Today, Böhse Onkelz have released their new, self titled album as they celebrate forty years as a band. For many of you, this is not a band with which you are necessarily familiar, as they are a German band and all of their songs are in the German language. Their albums are all intended for the German market. I don't believe they even tour outside of German speaking countries. In Germany, however, they are hugely popular.
Böhse Onkelz is a stylized spelling of a term that means evil uncles. Their fans are referred to as "Nichten und Neffen" or nieces and nephews. If you watch any concert footage, you will often hear the entire crowd singing along, word for word. They have climbed their way up from sketchy independent labels to major labels and have even opened for the Rolling Stones. Böhse Onkelz are a model for achieving success in spite of a relentless assault from critics.
The majority of the criticism leveled against them stems from their early years. Carelessly worded lyrics, record labels that catered to an unsavory crowd, and a skinhead aesthetic on their first album all contributed to an unflattering picture of them being painted by the media. Accusations of right-wing extremist sympathies followed the band throughout their career, but they carried on and continued to deliver to their fans. Even as large record store chains refused to stock their albums, they still charted well in Germany. The Onkelz were a force to be reckoned with.
So in honor of forty years of Onkelz and a new album, let's go back to the beginning and see what all the fuss is about...
Böhse Onkelz began as a punk band. Not many recordings exist from this era, but some poor quality demos have always been in circulation among fans and bootleggers. Some of their songs from this early era have been criticized as being xenophobic or racist, though the band dismisses them as simply products of youthful rage against other groups of kids around whom they grew up. I'm inclined to believe this explanation because as a young punk rocker I too would say and do things I knew would provoke others just for the sake of being an anti-social punk. It's what teenagers in such subcultures do. As an adult you look back on those words and actions and cringe because you've grown up and realize that all of that really wasn't too cool. To base any accusation against someone's character off of what they said in a few songs as teenagers is simply unfair and I'll say no more about it. The bigger controversy is yet to come.
In 1984, Böhse Onkelz released their first LP, Der Nette Mann. A West German label called Rock-O-Rama Records put the record out. At the time, Rock-O-Rama was known for left-leaning punk rock, with the punk band OHL being their flagship artist. The label had dabbled in Oi! music previously with the left-wing skinhead band Die Alliierten in the previous year, and it had recently released an album from British Oi! band Combat 84 to which it had obtained the rights. The debut LP by the Onkelz, however, was the first to firmly stand in the quickly growing skinhead culture, as the band had adopted an Oi! sound and presented themselves as skinheads on the album cover. Not a big deal, really, as the Oi!/skinhead scene had achieved a fair amount of popularity in Britain over the last several years, and their songs were non-political apart from a patriotic song about Germany. They had no idea what was just around the corner.
Within the following year, the Rock-O-Rama label released an album by perhaps the most notorious white nationalist skinhead band ever to have existed. The British band Skrewdriver, having seen the label was willing to work with skinhead bands, signed with Rock-O-Rama and brought some friends of theirs with them. By 1986, Rock-O-Rama was almost exclusively right wing and racist skinhead music. By that time, Böhse Onkelz had dropped the skinhead look and were eager to sever ties with the label. They fulfilled their contract as soon as they could, releasing Böse Menschen, Böse Lieder and the six-song mini-album Mexico, and went on their way. That wasn't the end of it, though.
In 1986, their debut album landed on the index of youth endangering media in Germany, and was later banned, due to the content in six of the songs on the album. The song "Frankreich '84" contained a poorly chosen metaphor relating to Germany invading France for the UEFA 1984 soccer tournament. There was similar reasoning behind the song entitled "Böhse Onkelz" with a line that basically said today we rule Germany, tomorrow we conquer the world, in reference to their expected rise in popularity; they would write many self-aggrandizing songs throughout their career. "Fußball und Gewalt" and "Dr. Martens Beat" contained references to committing violent acts. "Mädchen" was sexually explicit. The title track was about a child murderer told from his perspective. There were no songs promoting any Nazi or racist ideology, but the fact that a record from a skinhead band on a label that was now producing racist and neo-Nazi material had been banned was just too easy to demagogue. They were labeled as having far-right sympathies and it would be a difficult label to shake.
Their next recording contract was with a relatively new label called Metal Enterprises. This label is known most for releasing really bad hard rock and heavy metal albums, with a few exceptions. Oddly enough, this label would also begin to release music from far-right bands, but that would come much later. Böhse Onkelz would release three albums (Onkelz Wie Wir, Kneipenterroristen, and Es Ist Soweit) and an EP (Lügenmarsch) on this label. Their sound was more heavy metal than Oi! on these albums, though they had started moving in that direction prior to switching labels. It was during this era that they really began to fire back at their critics. The song "Lügenmarsch" (parade of lies) in particular is an example of this. They return criticism to those who dislike their new musical direction, to the press, those who would ban their albums, and retailers who would not stock their albums, condemning the lies being told about the band by all of those people. This is really a great strategy for getting a very loyal following from your fans, too, especially in the punk and metal scenes where you feel you are part of something that other people just don't understand and want to take away from you. Whether intentional or not, the Onkelz were on to something that ensured the loyalty of their fans always overcame pressure from the critics.
After leaving the Metal Enterprises label, Böhse Onkelz signed with Bellaphon Records, the larger label that was doing distribution for Metal Enterprises. They took on a more melodic hard rock sound beginning with their first Bellaphon album Wir ham’ noch lange nicht genug. This sound carried through to the next album, Heilige Lieder, and on to rest of their career and helped bring them their mainstream popularity. The Ballaphon era also saw the release of their first live album, Live in Vienna; a compilation called Gehasst, verdammt, vergöttert, which featured some remixes and re-recordings of some older songs; and the double album set Weiß/Schwarz. It was on the Weiß album that they included a scathing song about racial violence called "Deutschland im Herbst" written in response to xenophobic riots that occurred in Rostock, Germany, where rioters firebombed an apartment block of asylum seekers while 3,000 onlookers stood by and applauded. In this song the rioters are condemned and compared to the Brown Shirts of Nazi Germany. If there was any question of where the band stood on this issue, this should have settled it, but of course it did not.
Even after moving to a major label, Virgin Records, and having their new album Hier sind die Onkelz reaching #5 on the German charts, the controversy continued. One newspaper saw a mis-spelling of the song Noreia (they read it as Noreira) and discovered that if spelled backwards, the mis-spelling was the name of a Celtic god, and many white nationalist groups identify with ancient Celtic culture. In response the Onkelz included a song on their next album E.I.N.S. (a stylized spelling of the German word for one) called "Enie Tfahcstob rüf Ediona-RAP", which spelled backwards is "Eine Botschaft für Paranoide" or "A Message for Paranoids". This contained a backward message that when reversed translates to: "Congratulations. Must've been a lot of work playing this song backwards. Either you are one of the paranoid assholes we've created this song for, or you're simply curious. For the former, let me say: Anyone expecting satanic or fascist messages to be played backwards on our records must be downright silly and, what's more, probably has a persecution complex. You poor creature, we really feel sorry for you! Better lock yourself up and throw away the key."
After another live album, Live in Dortmund, and perhaps their most popular album, Viva los Tioz, Böhse Onkelz left Virgin Records and began their own label, Rule23 Recordings. During this time, they released their final three studio albums of the band's initial run: Ein böses Märchen, Dopamin, and Adios, plus several live and compilation sets. The band announced their retirement, and at the end of their final tour they performed for an audience of 120,000, a concert that included Motörhead as a supporting band.
As a sort of epilogue to the band's career, two years after their final show a new Onkelz recording was released. This was a re-recording of their 1987 album Onkelz wie wir. The band had been rather successful in acquiring the rights to their early albums, but this album had already been sold by Metal Enterprises to another label who refused to part with it. In order to, at least, have the rights to those songs again, the entire album was re-recorded and released in 2007. The music was faithful to the original version, though there was a noticeable improvement in their playing abilities in the twenty years that had passed.
In 2014, a reunion concert was announced, the success of which brought about the prospect of a new album. Memento was released in 2016, and throughout the packaging appeared a collage of Böhse Onkelz tattoos sent in by their fans. Two years later, a 30th anniversary re-recording of the Kneipenterroristen album was released.
Their most recent album to date, the self titled Böhse Onkelz, was released today, 28 February 2020. Having just listened to it, I'm rather impressed. The band is in excellent form, and several songs stood out that I'm sure will grow on me the more I listen to it. Many bands seem to suffer from a sort of late-career autopilot syndrome; that is not the case here.
I've been a fan of Böhse Onkelz for twenty years now. I barely speak a word of German, but I still find them quite enjoyable and am even learning more of the German language along the way. For the most part, the controversies surrounding the band are silly. Of course there are some criticisms about their early years that can be fairly made, but the same can be said about any of us to some degree. We all grow and change and the Onkelz are no different. I encourage you to ignore any negative press you may have heard and look into them yourself, read and listen to their own words and I think you'll see they have a positive view and that their success is well deserved.
Viva los Tioz!