LARRIKINS

A school courtyard in Goldberg

Larrikins were founded in May 2001 in Goldberg, a small town in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The band's own account of the beginning is unglamorous: a school courtyard, no plan, and a lot of ideas. Singer Felix Laube and guitarist Tino Meisel are the two who have been there since the first day; in September 2026 the band marked Meisel's twenty-five unbroken years on guitar with a note that mostly teased him about his reliability.

The rest of the line-up arrived slowly and locally. Drummer Christian Mielke was asked to join in 2006. Bassist Mike Engelberg, known as Icke, came in from the other side of the desk: he recorded and produced the band's debut, helped out at concerts, and then joined properly in 2010. In a November 2019 interview the band explained that they all grew up in the same town and went through the same school, which is a large part of why the group never dissolved during the years when nothing much was happening.

Those early years produced no records at all. Songs written between 2001 and 2006 were played live and then left alone, which is why the back catalogue starts seven years after the band did.

Seven releases, the first two paid for themselves

The recorded history begins with two self-financed CDs: Kommt Zeit, kommt's hart in 2008 and Krisenkirmes in 2011. The first outside support came with Am Ende war der Mensch in 2016 on Ruegencore Records, produced by Dirk Burke, whose other credits include In Extremo and Knorkator. Fuer die, die geblieben sind followed on the same label in 2019, and the band described it at the time as autumn in their souls - doubt, grief and processing rather than anything built for a party.

Reminiszenz, released in 2022 on Dackelton Records, is the odd one and the most revealing. It collects ten of those unrecorded songs from 2001 to 2006, reworked to sit alongside the band's present sound, and runs only 34 minutes and 33 seconds. The booklet goes past twenty pages and carries historical photographs of Goldberg dated between 1899 and 1960. Reviewing it for Rocktimes, Joachim Brookes called the band raw, unpolished and aggressive, and judged the reworking of the old material excellently handled.

The last link in that chain is Live & Akustisch, issued digitally on 22 December 2023 as eight tracks taken from an acoustic concert at the Stadtkirche in Goldberg on 22 April 2023. That show had been postponed for more than two years before it finally sold out, and the band treated the recording as a Christmas present to the people who waited.

Nichts ist jemals sicher, and the argument about it

The current record is Nichts ist jemals sicher, a double album released on 31 January 2025 through Dackelton Records: sixteen tracks, around seventy minutes, and the first studio material in close to six years. Its subjects are freedom, self-determination and the right to be left alone to decide things.

It split reviewers in a useful way. Writing for powermetal.de, Bjoern Backes gave it 7.0 out of 10, singling out Moll und Dur for still finding a decent paraphrase for the state of the world and Scheisse und Juwelen for proper aggression, while complaining that 19 Zigaretten and Dir gehoert mein Leben trade in standard German-rock platitudes. His verdict was that it is a good album short of the final punch. Florian Buechting at Flyctory rated it 4.2 out of 5, praised the spread of brass, piano and guitar and the number of choruses built for crowds to shout back, and picked 8 Minuten - delivered in a hip-hop-inflected cadence over lyrics about inequality - as his favourite. His criticism was the opposite end of the same problem: too many tracks of similar length and similar shape, so the back half of a seventy-minute double record starts to blur.

The band's own line about where they sit is blunter than either review. Too melancholic for straight Oi!, too angry for agreeable German rock, too awkward for the usual boxes. They have been calling what they do Non Genre Music since at least 2019, and name Genesis and Pink Floyd alongside punk and hard rock when asked what they listen to.

Where they stand in October 2026

The past twelve months have been the busiest of the band's history. On 21 October 2025 they played what they called their first headline show at the Mau Club in Rostock. A month later, on 21 November 2025, they headlined Marias Ballroom with Edelgift and Moin Cherie opening, and by 26 November 2025 they were thanking Hamburg and Oberhausen in the same breath. On 12 December 2025 they put out a standalone single, Lass es Weihnachten sein, with a lyric video.

2026 opened with club shows at the Alte Post in Schwerin on 9 January and the Baracke in Muenster on 10 January, followed on 30 January by the fifth instalment of their Kuddertour aboard the MS Kaeppn Brass in Rostock-Warnemuende - a 35-euro ticket, support from Moewe & die Oelmuetzen, sold out. The B.A.Rocktikum show in Guestrow on 7 March also sold out. Summer was festivals: the twentieth Aukrug Open Air on 14 May, Amtsrock in their own Goldberg on 20 June, and Bockpalast in Wienhausen on 8 August, which charged nothing at the gate.

On 20 May 2026 the band announced 25, the anniversary tour, presented jointly by Ox-Fanzine, Livegigs.de, Punk*Rockt and Dackelton Records. It began on 26 September at the JUZ in Leer. Two dates in the first week of October stand out: on 9 and 10 October 2026 Larrikins opened Oxo86's record-release shows at the Felsenkeller Ballsaal in Leipzig and the Grosse Freiheit 36 in Hamburg, both sold out with no box-office tickets at all in Leipzig, where The Offenders were also on the bill. The band called the Leipzig night the opening of an important weekend.

One date is gone. On 22 September 2026 they cancelled the 2 October show at Heile Welt in Muenster after a death close to the band, and said they would try to place it in 2027.

The rooms, and who else is on the bill

Nothing about the operation has scaled beyond clubs, and that appears to be deliberate. The remaining anniversary dates are the Mau Club in Rostock on 6 November, the Goldgrube in Kassel on 7 November, the Ponyhof in Frankfurt am Main on 13 November, the AJZ in Neumuenster on 14 November, the Flamingo in Hitzacker on 4 December and the Kiste in Berlin on 5 December. Earlier dates in Damelack were played in a Gasthaus.

Billing shifts from room to room, which is normal for a band at this level and worth knowing before buying. In Kassel on 7 November they are the special guest rather than the headliner: Normalboese, formed by former members of Zaunpfahl, closes the night, with doors at 19:30 and music from 20:00. The support history runs a long way back - slots with In Extremo and COR, and an opening set for Dritte Wahl at the Astra Kulturhaus in Berlin in December 2019 - and the band has said plainly that it rates all three formats, festival, club and support, for different reasons.

By the time the double album landed in January 2025 they had passed four hundred shows. They have also learned to cancel when they have to: a Klanggeruest date in Erfurt set for 25 November 2023, with White Sparrows and Kruemelmilch supporting, was pushed back because of illness in the band.