Introduction

 

At the time I stumbled on TH in summer 2006, I was in Germany to brush up what little German I had learned in school. I was also on the look for some German music, as I learn better in music.

I happened to be also eager for some "noisier" sound than what I listened to at the moment, but I had a few problems with that quest of mine :
- I can't stand whininess, and gods know emo-esque bands do tend to be whiny
- heavy metal-related singers tend to grunt rather than sing, and I don't have much taste for cavemen
- I can't stand the posturing of either emo or heavy metal bands, or affiliated

When you're over 30, raccoon make-up on a musician makes you roll your eyes in a "Robert Smith from Cure called, he wants his mascara back", rather than being all excited by the rebelliousness.
Or it did to me, anyway.

If you looked at pictures of Tokio Hotel of that era, you must be thinking "Buuuut... They also have the posturing and the raccoon make-up!".

Indeed. But Bill looked like something out a manga (androgynous face with spunky black hair), Tom looked like a hip-hop dreadlocks teenage girl, and the other two guys seemed there to give some sort of grounded credit to the band's existence. Like a perfect marketing formula that screamed "We're trying to milk the anime generation by putting out there a German band combining everything that's out there, with a Visual Kei (Japanese Visual Rock) frontman".

It was such an odd package that it self-imploded under the weight of improbability.

Being older than their average fan, and having seen the rise of ultra-marketed music in the 80es, I have no illusion about how artificial and money-oriented 90% of today's music production is. So I can't resent kids trying to "make it" in that career for playing the devil's game, at least until they can do better.

So it was all about "Would I enjoy their music? Could it become my German-lessons-in-fun?".

The answer was "yes".

Nearly a year later and upon watching some live performances of them, the answer turned into a bewildered "But... they can pull it off live! Awww, my baby-band is not as much of a fraud as I thought! I love it!".

Hence this website.

EDIT : many years later... Still there.