How a European industrial rock band opposed to violence got tied to school shootings in America

(CNN) — Searing guitar riffs, primal drums, and electronic textures collide with impassioned vocals to create a chaotic yet precise sonic storm that blurs the lines between human aggression and mechanical force.

That’s industrial rock, and for fans of German band KMFDM, it is the sweet spot between the freedom to express individuality and rebelling against a system of political corruption and injustice.

But in 1999, when the band’s lyrics were cited by the perpetrators of the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado, which resulted in 13 deaths, their message of resistance was suddenly eclipsed by the violence they had long condemned.

In January, a song by the band was featured in a TikTok video posted moments before a 17-year-old unleashed gunfire at Iowa’s Perry High School, killing two and wounding others.

And now, the band has once again been thrust into the spotlight by photos of 15-year-old freshman Natalie Rupnow, who on Monday killed a teacher and student at her private school in Madison, Wisconsin. The images show her wearing a black KMFDM band shirt while at a shooting range.

Band says music stands against violence

KMFDM issued a statement condemning the Columbine massacre, expressing sympathy for the victims and explaining its music was intended to stand against violence.

“KMFDM are an art form — not a political party. From the beginning our music has been a statement against war, oppression, fascism and violence against others,” read the statement at the time.

KMFDM told CNN on Saturday it has been “distressing” to be in a similar situation again, after “how unfairly maligned KMFDM was by the media during Columbine, in what was tantamount to a witch hunt.”

“We stand by these words as strongly now as we did back then,” KMFDM said in its statement. “We don’t believe Natalie Rupnow wore a KMFDM T-shirt because she’s necessarily a fan of the band, but instead because she glorified the Columbine shooters. Sadly, there’s a subculture of sick individuals who do have an obscure fascination with the Columbine massacre, and our band’s acronym will forever be associated with it.”

KMFDM said the concern should not be its music but the ubiquitous culture of gun violence in the United States, with a persistent rise in gun-related deaths and mass shootings that have killed hundreds of children and school staff in classrooms.

“In a culture that is obsessed with guns, people will always try and blame someone or something else for these tragic events, rather than the abundant and easy access to firearms,” KMFDM said.

The history of industrial rock

The first decade of industrial music was recognized as being “very experimental and very hard to listen to,” said industrial music expert Alexander Reed. It started with combining noise samples – ranging from vacuum cleaners, power tools or banging on metal – with drum beats and turning them into songs.

“It was very interested in turning noise into music and music into noise. That’s tied into their idea of flipping notions of the powerless versus the empowered, or good versus evil,” Reed, a professor of music at Ithaca College, told CNN.

Industrial music originated in the 1970s in northern England, Germany, and, to some extent, San Francisco before spreading all over the world. Around the mid-1980s, Reed says, industrial musicians began incorporating influences from dance music and rock ‘n’ roll, leading to KMFDM’s rise.

The band was founded in 1984 as a performance art project. KMFDM is its original German name, which is intentionally grammatically absurd and stands for “Kein Mehrheit Für Die Mitleid,” translated and interpreted as “No pity for the majority.” The name, KMFDM told CNN, was inspired by Dadaism, the early 20th century antiestablishment art movement which rejected nationalism and war.

KMFDM surged to success in the late ’80s and early ’90s, alongside fellow industrial pioneers Nine Inch Nails and Ministry, who helped bring the genre into the mainstream.

Themes of dominance and military violence come up all over the history of both industrial and electronic music. They are expressed through the melodic differences between electronic instruments and acoustic rock, Clara Latham, an assistant professor of music technology at The New School in New York City told CNN.

Electronic instruments, like drum machines, synthesizers, and keyboards, have a machine precision that lacks the nuance that a drummer or guitar player conveys with fluctuations in tempo. When these elements collide, Latham says, they create a cacophony of melodic chaos.

“The sound gets associated with a kind of oppressive quality in comparison, and that became part of the industrial aesthetic,” Latham said. “Compare a crazy guitar solo where the guitar sounds like it has a mind of its own, with an electronic artist at a console turning knobs – it has a totally different connotation.”

The combination of the aesthetic sound differences projects the anti-violence messages behind the music: “There is a very, very clear anti-authority, anti-capitalism, anti-establishment political message that’s trying to be shouted,” Latham said.

“One of the reasons why they have an enduring sort of legacy among young people is they really make people feel listened to,” Reed said. “They stand for the side of the oppressed, so their politics and their music seem to say, ‘Hey, if you are marginalized, if you are pushed to the side, we will listen to you.’ And some of that sort of earnest fist pumping power that comes through their rock influences is acting as a way to empower their listeners.”

KMFDM has released 24 studio albums and related projects and continues to release music. The band had a 40th anniversary tour around the world in October.

“KMFDM’s fans are incredibly dedicated, outspoken and loyal, without them, it would be unbearable to continue to exist through times like these,” KMFDM said.

Underlying theme of school shootings is gun violence, not music, experts say

It is unclear if Rupnow was inspired by the Columbine shooters or if her interest in KMFDM stemmed from Columbine shooter Eric Harris wearing the band’s shirt and citing its lyrics.

But whether an individual has a particular musical preference likely has no effect on their decisions to carry out violence, Indre Viskontas, neuroscientist and associate professor of psychology at the University of San Francisco, told CNN.

“When people are in a state of anger or very heightened emotions, they often listen to music to help them regulate their emotions, to blow off steam, get that anger out in a healthy way, so that they don’t act aggressively, or ways in which they wouldn’t want to,” Viskontas said.

“A person who is going to go into a school and murder children has a lot of issues. That is not healthy behavior, so there’s obviously a lot of failures that have led up to that particular behavior, but I don’t see any evidence that their particular style of music would lead to or enhance that behavior.”

Reed, who wrote the book “Assimilate: A Critical History of Industrial Music,” points to examples of how people misinterpret music to fit their own ideas.

“People are going to mishear things. Paul Ryan thought that Rage Against the Machine was a right-wing band, and they clapped back saying ‘You are the machine against whom we rage,’” Reed said. One alt-right founder and white nationalist “claimed Depeche Mode is the official band of the alt right when they had been wearing literal Karl Marx beards unironically in their previous video.”

It may also be likely that the Columbine shooters misinterpreted the messages in KMFDM’s music, Reed said, since the band consistently denounces violence and uses lyrics that critique social and political issues.

“KMFDM was one of a bunch of bands that they listened to and music was only one of a bunch of things that they were into, a lot of which was a lot less savory,” Reed said. “But the most important thing that Columbine kids were into were guns.”

The past year has continued to see a rising number of school shootings and a lack of legislation to curb gun violence. There have been at least 83 school shootings in the US so far this year as of December 16, according to CNN’s analysis of events reported by the Gun Violence Archive, Education Week and Everytown for Gun Safety.

“After every school shooting, we outsource our conversations, difficult decisions, policies, and our sense of societal guilt to symbols, so we can point to them and say, ‘Oh, well, they listen to this rock band’ and we no longer have to have a conversation about gun control, or the degree to which we are raising our adolescents through screens and algorithms that veer their screens toward extremist politics,” Reed said.

“We are missing the point – that the problem is not the music, it’s the guns.”

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