Keller Kinder
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Keller Kinder

Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand | Established. Jan 01, 2006 | SELF

Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand | SELF
Established on Jan, 2006
Band Rock Industrial

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This band has not uploaded any videos

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"The Best New Music : Dying City by Keller Kinder (2014)"

Dying City is the second album for gothic/industrial outfit Keller Kinder from Wellington, New Zealand. Dying City features thirteen tracks over fifty-six minutes and is the first LP release from the band in six years.

The album comes with a ton of artwork which is credited to Hayley Heartbreak, and for a digital release I felt that adding artwork was really cool. In a typical Bandcamp release you just get a single cover art image so that your media player has something for the album. The artwork delivered with Dying City is enough to do a "make your own CD", with front cover, insert and back cover art provided in a few differentiations just so you can personalize the album in your own way. It is, I think, a clever touch.

Of the thirteen tracks on Dying City, five or six are non-vocal instrumental or interlude pieces. I actually don't mind this. Several bands have done it before (Nine Inch Nails, Psyclon Nine and Dawn of Ashes come to mind) and it can really work. Though I think the feelings behind the breaks in Dying City are less about breaking up chapters in the album, which is how Psyclon Nine and Dawn of Ashes used them, and more about breaking between styles.

In an excellent example of how instrumental pre-tracks can work well, the album opens with one of these non-vocal tracks entitled "Black Sabbaticals" which builds this great crescendo before dropping into "House of Glass", and I love how this song sets the scene. It very much reminds me of "The Frail" leading into "The Wretched" on Nine Inch Nails' The Fragile.

"House of Glass". What can I say? I love this track for a number of reasons, only one of which is how raw it is. I've been privileged enough to see this track live too, and it's very impressive to the point where the album version doesn't give it justice.

The album sticks to a bit of a formula with an instrumental before the vocal songs, where the instrumental "introduces" the vocal song and the change in style. This works to help break up the album and herald that the next thing coming up is different.

Track five is the awesome "Feinde", the sole track featuring singer Duncan Nairn's brilliant lyrics sung in German. It's hard to believe after hearing the song that singer Duncan Nairn’s first language is in fact not German and I must admit after their first album Kindergarten I wanted more German tracks than just "Feinde" on this album.

One of the most powerful songs on Dying City has to be "The Storm". And as per the formula, there is a beautiful and soothing instrumental titled, "Tout Seul à Calais" leading into it. "The Storm" itself is nearly six minutes of goth beauty and really showcases Duncan's vocal capabilities. "The Storm" for some reason makes me think of Nick Cave, and overall this song is one of my favourites for the album.

"Bridgeburner" is a fast paced track with industrial leanings, featuring modulated vocals, strong electronic elements, and rapid drumming. Following at track nine, and weighing in at nearly nine minutes, is the epic "Bats in the Belfry". My copy of Dying City, being one of the first, was actually missing this track at release but the good gents at Keller Kinder saw fit to furnish all early birds like myself with a copy after fixing the Bandcamp release.

The album finishes with the interesting "The Tale of The Widow", and I can hear the feel of The Cure and other eighties goth bands here. I've said it before, but I really adore Duncan's vocal range and this album just has such a great mix of songs to reflect this.

The album is brilliant and it was great to hear many of these tracks live at Fiend Fest. The album is a steal for its asking price, filled with excellent quality goth and industrial music, and I'm happy to rate this a 4/5. I'm just hoping we don't have to wait another six years for another release. - ISN Radio.com


"CD Review: Keller Kinder - Dying City (2014)"

Gothtronica at its finest. Keller Kinder formed in 2007 and have been impressing a local and international audience ever since. Their first album, Kindergarten, had fantastic reviews from all around the globe. After such success with their first album their second album, Dying City, was highly anticipated though fans did have a long wait. An album worth the wait however as Keller Kinder brings back their impressive blending of goth, industrial, and metal for another hour of great music.

Off to a dark and powerful start, Black Sabbaticals, the first track marches into the album and blends seamlessly into track two, House of Glass. With simple but powerful synth rhythms, backed by a solid wall of guitar, and the dark vocals from Duncan, House of Glass has all the elements you expect from Keller Kinder. Followed by Indifference we hear the first of the album dividers, these kind of tracks are something quite common in industrial music, some may call them filler tracks. These speak more artistically than musically and you can make up your own mind about them but Dying City has four, Indifference, Tout Seul à Calais, 19 65 9 17 C, & Seventeen Seconds.

Inhuman comes back in with a very strong industrial sound before moving onto Feinde. If you are unfamiliar with Keller Kinder, Feinde will come as a surprise from the bi-lingual vocals being the only track of the album with German vocals. The Storm is a much more melodic track bringing a more gothic feel to the album than the previous tracks. The gothic feel is continued strongly with Bats in the Belfry that has some decidedly classic Bauhaus sounds to it with some more modern industrial thrown in. The album ends off with Tale of The Widow, a fantastic finish, with a heavier gothic sound it winds up the album brilliantly.

In efforts not to bore you this hasn't been a track by track analysis so there are other tracks you'll have to check out for yourselves. There is no one quite like Keller Kinder in the New Zealand goth scene and this album is a must have. Well arranged with most of the tracks moving perfectly into the next and a brilliant variety of sound & style, Dying City, is another great album from Keller Kinder and we hope the wait for a third album isn't as long.

- Vince Clark - ALTearoa


"An Interview with Keller Kinder (2014)"

Altearoa:
How would you define your music?

Duncan:
I don’t know, I suppose it’s electronic, its dark, its sinister, its aggressive, its introspective, its mopey at times. It has…

Brad:
Have you got any more adjectives left? (laughs)

Duncan:
Well it has very sad moments and very angry moments.

Brad:
When I’m trying to give my three word description I just say its electronic or industrial rock. Obviously there’s a Goth aspect to the music and we’ve worked on that for a long time and worked with that, but there’s this connotation to that word for people, especially if they’re not part of the scene. So they immediately think you’re weird and just all sorts of things that you probably don’t want to be thinking so I just try to avoid it.

Duncan:
Yea, you say dark and gloomy and sinister.

Brad:
I don’t even say that I just say it’s like guitars with computers.

Duncan:
You can just boil it down to electronic music with guitars.

Brad:
Occasionally I say that we sound like Marilyn Manson or something just cause that’s what they know.

Duncan:
Because they’ll understand what that means and it’s not completely inaccurate.

Altearoa:
One of the terms we’ve seen to describe your music is ‘gothtronica’, what do you think of that?

Duncan:
I think I came up with that (laughs). I remember sitting in a car once, on the way to the photoshoot that ended up being used for Kindergarten, I recall thinking “gothtronica... well, close enough”. That was at a time when we weren’t doing as much industrial, it was quite early on, and it was definitely more of a Goth band. We just had that in our minds of what it was going to be. Later on we did a lot more industrial and it got heavier, it got dancier, as we wanted to incorporate other sides of musical tastes into the band that we were doing. That was mostly down to Brad. I just changed my vocal style and rolled with it. I started writing actually borderline sincere lyrics because originally it was all kind of a joke. The first four or five songs were all kind of satirical and a bit of a joke. Then I got into some literary stuff. I’d write songs inspired by books I was reading and those became songs for the first album. Lost Happiness and Lasting Pain is based on Paradise Lost, and Häftling was based on Mary Stuart, which is a German play so I wrote the song in German.

Altearoa:
So you speak German fluently?

Duncan:
I’m bilingual, yes. There critics with the first album, I read some reviews, that thought that my use of German was very predictable given the genre in which we were working. Given how strong the scene is in Germany for this kind of music and a lot of darkwave does come out of Germany.

Brad:
One of the bands in particular I was listening to a lot of at the time was Hanzel Und Gretyl. Who are obviously not German but are playing that up a lot. The thing is that the German language has a very cool sound too it. It’s not aggressive but it is, should we say assertive.

Altearoa:
How did Keller Kinder get started?

Keller Kinder - She Likes The Candle Burning
Kindergarten (2008)
Duncan:
Brad and I were drinking a lot of bourbon and absinthe together when we were about 21, and listening to a lot of Type O Negative and Rammstein and that sort of thing. Brad had written this pretty little piano piece that he called ‘She Likes the Candle Burning’ and he’d written some lyrics to it. You’d (Brad) written that before we started jamming and then we got together and went up to your parents place and got really pissed in that sleep-out and wrote ‘The Black Ravens Dark Flight of Doom’ because I was studying Gothic literature at the time at university and I had all these tropes and concepts of what makes Gothic fiction. The castles in Europe…

Brad:
A small German town, I’m actually writing a Gothic fiction at the moment.

Duncan:
Brad and I were just sort of hanging out and writing these kind gloomy Goth pop songs. They were a kind of Goth pop. (laughs)

Brad:
They still are (laughs). What I love about pop music, and I know that’s a weird thing to say, is that you don’t fucking forget it. It stays in your head. It’s not necessarily written to be great music but its written to be sold and be memorable. That’s not say that I’m writing music purely for the sake of being memorable and not to have any musical value, but if I don’t go to bed at night with the new hook stuck in my head, then the songs get thrown out and its forgotten in the morning and we start a new song. At the end of the day I’ve always found that people are going to remember you more if they remember the song and the catchy hook. I love metal but it’s not all about hooks. You go see a metal band and they’re proficient, fantastic and tight but I don’t remember a second of it when I walk away because all they’re doing is essentially showing off.

Altearoa:
As you mentioned earlier, Rammstein as an influence, and the one song everyone knows…

Brad:
Du Hast. Exactly because its catchy and simple.

Duncan:
And those riffs stay in your head.

Brad:
That’s one of the reasons they’ve been so successful. They’ve played on the Germany, the efficiency, the machines.

Duncan:
They’re playing on their reputation, the national reputation.

Brad:
And they know that but mostly they’re catchy. The repetition that they use it just catches on. So that’s the sort of thing we try to do.

Duncan:
Brad might not remember this but original concept for Keller Kinder was a two night Rammstein tribute show, Wellington & Auckland. At the very first show we did a Rammstein cover. We learnt ‘Wollt ihr das Bett in Flammen sehen?’ and then Brad had ‘She Likes the Candle Burning’ and that sort of spurred the band out of the concept of a Rammstein tribute.

Brad:
I remember the Rammstein tribute night I’m just hazy on the details.

Duncan:
That’s how we got talking about you (Brad) and I being in a band.

Brad:
And that became Keller Kinder.

Altearoa:
When did you decide that Keller Kinder was a band you wanted to take further?

Duncan:
It was actually a side project of Alabaster Theatre.

Brad:
It was always a side project never meant to go anywhere.

Duncan:
Brad and I were writing this kind of in indie progressive rock in a band called Alabaster Theatre. It became a lot more progressive once Brad joined. As I said earlier we at the time were friends, drinking quite a lot together, outside of that band. We listened to a lot of Goth and industrial music as well so wanted an outlet for that and Keller Kinder became the outlet for that side of ourselves.

Duncan Nairn
Photo: NicksPlace Photography
Brad:
I’m just remembering the first time I met you (Duncan). It was clear that you’d just come from Germany, spoke German, and had an interest in all things German. I asked you what sort of music you liked, expecting to hear Rammstein, and the response was “I quite like jazz” (laughs).

Duncan:
I was listening to a bit of jazz.

Brad:
I’m sure you were and still are it’s just not what I expected.

Altearoa:
What’s helped you take Keller Kinder this far?

Duncan:
I don’t know why it got the recognition that it did. It does enjoy some kind of notoriety in New Zealand and to a limited extent Australia and Germany.

Brad:
To me it’s never really been a thing that we’ll go for and push. So, for me personally, it’s not been something that I’ve been driving and hammering forward and I’d kind of like to think if it had been we’d be a little further on than we are right now.

Altearoa:
So in some way it still feels like a side project?

Brad:
Not so much a side project, not musically but….

Duncan:
It’s still a hobby and not a job.

Brad:
We’ve got full time jobs and I’ve got kids and stuff. My wife’s at home complaining about the bitter nor westerly at the moment and the fact that’s it blown one of our gates over. So that’s my life.

Altearoa:
So do you think not pushing it has actually helped it keep going?

Brad:
No, I don’t think so. Duncan, to his credit, has pushed it a bit further than I necessarily would have at times. Duncan has done a lot of work with networking, getting to know people, he hooks up the gigs and gets help from people who can help us.

Duncan:
It shouldn’t be hard, if we’re doing this in New Zealand where there is no real chance of playing for profit, it can’t be a burden on us.

Brad:
They say about the music industry it’s all about who you know and that’s very very true and Duncan knows a lot of people. So that’s definitely helped us. I think that we try to keep the music reasonably accessible and we don’t take ourselves too seriously so that’s also helped.

Duncan:
Another thing that helped Keller Kinder a lot was when you (Brad) and I set up and ran Shadowplay’ There was a bit of a lull in the Goth scene in Wellington at the time so Brad and I started our own monthly Goth night called Shadowplay. It was normally on a Wednesday or Thursday night, $2 entry one band and couple DJ’s. Every few months though we’d do a big show on Saturday night and because we were running it we made ourselves the headliners.

Brad:
Wow, so pretentious.

Keller Kinder (2011)
Photo: Jason Mann, Make-up: Anastasia Papadopoulos
Duncan:
It was a pretentious move but it worked and it imprinted a lot on the scene in Wellington and throughout the country. And then we were lucky to get some big international supports acts for the bigger shows.

Brad:
It was exposure. I think one of the other things was, and it was never for the sake of getting publicity but just for the kind of band we were as a Goth industrial band, so we always made sure we had an image and we did photoshoots to reinforce that image and keep it consistent.

Altearoa:
When did you first know that you weren’t normal?

Duncan:
I think it happened in Chicago. I’d just turned 15, and I was walking along one of the main streets down from the big baseball stadium where I’d just seen the Cubs be defeated, unsurprisingly. I saw this shop, and I popped my head in and I just saw a big entrance, a ramp upwards, lined with skeletons and I thought “well, this is fucking amazing. I’ve got to check out this shop”. It was a huge two storey shop basically like a department store for goths and I walked in there and everything was gloomy and spooky and black and creepy and I loved it. I felt at home, so I bought some t-shirts and some necklaces. I got back to New Zealand about a month later, dyed my hair black and started wearing the t-shirts I brought in the Chicago Goth shop. That was the turning point, I found Goth in Chicago.

Brad:
I think there are two sides to what you asking I think I was about the same age, maybe 14, but I was in Upper Hutt when I found Goth so to speak. But with me I think I’ve always known I was just a bit different.

Altearoa:
What advice would you give to people just starting out?

Brad:
All I can say to people wanting to make music is just be true to what you actually want to do, be genuine.

Duncan:
Just do exactly what you want to do, don’t try to be something you’re not and don’t take it too seriously.

Brad:
But that said, a good hook is fucking killer. (laughs)

Duncan:
You’ve got to have fun with music because as soon as you take the fun away its ruthless, its empty.

Altearoa:
What advice would you give to the baby bats out there?

Duncan:
Watch some make-up tutorials for Christ’s sake (laughs). Check out Black Friday, she has some awesome tutorials and a close friend of ours.

Brad:
I wouldn’t want to see my kids exposed to half the shit I’ve been exposed too so my advice is almost, go back home to your parents, puts some colours on, sit and read a good book.

Duncan:
Just read, read, read. At the risk of lowering the tone, never give up, never consider suicide, it will always get better.

Brad:
Say that to adults as well. Its relevant at all times.

Duncan:
And tragically more so in this scene, we’ve lost friends, that fleeting hopelessness that does pass so quickly.

Brad:
Regardless of what you’re wearing, listening to, or what you do at night, surround yourself with good supportive people.

Altearoa:
What has gotten in the way of Keller Kinder going forward?

Duncan:
Geographical isolation (laughs), we’re on an island in the South Pacific with 4.5 million people or something like that. There are only so few people out of those people who are interested in listening to our kind of music.

Brad:
I think if we could travel easily to another country and back in four hours then maybe my hang-ups wouldn’t be such an issue.

Duncan:
Or if we could afford to put the family up in a nice hotel.

Brad:
I could imagine living in Denmark and going to Sweden to play gigs and coming back, you can do that overnight. You can’t really go to Australia overnight.

Duncan:
It’s a lot more expensive.

Brad:
The thing with Europe as well is whether you’re changing country or not, every major city is no more than a two hour drive away. Whereas if you leave Wellington and drive for two hours you get to Palmerston North (laughs).

Duncan:
Where I was living in Germany, you could drive for 45 minutes in any direction and you’d be in another half a million person city. And every one of those cities has two or three different Goth clubs and a massive scene who are probably going to be interested in this kind of music.

Brad:
They’d at least check it out.

Altearoa:
So if you could take Keller Kinder and live in any country in the world, where would it be?

Duncan:
I’d have to say Germany.

Brad:
I would go with Sweden.

Duncan:
If I could play anywhere in the world though it would be at Wave-Gotik-Treffen in Leipzig.

Altearoa:
What’s been your favourite moment with Keller Kinder?

Brad:
I think one of the coolest experiences I’ve had, it just so happened it was the gig that we were opening for Hanzel Und Gretyl so that made it even cooler, but we got wherever it was in the set we played Candle Burning. We got to the chorus and I looked out at the Transmission Room, full of people there to see Hanzel Und Gretyl, but they’re all singing along to our chorus. A room full of people I don’t know singing along to my music. That’s huge.

Duncan:
My favourite concert was probably the Wellington Capital Fetish Ball 2010.

Keller Kinder (The Garden Club 2010)
Photo: Nix Clickbang
Brad:
Was that the topless grease up?

Duncan:
Yeah, we had a make-up artist who had black pigment powder which she blew all over us and then rubbed it in with Vaseline. It just had the effect that it made us look like grubby miners so we were kind of ripping off Rammstein from their ‘Sonne’ video. It was a fetish gig, so there was probably 450, 500 people there so the turnout was solid. That was probably my favourite concert. There were other ones that were good for other reasons but just down to our performance that one was my favourite.

Altearoa:
What are Keller Kinder’s plans for the future?

Duncan:
A remix album of Dying City, we’re going to get the tracks of Dying City remixed by the industrial artists around the world.

Brad:
A remix collection of indeterminate length.

Duncan:
We’ve got the artwork all done so it’s just a matter of nailing down details such as who’s remixing what so we don’t get everyone remixing the same tracks etc.

Altearoa:
So they’re won’t be another six year gap between albums?

Duncan:
Yea, sorry about that, (laughs) sorry for the delay.

Brad:
It was entirely his fault.

Duncan:
It was entirely my fault. I agreed to have my hair cut off and I had something of an identity crisis once I had short natural coloured hair. I had a broken heart and kind of lost track of who I was and basically had two years of writers block. When I didn’t have long black hair, I didn’t feel like me, so I couldn’t write. Pretty much as soon as I dyed my hair black again I wrote ‘Yours in Antipathy’ and ‘Bats in the Belfry’ and so we got into the studio and finished the album which we hope you enjoy. - ALTearoa


"Interview with Black Friday (2014)"

[Video Interview] - Black Friday


"CD REVIEW: KELLER KINDER – KINDERGARTEN (2009)"

New Zealand four-piece Keller Kinder are the new breed of Goth. Whilst ‘Kindergarten’ may not break any new ground this album touches the listener with enchanting keyboard lines and dark-as-night vocals throughout. Some of this material has the potential to make you cry as well as mosh.

Following a suitably dark intro, ‘She Likes The Candle Burning’ is an emotive rocker with sledgehammer beats and classic riffs that will grab you by the ear and twist. ‘Labyrinth’ follows suit and is a real change of pace. Hard and fast synth work smashes up against violent vocals and deep lyrics for a raw and unrelenting cyberpunk beast. Follow-up ‘Verfuhrerisch Verlockend’ is an EBM-metal crossover track packed full of raging guitars and some electronic elements that Soman would be very proud of. Oh yes, and the vocals are in German, which will surely only add to the band’s already growing international appeal.

‘Lost Happiness And Lasting Pain’ is a tragic tale based upon Satan’s fall from grace. It’s a definite standout tune on this record. This one is a triumphant amalgamation of styles and it could easily become one for Goth club dancefloors everywhere as it will appeal to both headbangers and cyber-kids. ‘Tongue Of Lies’ again sees the group successfully meld genres in an intriguing fashion. On here, black metal elements are utilised and contrasts can be drawn with the likes of Psyclon Nine for this, a ferocious aural onslaught that leads nicely into the infectious ‘My Hopeful Wings’. This well-written tune features some nifty orchestral elements, angry vocals and buzz-saw electronic workings that will surely burrow into your brain and attack your synapses without remorse.

‘Haftling’ is another composition incorporating German language. It’s one of the heavier songs on here and it will certainly force a huge impact upon the ears. From the opening moments it lulls the listener into a false sense of security with rock beats and classical arrangements before bulldozing the senses with sadistic Industrial waves ala’ Rammstein. Meanwhile, ‘Into The Cellar’ is a playful (and slightly creepy) break from the full on attack using keyboards to create a kind of twisted Tim Burton-esque circus soundtrack. Next up, ‘The Cold’ draws influence from the 80s to form an epic, ambient and deathly sound that comes somewhere between Depeche Mode and Type O. The final track on offer is ‘The Black Raven’s Dark Flight Of Doom’ which is an intelligent story forged to have maximum impact on the final moments of the record.

Our only major issue when studying this strong material is that more vocal variation is needed on future releases as the style can sometimes sound all too similar from track to track and Kaptain Keller certainly seems to have the skill to push his register more. Overall though, there is serious potential here and each member of the band demonstrates great musicianship throughout. Keller Kinder have produced some of the most original Goth sounds we have encountered in a very long time.

****/5 - SoundSphere Magazine


Discography

Still working on that hot first release.

Photos

Bio

The name Keller Kinder (Cellar Children in German) comes from the vocalist Duncan's time spent in Germany on an exchange program, where his host parents kept him locked in their basement. He got out alive, and in 2006 formed the band with Brad (writing, production and synths) and Anton (guitars).

Rocking out at industrial clubs around New Zealand and Australia, Keller Kinder's polished sound and good sense of self-deprecating humour has seen them grow in strength and popularity; with their style of heavy, stomping rhythms and brooding chord structures and melodies they are frequently described by fans as 'the love child of Rammstein and Type O Negative'. 

Keller Kinder have released two full-length albums; Kindergarten (2008) and Dying City (2014), and remix EP Labyrinth (2010). (A follow-up Dying City remix EP is currently under production). Each of these were released on CD as well as via Bandcamp. Along side album releases the band has self-produced five music videos, with a sixth currently under production.

Keller Kinder's live show has come to have it's own reputation. Making use of a custom designed and built LED lighting rig created by Production Head Kevin (a native of New York), comparisons have been made to Nine Inch Nails and The Prodigy.  As a result, Keller Kinder have played support slots for Christian Death, Voltaire, Psyche, and Hanzel und Gretyl, and have toured with Clan of XymoxLeather Strip, and Covenant. Keller Kinder have performed across Australia and New Zealand, and planning is underway to touch down in the USA and hopefully Europe in 2016.

Band Members