MDFMK: Stronger Than Never Ever Before
an interview with Sascha Konietzko, Tim Skold and Lucia Cifarelli by Rev. MOOSE A little over a year ago, KMFDM officially declared itself dead. After fifteen years, ten full-lengths, twenty-one remix EPs, and one retrospective album, co-founder Sascha Konietzko pulled the plug on a pillar of aggressive dance music. At the same time Sascha went public with the death of KMFDM, he also entered a self proclaimed media blackout. With rumors abounding and no one to stop it, what was to come next was anyone's guess. On April 20, 1999, two Colorado high school students massacred their fellow classmates in one of the United States' worst school shootings ever, leaving a website loaded with KMFDM lyrics to take the fall. The Columbine shooting, compounded with an extremely public parting of ways with TVT Records, made KMFDM's last album, "Adios," a less than graceful exit. Always one to upstage himself, Sascha and KMFDM cohort Tim Skold flipped the name around and started over. The two tossed aside everything held sacred by the KMFDM fanbase and quickly recruited Lucia Cifarelli to be part of the melee. MDFMK finds all of its members on a new label with new goals. These three are running forward as fast as their techno hybrid can take them. With the same apocalyptic song structure that built their name recognition, MDFMK lays new tracks in an overly stagnant society of come-by-night bands and catchy marketing. This interview was one of the first they did since denying the media access. I was given a chance to simultaneously lay to rest many smoldering rumors and introduce a few new ones. This is their life, fifteen minutes of shame.

OB is Outburn, SK is Sascha Konietzko, TS is Tim Skold and LC is Lucia Cifarelli.

OB: How do you interpret the death of KMFDM?

SK: I don't interpret it. I brought it on like it was a conscious decision. I started it, and I killed it fifteen years later. It was just time to go. There was so much restraint from the expectancies of the audience that there was no way to go on any more. People just wanted more "Godlike," more "Light," more "Drug Against War," more Brute! covers, more of the same old shit, and I needed to swim free of that stuff.

TS: It's pretty clear cut. The end of KMFDM was just the beginning of MDFMK. Sooner or later everything will rot and die. Things happen for a reason.

OB: Does this mean that live performance will show that difference too? Will you be playing any old stuff?

SK: No old stuff. KMFDM is in some respects a different band, and I don't really want to go back and play "Godlike" for an encore. If we do that, then we should play a Drill song and a Skold track, or maybe a Shotgun Messiah track and a KMFDM track to balance it out.

OB: Whatever happened to the Skold solo project?

TS: That was back in the day. I haven't been working with Skold stuff since I got in KMFDM... maybe I'll do that again someday.

OB: Is Skold still contractually obligated to RCA?

TS: No, not at all. I managed to get out of the deal. The person who signed the record left, or was fired depending on who you hear it from. It's just your average A&R story; someone falls in love with a project, signs it, and tries to sell it. Labels are in constant upheaval. They're like a living organism that constantly changes. People come and go. Sometimes it affects you and sometimes it doesn't. I got out of that deal, and that's actually the first time Sascha and I really worked together. I wrote him an email and said, "We talked about doing something together, and right now it's really good because I don't have any contracts with anyone, so I can do whatever the hell I want." And Sascha said, "Are you serious? Well, come up here then." So I went to Seattle. From that little conversation came "Anarchy" for the "Symbols" record. It was just a one-off track. Then we went on tour and realized that we could probably do some serious damage together, and we did the final goodbye KMFDM record, "Adios," which in certain ways was kind of the beginning of MDFMK.

OB: How did the two of you bring Lucia into the mix?

LC: Actually, Sascha and I met over the phone in 1996. He did a remix for my band Drill. We had a song on the "Empire Records" soundtrack, "What You Are," and Sascha saw us play in Seattle. We got together through that. Then years later, after I finished my second record, he gave me a call and asked if I wanted to come out to Seattle and do some work with him and Tim. I came out there, and it was just instant synergy among the three of us.

OB: How much did you do on this album yourself?

LC: I didn't do anything myself. I did everything with Sascha and Tim. They provided me with tracks and I wrote lyrics and melodies. I'm not a technical person at all. I'm trying to change that, being surrounded by the two of them. They're technical geniuses. So I feel very inferior, and I do have a desire to learn. But at the stage that I came in... my god, I felt like I was on the Starship Enterprise. I bring something different to the party and it's not technical chops, it's more melodic lyrical, vocal additions.

SK: At first it was more like a test. We invited Lucia to do a couple of tracks that we had prepared, like a backing vocal. But then it quickly became apparent that she had way more to bring to the party, and I sat down and started writing "Get Out Of My Head" just as a calibration. It wasn't even necessarily meant to be MDFMK. At that point, I just wanted to see how far we could take this. Then this whole new thing started and Lucia was actually writing songs. That totally expanded the possibilities and made her presence in MDFMK necessary, because she was bringing so much to it that Tim and I couldn't do by ourselves. We don't have songwriting backgrounds. We write tracks, we make music, but we don't write songs.

OB: Didn't you audition other female vocalists?

SK: Yeah, we had solicited some, but it never really worked out. We did get a number of packages. It was some good stuff, but it wasn't the right stuff. It was more people that wanted to get in our pants, I think, than really serious singers and performers. I knew of Lucia-that she had a history with Drill, that she had a fair share of experience. She was a frontwoman for her own band and not just some chick. We didn't want some chick. We wanted someone who was full-blown, right on.

OB: What happened to Drill?

LC: Um, [laughs], our second record was a nightmare experience. It took us two years to make. The process was very painful, and we achieved the record that we wanted to achieve. Unfortunately, our record company was absorbed to Seagram, and our band was one of many that was caught up in this tornado effect. We were inherited to Interscope and our record never came out. I'm still in touch with my partner. I still call him my partner, because we worked together for ten years. We still write, and I don't want to say that Drill is dead. The spirit of Drill will go on. Its fans are staunch and it's in my heart and soul, but right now we have no plans to make another record.

SK: Drill was forced into a hiatus where KMFDM was deliberately put to sleep. That's probably the difference, right? OB: Let's talk about KMFDM's split with TVT. How long was that in the making? I get the impression it was ever since the WaxTrax! merger.

SK: I couldn't wait. I just simply couldn't wait. It was like this: WaxTrax! went downhill, mainly because Jim was dying of AIDS, and TVT bought the whole kit and caboodle and TVT inherited all the contracts. There was an instant disliking between TVT and KMFDM, but we kind of got along very well, I must say. Everyone maintained a very professional air about it until the day that the last album was delivered, and then all the money was pulled from everything. It was, "That's it, we can't expect anything from these people anymore." I mean, both sides were saying that. And that was it, and it culminated in a funny way. I went down there not too long ago to just say "hi" to all my old relations at TVT, just check in with them, and I got thrown out of the building by security.

OB: KMFDM made a very public withdrawal from WaxTrax!/ TVT. What is Republic/Universal going to do for you that TVT was unable to?

SK: Well, after fifteen years on indie labels, it was time to move on. I want to take MDFMK to places where KMFDM has never been. I want to work with people like yourself. I want to work with people like Annie, our publicist, and I want to have a team of people that can actually move some stuff, so I don't have to do everything myself. Going to a major, for me, automatically means going to the biggest major. I'm very extreme about these things. I stuck for ten years with WaxTrax!, even though I know it's the shitbin. Now I'm moving, and I'm just moving radically.

OB: It would have been easy to have said, "KMFDM is getting out of their record contract with 'Adios.' Here's an album that the label probably won't get 100% behind. KMFDM is going to churn out one last record and get it over with." Would they have been wrong?

TS: The band is unfortunately naïve and ignorant when it comes to that stuff. It doesn't matter. You put us in front of a couple of computers and the rest of the world goes away, and we just do the shit. Politics and business don't really enter into it. It's some form of work ethos type of thing. If you're going to do something, you are going to do it as well as you can. Otherwise, you won't fucking do it at all. "Adios" was not a compromise in that way at all. But it was still a group effort in a very strange setting as far as KMFDM, the big group, went. It wasn't until we finished up the record that we realized, "Oh shit, we're not going to tour for this, we're not going to do anything for this. TVT isn't going to promote it. They don't care. This is really weird." But I think it's a pretty damn good record actually. It is a bit transitional.

OB: How do the two projects differ? Does MDFMK have the same anti-MTV viewpoint as KMFDM?

SK: No, those days are over. It's not the same band anymore. I still have my opinions about MTV and this whole kind of commercialism shit, but if MTV would change their mind and welcome MDFMK then I don't have any problem with that. I'm over certain stages in my life. I've been there, I've done things, and I've learned from them. I can look things in the eye now with a different approach like I have a clean slate.

OB: Visually speaking, MDFMK has taken a complete left turn from KMFDM's image, most notably with the absence of Brute!'s artwork. Is that something you plan on returning to or not?

SK: No. Brute! was a part of KMFDM and KMFDM is gone, so Brute! went with it. It was part of the fifteen years of accumulated baggage, preconceived notions, and expectations. So no, no return. It's not like "Hey, Brute!, you're fired" or anything. I called him up, I said, "Hey, we're changing this whole thing." I have a huge collection of his stuff. He lived a couple of doors down from me. He would call me every other day and say, "Hey man, can you come over? I need some money, I need to feed my kids." He has four kids and he was working for Microsoft at the time. They had him on suspended retainers and shit like that. I would go over, and for a hundred bucks I could buy a whole portfolio full of erotic art from him, so it was a fair parting. I bought a lot of shit from him, I could turn out another twenty-five album covers with Brute! stuff if I wanted to, but that's not the point. The point is that now we turn the page and there's no going back.

OB: MDFMK is also a lot less political than KMFDM. What role does music play in politics?

SK: The question should be what role do politics play in music, and the answer is pretty much not really. I mean KMFDM has been outspoken, but not political necessarily, because everything is offset by one extreme or another. There is a song about problems with children who are being expelled from school because no one wants to deal with idiosyncrasies of character and stuff like that on the same album as a track that is blatantly self- promoting and taking a hit out of ourselves like "Sucks." KMFDM was always a balance of nonsensical stuff and semi-political soapbox stances.

OB: As KMFDM you maintained an anti-media relationship, but yet overnight, with the Columbine shootings, you were thrown head over heels as a headliner act all of a sudden. How did you adapt to that?

SK: I never really adapted to it. I merely reacted to it by putting out a statement that was as blunt as it was short and brief-by just saying, look, this is a bunch of crap. You're trying to make us into some sort of evil force that we're not, and just back off and fuck off. The effectiveness of it was proven by the fact that within two or three hours of my putting out the release, Rammstein and Manson basically copied the release verbatim and put it out just as a preventive measure. Two days later they got hit with the shit.

OB: What did it mean to you when the media changed their focus from KMFDM to Marilyn Manson?

SK: What it meant was that for the first two days after the shooting... it happened on a Tuesday. That Tuesday and Wednesday, KMFDM was in the focus of this whole thing, and then on Thursday the media generally realized that no one really knows KMFDM and no one really can tag on to this. There was no story because there was no comment from KMFDM, so they quickly focused on Manson, who everyone loves to hate and everyone knows of. Middle America knows Marilyn Manson and has some sort of love/hate relationship with that, so the story could live on for another day and that means a lot to those people. In our case, the story was over. There was no attachment to it, there was obviously no truth in it, and there was no continuation. They couldn't get anyone on the phone; they couldn't get anyone to defend themselves, because there was nothing to defend.

OB: If a teenage fan had a parent that was concerned and talked to you, what would you say to them?

SK: It would depend on what they wanted to talk to me about. Am I on a panel to defend rock music and to say rock music does not kill people, guns do? We're talking totally different things here. We're talking about a heinous crime. We're talking about a trend in young people to abuse access to weapons and direct them against their peers, teachers and their closest environments. We're talking about a complete loss of ethics, morals and irresponsibility in a whole generation of parents. We're talking about television being used as a substitute to bring up people instead of warmth, love, understanding, and most of all communication and exchange. I simply have nothing to do with that.

OB: Let's change the subject drastically. Your website is very fan-oriented and constantly kept up. How much time goes into website upkeep?

TS: That ties in with everything else. It's just this neurotic, anal mindset about some form of artistic perfection. I'm not running it, I wrote it. As far as database management and running a website, I have no interest in that at all. I don't know what the future of that site is going to be. I wrote the existing site because I like code, manipulating stuff on computers, so that was a blast. That's funny because it's punk rock code, actually.

OB: What do you mean by "punk rock code"?

TS: If you know code, and if you look at the programming and the HTML on the MDFMK website, you'll have a laugh. And that's kind of done to amuse a little bit in ignorance. It's more like an artistic statement, a little art project. The disclaimer kind of says it all. A lot of code is stolen, but it's not ripped off. It's sampled, twisted, manipulated and combined beyond recognition. It's a funny little thing. I think it's really menial though-websites in general. The Internet has just become something really strange. It's the mall now... it's just really weird.

SK: When I was running the KMFDM website, it took up a lot of my time. I would sit there until five or six in the morning answering individual letters. With MDFMK, Tim implemented mechanisms that will make it very easy to summarize a lot of questions like basic FAQs and address a lot of issues, and hopefully manage the flood of requests and questions. It's a shame, and I still think that I would like to clone myself and actually spend twenty-four hours in front of the screen and answer everything, because that makes for this very special exchange that we had or have with our fans. It's a very one-on-one kind of thing. That's also one of the reasons why KMFDM fans have always defended KMFDM so much. At the time of the Columbine thing, there were so many people that really went out of their way to explain to their congressman or to local politicians or in their schools. They stood up and they said, "Look, what you guys are trying to tell us here or sell us here is a load of shit. These guys are not killers. They do not influence people to kill." It remains to be seen what the consequences and aftermath of this Columbine thing will be, but I think it's actually going to be a good thing because a lot of people have made up their mind about us. They have been confronted with the worst of scenarios, and they had to take a stand, as we always took a stand for our fans.

OB: Yet you seem to achieve a great amount of joy from messing with your fans' heads as well. Saying things, then contradicting them soon after. I think it was "Nihil" when you said no more EPs and then you came out with another EP soon after that. What's MDFMK's viewpoint on remixes or EPs?

SK: Well, in fact, when I said there were no more EPs, there were no more EPs. I didn't do any more KMFDM remixes. I did remixes as Excessive Force, to which you can say "that's fucking with your fans' heads." To answer the question, MDFMK will do remixes when the requests come in, when the stuff is right. I turned down so much stuff as KMFDM because I simply didn't like it, and if I don't like it, I don't do the work, regardless of whether it pays ten thousand or twenty thousand dollars.

OB: Whatever happened to Excessive Force?

SK: Excessive Force had their last release in '94, I believe. I just haven't had the time or the incentive to do any more as Excessive Force, because I've been focusing on KMFDM. Now I'm so focused on MDFMK, I couldn't even find the time of day to do anything other than what I'm doing right now. If there comes a time in my life where I feel like doing something completely different, then I may just take it up again.

OB: What are your opinions on piracy of music?

SK: Well, that's a whole can of worms, really. For one thing, there are MP3s. MP3s are two things. One, they're a good means of promotion, because someone gets to hear an MP3 and can make up their mind, can become an educated shopper, and I'm all for that. It also spreads music around to a lot of people, and the good thing is that if someone really likes what they hear, they typically go out and buy the record. Secondly, any form of ripping an MP3 is an infringement on copyrights. I think as a creator of any sort of intellectual property, all we have is copyrights and to receive royalties and payments for creating this kind of stuff. That's what I'm depending on, that's what I'm living on, and if you little fuck faces out there rip me, then I'm going to kick your fucking asses.

LC: ...and a lot of people are proud of it. I can't tell you, while Drill was struggling out on the road, how many people would proudly come up to me and tell me that they got my music for free, and they expected me to pat them on the back and say, "Hey man, good going!" It's a dollar that I didn't make and I worked my ass off for. So, I'm not too happy about that.

TS: I think you should have to rent records like you rent movies, and if you want to hear a record more than once you're going to have to pay twice. I don't really care. I'm not a record company, but at the same time I make a living selling records. On the other hand, I kind of don't. I never sold that many records. Maybe it's hurting the people that sell a little records instead of the people that sell a lot of records, because you don't hear Alanis Morissette complaining. It's a tricky little issue. I think anything that involves theft for profit is a bad thing.

OB: What about merchandise? Is KMFDM Enterprises still in full effect?

SK: No, KMFDM Enterprises folded as of the end of '99. A number of reasons kind of prompted it. It was a very small company and we never decided to go big. We never wanted to take on stuff that we didn't want to sell, that we didn't feel right about, and our overhead became just too much. We found out, incidentally, that Amazon.com was buying the same records that we bought from a wholesaler for exactly the same price. We bought them all for $10.99 a pop, we sold them for $15.99. Amazon.com would sell them for $8.99, so they lost two bucks per record. We couldn't afford that. So basically, we're one of those small companies that are run in good spirits and with the right ethics, but we got buffed out. We just couldn't afford to run it anymore. I couldn't afford to have a company that loses 25 to 50 thousand dollars a year. I mean, I love to give my four employees health insurance, benefits, and shit, but I couldn't afford it anymore.

OB: I heard that KMFDM once sponsored an off-road biking team?

SK: There was this biking team and they did the 24 Hours Of Moab, I think it's called. It's like a grueling mountain bike cross- country type race, and they called me up and said, "We're all huge KMFDM fans. Can we get some sponsoring?" So they got some money from me. We got one bike jersey in return, pictures, and lots of email. It was loads and loads of fun. I had my own bicycling race team.

OB: Would you consider doing it again? Maybe getting a cigarette boat, an Indy car, or something like that?

SK: I think my frame of mind is generally very open to sponsoring anything from fine arts to all kinds of things. If there's fun involved, if I feel like there's a great team. I'm very passionate about these things. I have a bunch of friends that are artists. They have exhibitions, big, small, it really doesn't matter. I always make a point of going, and if I like something, I always buy it regardless of how it looks inside the wallet. I'm just into that stuff.

OB: Sascha has Excessive Force, Tim has Skold. Lucia, have you considered putting out a solo album?

LC: Well, it's a big dream of mine to put out a solo record, but right now I'm able to achieve everything that I want through MDFMK. Sascha and Tim are so open to my ideas that MDFMK's so natural. A solo record feels unnecessary in a lot of ways, but that's something I've been holding onto even before Drill. It's something that I always wanted to do. Sascha and I have been working on [the solo album] and if it comes to light someday, that would make me very happy, but right now it's certainly not on the forefront of my mind.

OB: Do you have any plans for collaborations with MDFMK? You did the Pig and Thrill Kill Kult splits as KMFDM. Do you foresee that happening again?

SK: It actually feels really nice to be in a confined environment right now. To not have to deal with any other characters than just Lucia and Tim. [Lucia laughs]

OB: Can you explain, because that was very vague?

LC: Can you elaborate on that?

SK: I come from fifteen years of KMFDM. You know, the rotating cast of everyone and their brothers, and basically like a freak show on wheels. I mean, who's a name or character that we haven't had in KMFDM? It feels really good to me now to be in a more band type situation. Not in terms of here's the drummer, here's the bass player, here's the guitarist, but like the three of us is it. If we need a vocal track done and no one can do it then one of us has to step out and learn it. If there's a complicated guitar lick to be played, then one of us has to learn it. We're not going to bring any outside help in at this point, we're just going to do it.

OB: What about when touring comes around?

SK: Same thing.

OB: How much say do you have in who you tour with?

SK: Everything that we want. At this point we're not even thinking about whether we are going to open for someone huge or headline a smaller tour. At this point, the most crucial question is really how to translate this album into a live show, because this album was done with no real musicianship... there was no drummer, there was no bass player, there was no guitarist. There's guitar on the album, but it's all made by Tim who's not a guitarist per se. The only talent that we three have is vocal stuff and programming, and being really good at hacking and chopping and mutilating digital data.

OB: What does Sascha mean when he says that although you play guitar on the album, you're not necessarily a guitar player?

TS: Well, it's a bit stereotyping. But if you've been around musicians, you've come to realize that musicians love to live up to stereotypes. The singer has a sore throat, the guitar player wears gloves and the drummer is really drunk, right? It's just how it goes. I don't have the mindset or the personality of a guitar player. I don't have precious little solo parts that I really have to get in there. I have the same approach to drum machines, it's just another instrument. If the part is good, the part is good. There is no guitar player mentality to it. And I'm not saying that's all bad, because if Stevie Ray Vaughan wasn't a guitar player in his heart, soul and mind, he wouldn't play the way he did. What I do is a totally different thing. Maybe that's partially a self-esteem thing, because I don't want to be compared to other guitar players. I have low guitar playing self-esteem, so I can't afford to walk around pretending that I'm a guitar player.

OB: Skold versus Jimi Hendrix or something...

TS: Right. It's just a different mentality to music in general and everything we do. The guitar doesn't escape the ProTools and the computers... everything is manipulated. It is guitar playing, but it's really interesting how guitar players are going to react to it. If I was a guitar player, which I kind of am... oh shit, this just keeps getting more confusing. We should just call it Mind Fuck instead of MDFMK. If we were to sit down and say, "Let's have lots of guitars on this record," it would have been a joke. It wasn't done like that. It's not like here's the guitar player and here is his part, where he fits in the picture. This is just music... these are songs, these are tracks, and we have different instruments.

OB: Will Universal Records break MDFMK?

SK: They will break MDFMK either way. They will either break it to the mainstream, or they will break it and it will be dead.

OB: If it fails, is it all over?

SK: No, MDFMK is an entity. It's the cover name for Lucia, Tim and I. Whatever happens to MDFMK, it won't break our spirit. It won't change us. We'll learn from experience, but they can't break our souls.