Frau Potz

[originally posted May 13th 2024 on cohost]

Ach, Heiner is a song about elitism and uniformity of counter-culture (lyrics and translation), and it's one I come back to very regularly. Frau Potz were a very short-lived band that released a single, very one-note album. If you heard one song, you pretty much know what the rest is gonna be like. But no one hits that note better for me than they do in this song.

Frau Potz fit pretty well into the German emo punk and post-hardcore scene, aesthetically hitting the nail on the head with what I heard being referred to as "Studentenpunk" (undergrad punk). But where bands like Turbostaat approach with a lot of finesse and an almost impressionistic sense of songwriting, Frau Potz just tear through their frustrations with with straight forward bruteforce like no other.

A friend I showed this to once said that this doesn't even sound like listening to music with screaming, more like someone really angry is screaming directly at you. I sarcastically referred to it as screechcore. Felix' vocals are way offputting and unconventional here (he later formed a new band by the name Adam Angst with a more palatable and multifaceted sound), but god damn, it gets the point across and it makes me feel absolutely feral.

Honestly, I'm not even upset this band only released one album. You can't, and probably shouldn't, keep up an energy like this for an extended period of time. I don't really know what happened with this band exactly, but I like to think that they probably vented it all out in this album and then fell apart. And that feels very appropriate for this sound