Band : Die Apokalyptischen Reiter
Album title : Moral & Wahnsinn
Label : Nuclear Blast GMBH
Distributor : PIAS
Release Date : 25/02/2011
Release : CD

They’ve been around for about 15 years already, have released lots and lots of material (EP’s, DVD’s, live CD’s demo’s, you name it, they released it) and this is their seventh studio album.  Besides their steadfast release of material, they’ve also played countless gigs all over Europe.  Yet they are hugely unknown to the wider public.  I cannot understand why a band like Rammstein got airplay all over the world, yet Die Apokalyptischen Reiter did not achieve this.

It’s a fact of course that you cannot easily pin the music Die Apokalyptischen Reiter produces to one single genre.  Just listen to this CD for instance, when I heard ‘Dir gehört nichts’ this song reminded me of Die Hôhner, a band not much of you might know, but who are very famous in Germany, having written a song for the football world cup for the German team.

Besides writing original songs, they are also using instruments that you’d not immediately expect on a rock album, like trumpets, flutes etc.
This is a very strong album, with no weak moments on it.  It’s a bit of a shame that up to now they haven’t reached the success status a band like Rammstein got for a brief period, because their music is as good as what Rammstein brings, but with even more diversity.  Besides that they also have a very strong live reputation, so what’s holding you Herman for asking them for Rock Werchter for the next edition.  I mean if you can put Iron Maiden and Metallica on your podium, why not these guys ?

96/100

Erik Morren.