Crossover bands seem to be more popular in Europe than they are in North America; while these bands do exist here, they don’t seem to get as much attention until they’ve already been noticed elsewhere. Definitely a Catch 22 for the bands, they’re not going to get any recognition until they have recognition. For these types of bands in Europe (and in the east) that doesn’t seem to be as much of an issue as there seems to be no shortage of these types of bands for us to present to you here.
And this time we present, yet another, crossover band from Europe – Kontrust.
Formed in 2001, (out of a band called ‘Suicide Mission’) Kontrust went on to win the Austrian Newcomer Award a few years later with their first album, their second album saw them having the most downloaded song (Boomba) on the Dutch iTunes.
From there Kontrust has gone on to garner more awardssteadily built up a large fan base and continuously enter the charts with every new release.
Originally known for wearing lederhosen (not so much anymore other than in videos), Kontrust’s lyrics are mainly in English, although the band does incorporate German and Slavic into their songs.
The 7 piece band has a dual female/male vocal lead in singers Agata Jarosz, Stefan Lichtenberger. Unlike many bands with a female/male lead split they don’t rely on using Stefan Lichtenberger for just screams and growls, although the bulk of the vocal duties do fall to Agata Jarosz.
The songs are tight, well crafted and catchy with a lot of variations. Like many other bands that have successfully blended styles, Kontrust moves within approaches without making it sound as though they’ve just stuck two different songs together.
Their videos are often goofy and humorous and live footage of the band shows a high energy, solid band that sounds as good (or better) than their studio recordings.
So is Kontrust Good or Garbage? As always we’ll leave a video for you to watch and decide, this one is called ‘Hey DJ’ from their 2013 release ‘Second Hand Wonderland’.
You can follow Kontrust on Facebook or through their Official Website. Kontrusts music is available for purchase through iTunes.
John Goodale is the author of ‘Johnny Gora’ (available through Amazon.com), and a number of articles here on TMRZoo.com. His monthly column ‘Indy Comics Spotlight’ appears here and through his blog Indy Comics Spotlight
