Orkus

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Orkus is a monthly German music and culture magazine published by the Zoomia Media Group. Despite its subtitle ("Gothic - romantic - industrial - electro") and its web tagline ("Das Magazin fur Dark Rock-Electro-Gothic Rock-Dark Metal & More" [1] ), it includes all popular music genres including metal, medieval rock, Neue Deutsche Härte, alternative rock, electro and futurepop. The gothic rock, dark wave and industrial music genres have had only a minor presence since the late 1990s.

Contents

History

The magazine was established in 1995 by Claus Müller and was released for free in A5 format. The focus was initially on new wave, gothic rock, electro, and industrial music. [2] With the third edition in May 1996, the magazine was published for a fee and in A4 format. Since 1997, the focus has shifted increasingly to heavy metal. However, other genres such as Goa trance, intelligent dance music, ambient, drum and bass, and techno, are represented in the magazine.

Each month has a goth-related cover, often featuring a semi-nude female model. [3]

It is generally considered one of the top three music magazines in Germany, along with Zillo and Sonic Seducer . [2] [4] [5]

Orkus is the official sponsor of the Amphi Festival and releases DVDs of the event in their issues at the end of the year. [6]

Content

In addition to interviews, concert reports, short portraits, and reviews, particularly from death metal, dark metal, and black metal, there are articles unrelated to music, such as illustrated reports on cemeteries and a series on mysticism in everyday life. There are also columns by musicians (Oswald Henke, Alexander Kaschte) and pages with poems from readers.

Each issue came with a CD with new tracks and remixes from the bands featured in the magazine until March 2020.

Its compilation CD Orkus Collection 2 made it to #1 on the 2002 Deutsche Alternative Charts. [7]

Related Research Articles

Goth subculture Contemporary subculture

Goth is a subculture that began in the United Kingdom during the early 1980s. It was developed by fans of Gothic rock, an offshoot of the post-punk music genre. The name Goth was derived directly from the genre. Notable post-punk artists who presaged the Gothic rock genre and helped develop and shape the subculture includes: Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, the Cure, and Joy Division.

Dark wave is a music genre that emerged from the new wave and post-punk movement of the late 1970s. Dark wave compositions are largely based on minor key tonality and introspective lyrics and have been perceived as being dark, romantic and bleak, with an undertone of sorrow. The genre embraces a range of styles including cold wave, ethereal wave, gothic rock, neoclassical dark wave and neofolk.

A rivethead or rivet head is a person associated with the industrial dance music scene. In stark contrast to the original industrial culture, whose performers and heterogeneous audience were sometimes referred to as "industrialists", the rivethead scene is a coherent youth culture closely linked to a discernible fashion style. The scene emerged in the late 1980s on the basis of electro-industrial, EBM, and industrial rock music. The associated dress style draws on military fashion and punk aesthetics with hints of fetish wear, mainly inspired by the scene's musical protagonists.

Diva house or handbag house is an anthemic subgenre of house music that became most popular in gay clubs during the second half of the 1990s. The Encyclopedia of Contemporary British Culture defines handbag house as having "prominent female vocals, breakdowns, and a proliferation of piano 'stabs'." Modern diva house compositions use synth stabs and four on the floor rhythms.

Dark culture

Dark culture, also called dark alternative scene, includes goth and dark wave culture, electro subculture and parts of the neofolk and post-industrial subcultures. Dark culture's origin lies in followers of dark wave and independent music, but over the decades it has developed to a social network held together by a common concept of aesthetics, self-representation, and individualism. The musical preferences of the dark scene are characterized by a mix of styles ranging from futurism, electropop, early music, (neo-) classical, and folk music to punk rock, rock, techno and ambient music.

Neue Deutsche Härte Subgenre of rock music

Neue Deutsche Härte, sometimes abbreviated as NDH, is a subgenre of rock music that developed in Germany and Austria during the early-to-mid 1990s and during early 2000s. Alluding to the style of Neue Deutsche Welle, the term was coined by the music press after the 1995 release of the German rock and metal band Rammstein's first studio album Herzeleid.

Certain music is sometimes described as "dark" in a metaphorical sense. For example, "dark pop" is often indiscriminately applied to a wide range of disparate artists, but usually refers to pop music that incorporates synthesizers or a minor key. In Germany, the term schwarze Szene has been "used since the 1990s to describe all the so called dark alternative music styles swirling around Goth: industrial, darkwave, electro, metal, neofolk and medieval, including BDSM/fetish culture".

The Singapore Dark Alternative Movement (S.D.A.M.) is an informal, social collective catering to the needs of the Singaporean gothic and alternative lifestyle community. It also functions as a support/help group for members within the latter regarding issues such as suicide, gender and sexuality. Although cited by their official webpage as having the date of their creation as 1998, the name of the collective only surfaced in 2005 with the return of former leader Saito Nagasaki from Perth, Australia.

Amphi Festival German music festival

The Amphi Festival is a music festival that has been taking place since 2005 featuring a wide-ranging program for a heterogeneous audience, albeit primarily fans of alternative, electronic music, and dark music. The number of visitors to the event in 2009 was 13,000 per festival day.

Futurepop is an electronic music genre that has been characterized as a blend of synthpop, EBM and dance beats, based on trance and techno. It began to emerge in the late 1990s with artists like VNV Nation, Covenant, and Apoptygma Berzerk. Other leading genre artists were Assemblage 23, Icon of Coil, Neuroticfish, and Rotersand.

Natasha Scharf is an author, disc jockey, presenter and journalist best known for her work publicising gothic, rock, metal and progressive metal music and subcultures. She currently writes for Metal Hammer, Classic Rock Presents: Prog and Artrocker Magazine on a freelance basis.

<i>Sonic Seducer</i>

Sonic Seducer is a German music magazine that covers gothic rock, new wave, EBM and other kinds of electronic music and culture. The magazine is noted for organizing the annual M'era Luna Festival. Since its inception in 1994, the Sonic Seducer has become one of the major publications of the dark culture in Germany.

Modulate is the studio project of Manchester-based DJ Geoff Lee. They are an Electronic dance music group from Manchester, England. Their sound blends elements of various styles including Electro, Rave, Industrial music, Trance music and Hard dance. The band is signed to Metropolis Records and Infacted Recordings (Europe/RoW). Modulate live shows also features Steve Wilkins

Sanguis et Cinis was an Austrian gothic rock band.

Ad Inferna

Ad Inferna is a French gothic metal/black metal and darkwave/gothic-industrial band consisting of members VoA VoXyD and Vicomte Vampyr Arkames, formed in 1998.

Cygnosic, stylized CYGNOSIC, is a Greek electronic music project created by musician and programmer, Georgios Psaroudakis. His music is associated with musical genres including Dark Electro/Industrial/EBM. The music is recognizable and consists of characteristic melodic sounds combined with death metal vocals. The studio project is a one-man operation based in Athens, Greece.

References

  1. Orkus MagazinInfoChronikInfo. "Orkus Magazin | Facebook". De-de.facebook.com. Retrieved 11 April 2012.
  2. 1 2 Ladouceur, Liisa; Pullin, Gary (2011). Encyclopedia Gothica. Toronto: ECW Press. p. 204. ISBN   978-1-77041-024-4.
  3. Brill, Dunja (2008). Goth Culture: Gender, Sexuality and Style. Berg. p. 173. ISBN   9781845207687.
  4. Kilpatrick, Nancy (2004-09-28). The goth bible. New York: Macmillan. p. 82. ISBN   0-312-30696-2.
  5. Brill, Dunja (2008). Goth Culture: Gender, Sexuality and Style. Berg. p. 12. ISBN   9781845207687.
  6. "Das Magazin für Dark Rock". Orkus. Retrieved 11 April 2012.
  7. "Jahrescharts 2002". Djcharts. Retrieved 11 April 2012.