Death has a way of cutting through pretension. You can hear it in every corner of Kalt Wie Du Bist, the debut album from Berlin’s Elektrokohle, and see it scrawled across their second video, Disillusion. This isn’t a band chasing style or nostalgia; it’s a group clawing its way back from the abyss, gasping, snarling. When their bassist, Suzan Flag, tragically died in a car crash last November (the same day their album dropped, in a terrible irony), it tore a hole clean through the band’s chest. What’s left is an open wound that hums, screams, and still somehow sings.
The track itself hits like a blunt confession. The bass line lurches forward like a heartbeat on borrowed time, while the drum machine hammers out a steady, unsympathetic rhythm. Guitars scrape and shatter, not in search of melody but in defiance of silence. The vocals cut through it all: raw, caustic, almost pleading, recalling the chaos of early European punk filtered through existential dread. It’s the sound of someone standing in the ruins of what they thought life would be, staring at the sky, and deciding to scream instead of pray.
Lyrically, Disillusion tears open the skin of self-awareness, picking at the wound of existence with a kind of grim lucidity. There’s talk of destruction, but also of renewal. Elektrokohle’s words bite at the border between enlightenment and collapse, and that tension gives their music its volatile charge.
The video for Disillusion is a noise-soaked revelation, filmed like a fever dream left to decay on VHS. Enrico Stocco, the Italian director at the helm, doesn’t try to make it pretty, he just lets it burn. Glitches eat the frames, film grain swallows faces, and the camera jitters like a body in shock. There’s no gloss, no polish, no illusion of control—just raw electricity writhing through three musicians trying to make sense of survival. The band looks half-possessed, half-resigned, as if every note might be their last, yet somehow that risk feels like freedom.
Watch the video for “Disillusion” below:
Oráculo Records, already known for pushing dark electronics with bite, found a monster worth nurturing here. Elektrokohle sound like they were built from the scrap metal of old factories and broken faith. They’ve toured with post-punk stalwarts like New Model Army and Agent Side Grinder, and you can hear that shared DNA: rhythm as survival, noise as truth.
Now, with Ombra Festival in their sights, Elektrokohle are dragging their grief into the spotlight, transforming absence into energy. Disillusion isn’t so much about mourning as resurrection by distortion. In the smoldering wreckage of loss, they’ve built a new altar, and it hums like a vintage amp. What a testament to their fallen friend.
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