its hinted that the singer only abused this partner to do the chores.
"Weg nach unten" describes a depressed person digging himself into the earth; what appears to be metaphorical at first is in the end revealed to be meant literally: "Dann kommt Licht und ein K?nguruh, und ich wei? ich bin zu weit" ("Then there's light and a kangaroo, and I know I've gone too far")
"Nur mal Angenommen" is a monologue inside the singer's head, where he wonders what would happen if he was flexible enough to stick his head up into his anus. The main question he deals with are "Where would I come out?"
The aptly named "A" only contains the lyrics "A / A / A / A", which are in fact four choruses of a lengthy distorted scream.
"Aeger sum" sounds like an ecclesiastic or gregorian choral in Latin, but if one translates the lyrics its basically an enumeration of technical terms of illnesses, taken from a medical dictionary.

Most of Knorkator's lyrics are in German; however, some songs also feature English ("beating around the bush", "Ma Baker", etc.), Thai ("Mai khao djai", "Khid tyng baan"), Latin ("Aeger sum"), or French ("Ma belle f?mme", "Franz Hose") lyrics - these songs are often extreme covers of previously well-known hit songs.

Knorkator's wild stage shows and appearance are analogously chaotic: half of Stumpen's body is tattooed black, and he usually performs in his goofy underpants; Buzz Dee's appearance is often cited as being a clone of "Big" Jim Martin.

Live performances

Knorkator were (in)famous for their wild stage shows. Alf Ator used to hit the audience with a big foam club, they also threw toast slices and wet autumn foliage at the crowd. A modified shredder was used to distribute shreddered vegetables and fruit over the crowd, which was announced as "vegetarian airway-catering". In earlier shows, there were a lot of furniture pieces placed on stage which became destroyed during the show by Alf or Stumpen, mostly with an axe or a baseball bat. Stumpen was also known for wearing almost nothing on stage except for a woman's bathing suit or underpants.

Origin of the name

The name "Knorkator" is, so it is generally assumed, derived from "knorke", a word used in Berlin and the Ruhr basin meaning "great" or "fabulous" that has, however, fallen into disuse and is somewhat dated (similar to the English slang word "swell"). The suffix -ator alludes to the endings of powerful and muscular superheroes like "terminator", "gladiator", "predator", etc. Thus an appropriate translation would be "Swellinator". As Knorkator state: "We wanted to become the best and finest music superheroes" (German: ?Wir wollten also die besten und tollsten Musiksuperm?nner werden.? - ?Tarebuch?, January 15, 2006).

Members

Stumpen (or Stumpennsylvania) - vocals
Buzz Dee (or Buzz Deenemark) - guitar
Alf Ator (or Alf Ghanistan) - vocals, keyboards, songwriting, arrangement
Nick Aragua (or Nick Daniels) - drums
Tim Buktu (or Tim Beam) - bass
Former members
Kirk Thiele - guitar
Chrish Chrash - drums

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Original Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knorkator