The Krupps, 45th Anniversary Tour 2025

Steel, labor, muscle power, sweat, machines, industry... but also structural change, unemployment, uprooting, xenophobia, and fear of the future: powerful vocabulary that DIE KRUPPS have always used, filling it with content, linking it to visions, and forming solid foundations for music – for their very own sound, which has constantly evolved over almost four decades and yet remains unmistakable. DIE KRUPPS are true pioneers who are not only at home in several soundscapes, but who have paved the way for the unheard and were and still are significantly responsible for the development of new genres.

In the late 1970s, Jürgen Engler and his band MALE brought punk to Germany; in the 1980s and 1990s, he and his congenial partner Ralf Dörper established EBM and electro-metal. DIE KRUPPS have so far moved between the poles of EBM/Industrial and groovy metal, albeit with different focuses. While "The Machinists Of Joy" (2013) emphasized electronics and their last album, "Metal Machine Music" (2015), was brutal and metallic, "Vision 2020 Vision" is the culmination of the band's groundbreaking phase between 1992 and 1997, the final, complete fusion of two musical worlds. Analog synthesizers sound raw and powerful, underpinning the fierce thrash riffs of guitarist Marcel Zürcher and making the current KRUPPS sound more driving and dynamic than ever.

Crisp verses, catchy hooks, striking breaks, marching basses, gripping choruses – Dörper and co-writer Engler wrote some of their best songs ever for "Vision 2020 Vision." Music, artwork, and lyrics are inextricably linked, fueling and stimulating each other. Jürgen Engler's world on the cover is gray and bleak, but the imminent future he sees through his lens is meant to be frightening. DIE KRUPPS remain thematically current and relevant: "Extinction Time" and "DestiNation Doomsday" describe our world on the brink, "Alllies" and "Fuck You" are addressed overseas, where egoism, isolation, and ruthlessness are dictated from the highest authorities, "Human" takes a stand against all of humanity, and the title track states: "Violence will soon explode, frustration reaches overload, Revolution is imminent, we're in the year of discontent." What remains is the hope that DIE KRUPPS will be proven wrong in this case.

Program and cast