Kochkraft durch KMA

Four rehearsal rooms, and a joke about a trowel

Kochkraft durch KMA came together in late 2014, assembled out of musicians scattered across Duisburg, Cologne and Bonn: Lana Giese on vocals, Andreas Klees on guitar, Beray Habip on drums and David Trapp on bass and synthesisers, with writing and production shared between them. The band now works out of Duisburg-Marxloh, one of the poorest districts in North Rhine-Westphalia, and the address matters to how they are written about — promoters rarely introduce them without it.

The name is deliberately meaningless, and so is most of the surrounding vocabulary. The group files itself under "Neue Deutsche Kelle" — New German Trowel — a pun on the Neue Deutsche Welle of the late 1970s and early 1980s that tells a listener roughly what the synthesisers will sound like while refusing to take the heritage seriously. Critics have settled on a cluster of terms that all point at the same thing: electropunk, synth-punk, indie-rave-punk, electroclash, with squealing keyboard cut-ups over guitars tuned slack and low.

The line-up has turned over almost completely. The band today is Lana Van da Vla on vocals, Sebastian Mellen on guitar and bass, Beray Habip on drums and vocals, and Nicki Louder on synthesisers — Habip the only founder still in the room. Louder, interviewed in December 2022 under the name Nicki Frenking, described the working method as close to indiscriminate: ninety-nine per cent of the ideas thrown out get a chance. Habip's summary of the arrangement was shorter — a band is like a marriage, only with three people.

Hits, lice and dead children

The recorded run began with two EPs in 2015, Volle Pulle! in May and Noch Mehr Hits ! ! 11! in November, titles that set the register for everything after. The first album, Endlich Läuse, followed in 2018; Alle Kinder sind tot arrived in September 2022, and remains the most purely absurdist thing in the catalogue — dark subject matter bolted to arrangements that keep collapsing into slapstick. Louder's explanation at the time was that the fun is necessary precisely because the topics are so heavy.

Hardcore never dies das, released on 11 April 2025 through Grand Hotel van Cleef, is the record that moved them. Twelve tracks in thirty-five minutes, it entered the German albums chart at No. 38 in its release week — the first time the band had registered there at all. Reviewers treated it as the point where the Dada settled into songwriting: plattentests.de gave it 7/10 and noted that the free-wheeling nonsense of the previous album had resolved into actual compositions, singling out Ich sang die ganze Zeit von Dir 2, Ehrlich, Reich and Wer soll ich heute für Dich sein?. Visions scored it 8/12, with Nadine Schmidt arguing that every lyric is deliberate and every joke calculated, and flagging Tag des Pferdes as the moment the swaying synth textures come closest to pandering. laut.de called it the band's most mature work and rated it four out of five.

The politics are not buried deep. Across the album the targets are capitalist logic, toxic masculinity and social inertia, and the delivery ranges from the gritty shove of Bon Jovi to the loss-of-control rush of Freefalltower. One review summarised the balance as danceable yet substantive — loud, but not empty — which is roughly the consensus position.

Six months later came a postscript. Hardcore never dies dazzz, a four-track 12-inch EP, was released on 10 October 2025, also on Grand Hotel van Cleef. Reviewer Oliver Lippert was explicit that it is not album offcuts: the four songs, including Was reimt sich auf klicken? and Die DJ hat ne REM-Phase und ich gleich auch, were written between April and August 2025. It runs eleven minutes. A single, Realität, recorded with Heisskalt, followed alongside the touring.

Cock am Ring

In summer 2022 the band started a side project that has probably done more for their public profile in Germany than any single record. Cock am Ring was a sampler and campaign built on a simple device: bands with FLINTA+ participation covering songs by the all-male acts on the Rock am Ring bill, as a way of making the festival's gender arithmetic impossible to ignore. It grew into a festival of its own in Münster.

The band have an obvious standing to make the point — an even split of genders in the line-up, which Visions noted in 2025 is still unusual within their own scene. Asked in December 2022 what the campaign had achieved, Louder claimed no victory beyond having pushed the conversation forward, which is a more modest answer than the project's reception would have allowed. The same interview carried the band's other recurring theme: buy tickets for small acts early, because the support slot is where the next decade of bands is decided.

2026: the year the diary filled up

The touring year that followed Hardcore never dies das has been the heaviest of the band's career, and it has been structured as a long festival summer feeding into a club run in autumn. The outdoor dates began on 1 May 2026 with a boat trip to Helgoland and ran almost without a gap: Summer Sound in Bremen on 6 June, Lonesome Lake in Zittau on 4 July, the Zelt-Musik-Festival in Freiburg on 17 July, Deichbrand at Cuxhaven on 19 July, AM SCHLUSS in Thun on 23 July, Noisehausen on 25 July, Rock im Dorf in Kirchdorf, Austria, on 1 August, Lippstadt Open Air on 14 August, Stemweder Open Air on 15 August, Umsonst & Draußen in Weingarten on 18 September and Rock am Pferdemarkt in Lingen on 19 September.

Two co-headline runs raised the room sizes. The band played with MADSEN at the Stadtpark in Hamburg on 5 June and again at the Festung Ehrenbreitstein in Koblenz and Burg Creuzburg on 28 and 29 August. In October they joined Das Lumpenpack for four shows: two nights at the Schlachthof in Wiesbaden on 1 and 2 October, both sold out, the Zenith in Munich on 3 October, and the Turbinenhalle in Oberhausen on 18 October.

Their own tour under the Hardcore never dies dazzz banner then takes over, opening at the Hafenkneipe in Zürich on 21 October, through Freiburg's Jazzhaus for the Still Pop Festival on 22 October, the Reitschule in Bern on 23 October, Heilbronn, Ulm, the Elfer Club in Frankfurt on 28 October, Gleis 22 in Münster on 30 October, Vechta, Chemnitz, Nürnberg, Leer, Lüneburg and Rostock, finishing at the Waschhaus in Potsdam on 14 November with tickets from €27.10. Two 2027 dates are already posted: the band's own new-year show at the Bora in Duisburg on 2 January, and Farewell Youth Fest in Dresden over 18–20 June.

Eight songs, no encore

What the band do on a stage has been documented in enough detail this year to be described precisely rather than impressionistically. The festival sets have been short and fixed: eight songs in thirty-five minutes at the Festung Ehrenbreitstein on 28 August, eight in half an hour on each Wiesbaden night, nine at the Zenith on 3 October, eleven at Rock am Pferdemarkt in Lingen on 19 September. Nothing is logged as an encore anywhere in the 2026 run — the set simply stops.

The opening is one of two songs, Bon Jovi or Wer soll ich heute für dich sein?, and the closing position rotates between Influencer:innen hassen diesen Trick, Kiss Me and Ich sang die ganze Zeit von dir 2. The Bremen headline set on 6 June ran a full sixty-five minutes and worked Fatboy Slim's The Rockafeller Skank into the front of the setlist, which is the clearest statement available of what the band think they are doing: a rave set with a guitar player in it.

Reviewers have mostly reported on the room rather than the production. A write-up of the Lippstadt Open Air appearance on 14 August 2026 called the set damn entertaining and cheeky, placed the band in a line running from 1980s new wave through techno and electroclash, and picked out Gutes Arbeitsklima, trotzdem kalt and Danke for their synthesiser work. The promoter copy for the autumn tour makes the same claim in blunter terms — energy, anger and attitude, and a show built to take everyone in the room with it.