Maybe it’s not “metal,” but it is Rock for sure. The band is “In Extremo” and I’ve been listening to them for a couple years or so.  How I “found” them is a rather long story – and since those seem to be some of my best ‘blogs so far, here goes…

My indoctrination to German Metal was many years ago, at work, during “stretching.” Yes, you know, at big corporate jobs they do lots of warm fuzzy things to make the employees “feel better,” so at Intel we did “stretching” as a group twice a day (everyone in the corp. did this, not just our IT group). And during that time, whoever was “leading” the stretch session was allowed to play whatever CD they wanted.  And on this particular day, the music was something I’d never heard before. It was really “hard-rock” (esp. for stretch time, lol) and it was in a foreign language.

 After the stretch session I asked the woman who led the session whose CD it was that she played. And she said it’s Rammstein. And the album was Sehnsucht.  From that moment on I was hooked. Of course I bought all of their CD’s, which at that time was just Sehnsucht and Herzeleid – but I’ve kept up with them and bought each of their subsequent albums as they were released. 

Having found Rammstein, I started looking for other bands with what might be considered a similar style. I quickly found Megaherz, and between the two my German Rock fix was doing pretty well.  One band that kept popping up was In Extremo. So I decided to give them a spin.  I bought two of their CD’s: “Weckt die Toten!” and “Verehrt und Angespein.” Hmmm.  The first time I listened to them I wasn’t sure what to make of them. They weren’t the electronica/metal that was Rammstein, that’s for sure.

What really struck me were the bagpipes! I was like, “Wow – they’re using bagpipes… in rock music! How odd! But I think I like it..”  I’ve always been fascinated with bagpipes.  As a child, my favorite part of watching parades go by were the marching bands, and even better were the bagpipe marchers. They were just so loud, exotic, and awesome! I’ve since bought all of the In Extremo I can get my hands on.

They’ve also got some amazing “Live” videos on YouTube.  Here are some that I find particularly representative:

“Omina Sol Temperat”

“Spielmannsfluch”

“Vanner Och Frande” (BTW the odd instrument opening this song is a “Nyckelharpa”

“Villeman Og Magnhild”

 Well, that should give you taste of what they’re like. It’s certainly not for everybody, but if you like bagpipes and rock music, you’ll probably enjoy it, LOL!  InEx might even be the perfect “parent annoyer.” Well in my day it would’ve been for sure, but today too many parents might be “rockers.” Maybe those rockin’ parents could use it to drown out that hip-hop crap their kids are listening to, hehe:

1. It’s Rock
2. Its got bagpipes which -can- really grate on some peoples nerves
3. It’s in a foreign language so folks have no idea what they’re singing about. (most are just “rock-ified” folk songs, but they won’t know that) 

Enjoy!

Addendum:

I forgot to mention that when I first started buying German Rock, a lot of it wasn’t available in the U.S. locally nor from Amazon, so I ordered it from Amazon-Germany.  Just in case you didn’t know… often it’s cheaper than paying the “Import” fee at your local shop, or even from Amazon-US.  Just FYI (sometimes it’s more though, so shop around to make sure you’re not getting ripped)