Forthcoming Fire

I only knew Forthcoming Fire for being the pre-Von Thronstahl band. I had half a cd on tape, but was way too late to be able to order any of their albums. Years ago I found their albums on a Russian mp3 site, paid, but presumably illegal. FF makes gothic/wave, but as the band continued, but music became better, more technoish and a bit like what Von Thronstahl would sound like. Especially “Watching Rome Burn” (1999) is a magnificent album. Then there were problems with a major deal for Sony who complained about the politics of the band, the fact that they appeared on “Riefenstahl” and similar compilations and the band was dropped, dismantled and Von Thronstahl was formed. Apparently the band couldn’t just leave it like that and released two cds which I have never been able to buy anywhere (probably because of the label). Actually now that I ran into them on a P2P network, I am glad about that! Both the album and the mcd are boring and nothing like the FF of “Watching Rome Burn”. Slightly gothic of sound and in my opinion rather unimaginable. Oh well, at least I heard them now. u

I don’t know the whole/exact story of the ‘fall’ of Josef Klumb, but let me start with a few quotes from the Von Thronstahl interview in “Letters From The Nuovo Europae”. “I lost a lot. But I never sold my soul to the highpriests of dust. I lost a big deal with SONY MUSIC as a label mate of MICHAEL JACKSON. For some months I was in the great position to overflow all my enemies, in the position of becoming a rock star but they wanted me to say – sorry for knowing Werner Symanek, sorry for working on Riefenstahl and Thorak CDs, and sorry for all the the fascist believing I had, I want to be a good guy like the antifascists ….But I didn’t and that is how I became the fallen angel, thrown out of the rock-n-roll-heaven in which only “good” rock stars can shine.” And regarding the following line: “VON THRONSTAHL is not my way of revenge – it’s more the way of victory.” it seems most logical to conclude that is was Forthcoming Fire that was supposed to be the big band.
“But is Von Thronstahl the continuation of FF?”, you may ask. No, both bands appear on compilations such as “Thorak” and “Riefenstahl”, so these are two musical expressions of Josef K.
Listening to Forthcoming Fire you can hear a few similarities. Tracks like “Signal & Signs” and “Brennende Himmel” sound quite similar to Von Thronstahl at times. Also there is neo-folk on this cd (“Europa Calling” and “Outside Metropolis”), but the largest part of this cd doesn’t have all that much to do with (dark) folk or even industrial music.
FF has a lot of gothic influences, especially in the manner of singing. Also there is a lot of techno in the music. Especially the technoish tracks sound pretty good, but they are often interrupted by the no-very-good gothic parts. Some songs/parts are even simply horrid in my ears. But it is not only the Von Thronstahl like tracks that I do like, also for example “Open Fire!” and “Ernte Den Sturm” sound quite nice. Overall I am not too impressed by FF though.