About Kaizers Orchestra
Six Norwegians, some guitars, a drum set, a double bass, a pump organ and several oil barrels, steel rims, trash cans and sirens. Sounds very strange at first glance, but it all fits together perfectly!
The music
There's no common genre in which Kaizers Orchestra's music fits. "Officially" one could characterize the music als "norwegian polka", because there's "ompa" in it, a nordic style of music that would probably be called "polka" here in Germany. But no - the Kaizers music doesn't really have anything to do with that... Kaizers Orchestra themselves call their music "Kaizerrock", I guess they haven't found a proper category either... =;-)
From the traditional part of the instrumentation it is obvious that their music is indeed rock-music. Additionally, the six musicians pound furiously at oil barrels and steel rims, which of course intensifies the rhythm and releases a lot of energy. And that's exactly the special thing about Kaizers: the energy. The musicians give everything on stage, the show is perfect, and the fun and energy spreads to everyone in the audience. But also on CD the music is just spellbinding.
The lyrics
Kaizers Orchestra sing in Norwegian. In fact in a norwegian dialect that is at the beginning even hard to understand for other Norwegians... =;-) Non-Norwegians don't understand anything at first, of course. But it's worth the effort getting the translations, as - like the music - the lyrics are no run-of-the-mill love-songs, but... different. The tell stories, about war, revenge, resistance and death, the songs are in part linked to each other. After some time one learns to know the characters, one finds out why Sven Korner is a villain and why Marcello cannot get his Viktoria. But even without further study of the lyrics one realizes soon that only Padre Martin knows what is behind a "hallelujah". And maybe Mr. Kaizer himself. And only he can save us... (But to understand that, it is indespensible seeing Kaizers Orchestra live. But that is indespensible anyway!)
Lyrics and translations can be found here:
The influences
A lot of influences for Kaizers Orchestra's music come from Tom Waits. The lyrics are strongly influenced by the movie "Underground" by Emir Kusturica. But Kaizers Orchestra make something new and particular out of these elements and thus create their own fascination.
The origins
A nice overview about the origins of Kaizers Orchestra can be found
here on the official Webpage - in Norwegian, of course... =;-) A nice summary in
German and
English was composed by
www.kaizers.de. So here is only a brief glimpse:
- The first joint band of Janove and Geir was Blod, Snått & Juling (translated: Blood, snot and punches). There exist three demo-recordings of this band, namely "En glad tunnel" (1994, total number released: 50 tapes *g*), "Sympatiske fisk" (1995, 100 tapes, after all) and another one from 1996. In the recordings for the last two tapes, Terje took part already.
- After a while the name Blod, Snått & Juling wasn't serious enough anymore, so the band "gnom" was founded. The people involved were Janove and Geir again, and additionally Helge and Rune. In 1998, the CD "Mys" was released, but it sold miserably. At the end of 2003, this CD was re-released in Norway.
- By way of the song "Bastard" which contains a barrel solo and a pump-organ, the musicians found their current style. With Jon as new bass player (replaced by Øyvind meanwhile) they called themselves "Kaizers Orchestra" and released the first EP "Bøn fra helvete" in 2000. Later Terje re-joined the band (who had in the meantime played in the bands Zombie Porkchop and Watershed), and Kaizers were complete.
