Slime is a Germanpunk rock band, founded in Hamburg in 1979. They were one of the defining bands of the 1980s German punk scene. Musically and lyrically, they developed from simple, straightforward songs in the style of into complex song structures with layered and cryptic texts. Their anti-fascist messages in particular had an enormous influence on the later Deutschpunk scene; many slogans from their earlier work were adopted in the autonomist scene. Slime's work was the subject of controversy. During their periods of growing success, they were accused of selling out. Their anti-American songs were also criticized by the leftist scene. Their first EP, Wir wollen keine Bullenschweine was the subject of preliminary proceedings by the public prosecutor. The band first dissolved in 1984 and reunited in 1990 as violence against refugees began to mount and released two albums, experiencing their first commercial success before dissolving again in 1994. The band reunited in 2009 after fifteen years and has released two additional albums.
History
Michael "Elf" Mayer and Sven "Eddie" Räther both attended Gymnasium Heidberg in Langenhorn, Hamburg. Both discovered their love for punk rock through the Ramones' first album and decided to found a band. Mayer played guitar and Räther played bass, and the harbor worker Peter "Ball" Wodok played drums. The first vocalist was Thorsten "Scout" Kolle, a classmate of Mayer and Räther. First appearing under the name "Slime 79 and the Sewer Army", which was soon shortened to "Slime". The first song written by the band was "Polizei SA/SS", a reaction to the police actions against anti-nuclear protests. The band made their first appearance in the youth center Kiwittsmoor, appearing with The Kreislaufkollaps. Their singer Dirk Jora impressed the band, which replaced Kolle with Jora. The band recorded their first EP, Wir wollen keine Bullenschweine, which was released in February 1980, followed by their first album, Slime I. The album also contained a copy of the song "Wir wollen keine Bullenschweine", which attracted the attention of the Hamburg public prosecutor. Charges for "Volksverhetzung" were filed and dropped. While their songs in the beginning featured simple riffing and rather stereotypic anarchist sloganeering, music and lyrics became darker and more complex by the third album "Alle Gegen Alle". Notable songs are "Deutschland muss Sterben ", an allusion to "Deutschland muß leben, und wenn wir sterben müssen", a line of the 1914 poem Soldatenabschied by the German poetHeinrich Lersch, "Bullenschweine", "Polizei SA/SS", comparing police to the SA and SS and "A.C.A.B.". They sang anti-war songs, and they made a punk anthem with the song "Hey Punk". They even produced songs against their government, their justice, their police and their politicians. The song "Yankees Raus" is against imperialism. The following years, neo-fascism in Germany was rising more and more, so they felt dutybound to sing against them. While their 1992 comeback album "Viva La Muerte" was a rather sketchy affair, their 1994 album "Schweineherbst" is by many seen as their masterpiece, musically as well as lyrically. The title song is a raging attack against rightwing mobs, who burned down homes for asylum seekers as well as those who just talk against it but do not act. The chilling song "der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland" was inspired by the poem Todesfuge by Paul Celan, who was a prisoner in different Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust and described the horrors he had experienced there. The band reunited in 2009 and released the albumSich fügen heißt lügen in 2012, followed by Hier und jetzt in 2017.
