Beyond Obsession

Founded in a festival crowd

Beyond Obsession did not begin in a rehearsal room. The duo's own account dates the founding to 2012 at the Wave-Gotik-Treffen in Leipzig, the gathering that fills the city with the German dark-music scene each Whitsun, and the reference points named then — Depeche Mode, Erasure, A-ha, Pet Shop Boys — have not moved since. The band is based in northern Germany and has worked almost entirely inside the German synthpop circuit: clubs of a few hundred capacity, scene festivals, scene press.

The first record, Listen, Learn and Speak, arrived in 2013, followed by a remix companion, Listen the Remixes, in 2014, then Pieces of Machinery in 2015 and Moments of Truth in 2016. Nils Upahl has been the fixed point throughout, singing and handling production; the second chair has changed hands.

The operation is run close to the audience. The band's site bills itself as the official home of synthpop, sells signed and limited pressings direct through its own shop rather than through distributors, runs a mailing list, and publishes a WhatsApp line for contact. That direct channel matters to how the records reach people, and it explains why some editions never appear anywhere else.

A pivot that did not stick

In December 2022 the band released its first EP, MonoPop EP1 Meaning — three tracks co-produced with Rob Dust — and said at the time that it would move to EPs rather than full albums. The plan lasted about a year. Revolution From Below is listed by Apple Music under 2023, and the single Kings of Ashes followed on 27 October 2023, announced together with a Kings of Ashes tour for the following spring.

The album of that name came out considerably later than the November 2023 the band had first signalled: 24 December 2024, ten tracks, part of the pressing sold as a limited edition through the band's shop.

The hard stretch

On 28 January 2024 the band announced that several dates of the Kings of Ashes tour had been cancelled because not enough tickets had sold. Hamburg, Berlin and Erfurt went ahead. The LUX in Hannover still carries its 2 March 2024 booking marked cancelled. Sonic Seducer's 2026 review of the new record refers plainly to the group picking up speed again after a difficult period, which is a franker description than most press releases manage.

The line-up settled in the same stretch. Marco Bartz took over the synthesizer and instrumentation role from André Wylar — the band's biography puts him in the group from 2021, Sonic Seducer dates the change to 2022 — and by that review's reading the substitution did not bend the music in a new direction. Between albums the pair stayed in circulation largely through other people's hands: the single Deadline in 2025, an Essence-Mix of Weight of Words by Peter Spilles, a Funker Vogt remix of I Can't Tell, and in December 2025 a rework of Erasure's She Won't Be Home.

In My Blood

In My Blood was released on 26 June 2026 through Scanner, part of the Dark Dimensions Label Group, and the label frames it as a record about obsession, loss, desire and the things that cannot be fully escaped. Ten tracks run a little under 38 minutes: Leave Me, You're Not My Lover, In My Blood, Dein Herz, Into the Deep, Sugar Kills, Deadline, Lines of Your Face, It's the Void We Share and I'll Take the Pain. Dein Herz is the only German title. It's the Void We Share runs 2:10 and works as an interlude; I'll Take the Pain, at 5:21, closes the record.

The album was trailed by You're Not My Lover on 6 March 2026 and by the title track with a video weeks after. It was issued digitally, as a CD digipak, and as a hand-signed edition sold direct with personal dedications on request.

Sonic Seducer carried a review by Daniel Dreßler in its combined July/August 2026 issue calling this the band's fifth album and its best, working at the seam between retro-tinted electronic pop and modern dance tracks. Dreßler picks out Deadline for its pull towards dark wave, Into the Deep for the hardness of the production, Sugar Kills for what is done to the vocal, and I'll Take the Pain as an experimental ballad in the manner of Depeche Mode's slower pieces — and puts the record's strength down to the width of that range rather than to any single song.

Standing, autumn 2026

The festival slot of the year was M'era Luna on 8–9 August 2026 at the Hildesheim-Drispenstedt airfield, one of the larger European fixtures for the goth, synthpop, darkwave, EBM and industrial audience. The band announced the booking as early as 5 December 2025 and played new album material alongside older songs. Songkick counts 73 past shows for the duo and logged 25 attendance marks for the festival, which is a fair indication of the scale being worked at.

The In My Blood tour proper is deliberately small: three German headline shows, presented by Sonic Seducer, alongside festival and support appearances. Berlin's Privatclub took the first on 20 March 2026, three months before the album was out. The remaining pair are the Ponyhof in Frankfurt on 16 October 2026 and the Alte Fleischerei in Mühlhausen the following night, ticketed through Eventim. Songkick currently lists one upcoming date, the Frankfurt one. Apple Music's concert listings add a November appearance at Sever Synth Fest in Liberec, in the Czech Republic.

On stage

The staging follows the line-up. It is a two-man show — Upahl singing at the front, Bartz behind the synthesizers — in club rooms rather than halls. The Privatclub billing for the tour opener put doors at 19:00 and music at 20:00, with no support act named, so the evening runs as a single set.

What gets played is not complicated: the new album at the centre, earlier songs arranged around it in live versions, with the older material reworked rather than reproduced. The venue's own description of the tour promises dense sound textures and hard sequencer lines moving between euphoria and melancholy, which is close to what the record itself does. Independent reviews of the 2026 shows have not surfaced in the scene press; the notices so far are for the album, and they are the strongest the band has had.