Don’t know how many people here were into his work, but neofolk/martial industrial musician Albin Julius died yesterday.
I was a big fan from the mid '90s when he was doing the medieval influenced Moon Lay Hidden Beneath A Cloud through the WW2 romanticization of Der Blutharsch. I kind of dropped off when Der Blutharsch became Der Blutharsch and the Infinite Church of the Leading Hand and Julius switched from his Third Reich gimmick to a psychedelic hippie thing (probably a good idea in the long run though).
His most recent album was a collaboration with modern neo-folker King Dude, and it’s quite good.
Never heard of him before, but that’s a pretty tasty groove. I hear King Dude mentioned a lot nowadays but know nothing of him either. Will take a look
2 Likes
Is that a genre or the title of an album or or an influence or a bunch of words put together? I’ve never heard of any of this.
I’m probably gonna have to duck flying fruit for this but it kinda reminds me of the cure… IF the cure was awesome, had a better singer and catchier hooks.
The most recent stuff, like the vid I linked, was more “rock” oriented, so I guess it could sound like the Cure if that’s what you’re hearing.
1 Like
I was a big fan from the mid '90s when he was doing the medieval influenced Moon Lay Hidden Beneath A Cloud through the WW2 romanticization of Der Blutharsch. I kind of dropped off when Der Blutharsch became Der Blutharsch and the Infinite Church of the Leading Hand and Julius switched from his Third Reich gimmick to a psychedelic hippie thing (probably a good idea in the long run though).
His most recent album was a collaboration with modern neo-folker King Dude, and it’s quite good.
If I didn’t know better from the weirdness of this sub, I would swear this is some kind of AI generated text.
HAHA! I got a chuckle too, but didn’t flinch since I’ve spent many days of my life goofing on BAL SAGOTH and their fans (no, seriously, look up the album titles and song titles and you’ll simultaneously choke on ridiculousness and pass out trying to complete the 500 word essays that count as names).
I was a big fan of the music of The Moon Lay Hidden Beneath A Cloud, which Albin and Alzbeth created. I didn’t think to buy all of their albums when they were available - just a couple, unfortunately - and now they’re very tough to get. Then they split (both band and romantic partnership, in a ugly and public way) and Albin formed Der Blutharsch, which didn’t float my boat so much. However, he also worked with Death In June then, and his addition and new sound produced some of the best and most refreshing new material from DIJ in a long time. Then that relationship too went sour, and Albin left and DIJ jumped the shark with All Pigs Must Die.
I don’t know too much about Albin personally, but he definitely contributed to some of my favorite music over the years in collaboration with other people. Still haven’t heard a word about how he died.
–SKot
1 Like
That’s the only Death In June song I can even name. I dong know anything about the rest of their catalog, but I love that track.
I mean, it’s a real toe-tapper…but on the whole, the subject matter of that album and the story behind it was just so stupidly petty and out of character for the group that it turned me off completely. DIJ had always been above stooping to personal attacks and airing dirty laundry in their music…until that point. I just lost interest for the most part after that, and the politics just got worse as time went on.
Although, incidentally, I did run into Paul Barker at a DIJ show in Austin not long after that album came out, and he bought me a beer. So DIJ was good for something.
–SKot
2 Likes
Moon Lay Hidden made beautiful, medieval industrial you might call it. They existed from about 1993 - 1999. Alzbeth more or less disappeared after that, she did talk about a new project, but it never materialised. Which is a shame, because I have her book and she was a cool woman with an obvious passion for the subject matter.
Der Blutharsch began as Albin’s side project, but after they broke up, it became Albin’s main thing. From about 1998 - 2002 it was a martial ambient project themed around WW1 and WW2. It courted the whole “is he a Nazi?” thing, but he was never stupid enough to be explicit about it, you never saw any literal Nazi stuff, he kept it pretty obscure. If my German was better then maybe I’d be able to pin more to him, but the feeling I got was he was talking about earlier stuff a lot too, eg the Franco-Prussian War through World War One. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking and it really was all Nazis.
In about 2003 he obviously got bored of both his sound and theme, and changed it into a psychaedelic rock party band, with actual members and everything, even a music video! By then I’d kind of lost interest as well, but I didn’t jump ship with the new material and didn’t keep up. I would notice his (their?) new releases, but I was put off by the over-merchandising. Every album came out in six different versions, with boxes and t-shirts and all this, constant live albums. I’m curious how he died, curious what Alzbeth makes of it or where she even is nowadays.