“It’s certainly a good time to be a punk musician”

Hamburg. If the zeitgeist were a butterfly, it would look disgusting. It's hardly surprising, really, that it's currently being captured with particular precision right here, in the gutter of pop culture, for some time now, and in the increasing glare of the astonished art world. And one can certainly marvel at this astonishment. After all, punk always thrives when things are slipping. And who would seriously doubt that?

Punk music, once again the rumbling pulse meter of the republic. Seismograph of social tensions. Reading the dregs. Frustration, anger, disappointment, overwhelm, compressed into acoustic sputum and coughed up in two, rarely three minutes.

The band that's spitting the furthest is a band from the new German powerhouse of decidedly left-wing, humorous protest music, from the Hanseatic city of Bremen, where groups like Frustwut, Scheitern.dreitausend, and Teddies Kneipe are currently attracting attention: Team Scheisse. Their current album, "20 Jahre Drehorgel," entered the charts at number nine in March. It's been praised by relevant subculture magazines. It's also been praised by the ARD cultural program "ttt." It's been praised by publications that are otherwise unwilling to compromise stylistically, such as "powermetal.de," where the album received a 9.5 out of 10. It's also praised by the arts section of the "Süddeutsche Zeitung." And by music journalist Linus Volkmann. You can't really achieve more than that.

Hamburg, St. Pauli, Große Freiheit, number 36, a Thursday in April. In a room backstage, with two sofas, heavy leather, worn socks on them, a backpack, a drummer, and a singer, the latter, Timo Warkus, reflects on the implications of the band's current success. "The real question now, of course, is: What happens next? What's the next album going to be?" His wonderful conclusion, delivered in lavatory poetry: "Now we're just in the mood to really shit."

Warkus, born in 1979, with his platinum-blond forest goatee, the face-tattooed father Abraham of German punk, is not only visually the most striking member of Team Scheisse. The band is a project between him and Hannes Gehring, launched a few years before their debut "8 Hobbies for Social Decline" (2020). Gehring, not one for the spotlight, is still the main composer in the background, Warkus writes the lyrics, and the rest of the band plays the music, appearing on stage as Team Scheisse. The lineup: a core group, with several reservists milling around them. Even Warkus has had to be substituted on stage due to illness. No one noticed, they say.

"We're not a normal band in many ways," says Warkus. "We're just a weird tightrope walker. And we stumble all the time. I think that's what makes it fun to watch us. That we somehow manage to play 'Karstadt detective'. Because it's not difficult. And it still rocks."

Hand on it: Team Scheisse and crew immediately before the first of two concerts in Hamburg.

Source: Danny Kötter

"Karstadtdetektiv" is one of their most popular songs, played 3.5 million times on Spotify. "You can steal whatever you want / I won't betray anyone / all I want is a friend" – a scratchy miniature, isolation, a critique of capitalism, concisely dealt with in 79 seconds.

Nobody goes to Karstadt these days. Team Shit, they're running the place down.

The band is currently on their "Who's supposed to pay for that, who has that much money?" tour. 16 shows across Germany, six of them sold out early. They'll be performing in Hamburg for two consecutive nights. One look at the audience in St. Pauli is enough to determine that punk as a form of expression in general, and Team Scheisse in particular, are currently achieving an astonishingly broad impact: There are people with mullets and wide trousers waiting outside the club to be let in. There are men in metal jackets standing at the urinal. There's the woman in the left-wing autonomous Christiania hoodie standing at the merch stand. There's the guy with a mohawk and a spare head shirt - another band that's helping to shape the German rumbling rock renaissance. There's the guy with a backward Slayer cap, the girl in a Hello Kitty top. Even a goth is happily buzzing through the aisles. When was the last time you saw one?

Before Team Scheisse take the stage shortly before nine, Warkus whispers a stage direction into the microphone: "Put your cell phones on silent. Please leave your T-shirts on. Look out for each other." Team Scheisse values ​​rules of consideration; awareness is part of their brand essence – in the spirit of punk logic and in light of the sociopolitical backlash from conservative anti-woke circles, something like the Flinta pit at Team Scheisse is almost a provocation. Twice per evening, and for two songs each, the men have to vacate the pogo zone to make way for women, trans people, and anyone who identifies differently. Then they effervescently box around to "Panzerquartett," "Cobratattoo," or the magnificent "Beige" from the new album, which sings about "ein helles Braun" – the everyday Nazis among us.

Team Scheisse, a band with attitude and humor. A pair of terms that hardly any text about the Bremen band can do without. Warkus, however, has problems speaking of attitude in political terms when it comes to marking where the band positions itself on the ideological spectrum. "Attitude, being so left-wing – that's so bizarre that it's somehow a thing. For us, for example, anti-fascism is the norm. The 'evil Antifa' is also a misconception that's become entrenched in people's minds. But that's a narrative from the right," he says in a conversation between the two Hamburg shows, half-swallowed up by the backstage sofa. "The evil Antifa," Warkus grumbles at an imaginary right-wing radical, "only exists because of you, idiot."

"The evil Antifa only exists because of you, digger": Timo Warkus (front) and Simon Barth (back).

Source: Danny Kötter

Team Scheisse dedicated a song to the topic, on their 2023 album "042124192799," called "FA," their most striking song. It was what "Schrei nach Liebe" (Cry for Love) was for Die Ärzte 30 years earlier: a statement against the neo-Nazis of their time, a political polemic set to music. "Are you anti-Antifa, are you Fa?" - they performed the song two years ago on Jan Böhmermann's "ZDF Magazin Royale." Böhmermann, a staunch fan, used to work with Warkus on the radio. They respect each other. But of course, the whole thing was controversial. Team Scheisse on TV? With Böhmermann? Commercial, some say. "Team Scheisse was never underground," says Warkus, who doesn't actually come from punk at all, but from another genre that can address social and political grievances: hip-hop. "As soon as you start making money with your music, are you still underground? So when does sellout become sellout?"

It's the eternal punk dilemma when a band like Team Scheisse comes along: They should deliver, but please not for everyone. Otherwise, they're mainstream. Team Scheisse is currently balancing on this precipice.

Awareness and consideration – part of the core brand of Team Scheisse.

Source: Marco Nehmer

"We're professional musicians," says drummer Simon Barth, the only one besides Warkus who could drag himself out of the tour bus for the midday interview. Bassist Thomas Tegethoff is still asleep, guitarist Mello Kanone is ill, and tour manager Henri will replace her on the second evening in Hamburg. "As a professional musician," asks Barth, "can you actually be part of a culture that defines itself by distancing yourself from society? That's perhaps something you have to do in your basement. On the other hand, if everyone can do that in their basement, then it's a hobby for rich, white kids who can afford to make music." That's why, he says, "perhaps there needs to be a bit of commercial punk too, so you can make a living from it."

They're pretty good at it. The demand is remarkable. Warkus and his family have returned from Erfurt to Bremen for his band, which has long since become a full-time job. "It's certainly a good time to be a punk musician," says drummer Barth. "Very lucrative."

Bands like Pisse, Pogendroblem, Kochkraft durch KMA, Burnout Ostwest – a project by Team Scheisse impresario Gehring, who also thrives in the scene with Mercedes Jens –, and Akne Kid Joe – punk, although never truly gone, is back in full force. Because it has something to say: The times we live in are shit. Damn dangerous. For the country, the world, and our own minds.

"You can," says Timo Warkus, "of course close the blinders, but when you look at the world, dude, what do you feel then? You don't feel like, 'Oh, everything's cool. I'm going to have kids, then I'm going to buy a house and get a Labrador.' It's like, 'What's going on, dude? Everything could explode tomorrow.'" This, he says, is a central theme in creating their music. "For me, it's healing to do it. For us, it's healing to bang on some furs for an hour and a half. It's cleansing. That's why I always say: Start a punk band. It doesn't have to live up to any standards, it doesn't even have to be punk rock, but find your own expression so you don't get pregnant with this shit, but get it out of your system."

Team Scheisse does it the Team Scheisse way. With neatly crafted, bungling performances. With Warkus' stage harlequinade, like a contortionist on speed, expressively flexing his buttocks from the small of his back, with his quirky screaming, which he calls his "natural expression" and only discovered through his work on and with Team Scheisse. With truly fantastic melodies, limping through the room like a shot, little, battered anthems.

And with this humor, which has a method. There is, for example, "Pluto," a song that blames its banishment from the circle of planets in the solar system for the decline down here, for war, climate catastrophe. And for the CDU. "Pluto" begins with a quote from Markus Söder, head of the sister party CSU, the dwarf planet in the federal government, so to speak, who nevertheless considers himself Jupiter. Söder talks about the "compulsive veganization of Germany and Bavaria." About a "life without roast pork," which is possible, but makes no sense. Absurd stuff that sometimes has to stand on its own. Team Scheisse have a certain flair for that.

"Look," says copywriter Warkus, "when you hear Söder speak, you get emotional. Do you really want to engage with him in substance? That's impossible. You can only laugh at him. Or Merz. If I think about it to the end, I can't even express what I wish for Merz. That means I have to turn it around somehow. Then I have to find a way to deal with all this shit, to keep my head above water so I don't suffocate on all this crap. It's sometimes hard to bear. Humor is a form of compensation."

Hard to bear, shut up for the umpteenth time: In January, Team Scheisse played a concert at the massive demonstration against the AfD federal party conference in Riesa. Shortly after, the federal election: AfD 20.8 percent, a result doubled. So, is attitude dead after all? Well, who knows how right-wing extremist forces in the country would dare to appear if there were no significant opposition from the civilian population, from the cultural sector? And besides, says drummer Simon Barth: "I think if we're now at 25 percent for the AfD in the polls, that's just a sign that we don't need a special fund for the Bundeswehr, but rather a special fund for education, because we're so stupid that we elect such idiots."

Hard work: drummer Simon Barth in Hamburg.

Source: Danny Kötter

This madness is everywhere. Here. And there. USA. Trump. Musk. The power of the tech oligarchs. Hard to bear. And sometimes it's too much, even for them. Team Scheisse recently publicly deleted their Instagram account. The band, signed by Kitschkrieg's hip-hop label even before their first proper album, "Ich habe Blumen von der Gase mit gebracht (jetzt wird küsst)" (2021), became known as a meme band; they mastered it like few others in the scene. But with Team Scheisse and Instagram, which belongs to the Facebook group Meta, it's over now. 50,000 followers - sunk. They had already turned away from X, which used to be Twitter, and that also cost them several thousand followers.

"Are we crazy? Why do we even allow this? Why are any left-wing journalists still on X? What's going on? We have to boycott it completely," says drummer Barth about Musk's platform. On Instagram, the situation is more complex, "but it's already completely clear how Zuckerberg is pandering to this fascist regime. And somehow the fact that they're really Nazis isn't discussed. I don't know what else they're supposed to do besides give Hitler salutes on stage. Should they paint a little Hitler mustache on themselves, or what are we waiting for to talk about it in Germany? We're already experiencing the financial fallout from this insane dictatorial policy. It all comes here, and then the DAX crashes by eleven percent or something crazy like that." Warkus: "And now I'm supposed to upload my weird cat pictures there? Won't happen. I don't enjoy it anymore."

Insta account with 50,000 followers sunk: Team Scheisse around Timo Warkus (left), Simon Barth (back), Mello Kanone (right), Thomas Tegethoff (front).

Source: Danny Kötter

These days, he only shares his little social media gems on behalf of the band on Bluesky, with just over 7,000 followers. They shut down the Instagram account shortly before the announcement of the additional concert in Hamburg, which was also significantly less well-attended on Wednesday. "Ticket sales plummeted afterward, which is pretty shocking," says Warkus. "The hype also came partly from this memefication, from the synergies created by users and so on, and that's gone now, and we're noticing it. We're simply not reaching people anymore."

But there are still enough people to create punk poetry with their cocktail of grimness and madness that works. "We're not the only Dada-esque political punk band out there," says Barth. "But nevertheless, many people can agree on it. I don't usually notice that in this genre."

That's what you call a spearhead. And with wonderful precision, it pricks where it hurts. And sometimes it hurts with shame. Then it becomes art. This is how gems like "Der Wirtschaft" (The Economy) are born – a song with lyrics that Warkus wrote after a chance encounter with Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann. Warkus waits, the FDP woman stares from a poster. "That face is staring at me at the bus stop. Underneath is a saying that personifies the economy. So I'm supposed to have feelings about the economy now? Are you kidding me?"

Reality as a subject, dissected and reassembled to seemingly expose it to ridicule, yet in the process tearing away its mask and revealing a deeper truth, stylistically unpretentious, simple, and carefree. That's what punk can do when it's good. And this one is damn good.

"If you don't want to express yourself at all," says Warkus, "so you don't have to justify your sharp feelings and opinions: Hey, go for it. This kind of music, leveled pop, will always exist. I'd be happy if that were different, but look at the masses. The masses don't want to be sharply agitated." A look at the charts: self-reflection, stupidity, escapism, even love, sure, but what good is love when things are burning? "There are some really great love songs. I love love songs too," says Barth. "But my God, there's so much to say in the world."

A few hours later, they're back on stage. Hamburg, act two. The zeitgeist flutters through the hall, that horrible butterfly. "Schmetterling" is the name of their most famous song; it has almost six million streams on Spotify. They blast it right out of the gate at the Große Freiheit. You have to be able to afford it—a difficult metaphor in the punk context.

But Team Scheisse, yes, they can afford it. It's 90 cathartically simmering minutes. Cups fly, the pit boils. And from the cleansing steam of sweat, beer, and self-assurance, a realization rises: German music finally has something to say again.