Australasian post-industrial punk artist Schkeuditzer Kreuz shares video for cover of Discharge’s ‘State Violence State Control’
Expat New Zealand punk veteran Kieren Hills, now operating as New South Wales-based post-industrial solo project Schkeuditzer Kreuz, today premieres the project’s second video single: a cover of ‘State Violence State Control’ by long-running UK punk band Discharge. Schkeuditzer Kreuz’s unique reworking of ‘State Violence State Control’ appears on the album Isolated and Alone; self-released in December 2021 under Kieren’s own label imprint Dorfpunk, and distributed by Bad Habit Records and Already Broken Records in Australia.
FOR FANS OF: Discharge, Einstürzende Neubauten, Laibach, Skeptics, Kollaps, KUBINE, Dark Horse, Death Church, S.M.U.T.
Photography and video by Photoyunist
The vinyl LP has just been released this month in the UK and Europe by Pyrrhic Defeat Records, with the new single and video marking what has been an often torturous birthing process.
Premiering the new video for ‘State Violence State Control’ today on Post-punk.com, Alice Teeple writes:
“In 1982, UK punk band Discharge released “State Violence State Control”, a terrifying dystopian rant about police brutality and militarism. Flash forward forty years, and it’s the same old scene. New South Wales-based artist Schkeuditzer Kreuz (alias Kieren Hills) unleashes a ferocious reworking of the track, combining dark, abrasive post-industrial influences with DIY punk.”
The new video by illustrator, photographer, and filmmaker Photoyunist brilliantly captures the live energy of Schkeuditzer Kreuz’s “one human and some machines” performances, from a recent show at Melbourne’s Last Chance Rock and Roll Bar, 21 January 2022, while on tour in support of the new album.
As Kieren explained to Post-punk.com:
“I was playing for the anniversary of two friends I had met in a night of blood, noise, and terror in Yokohama six years earlier, and at this show the nightmare continued – fun and pain in equal measures!”
On his love for the original, Kieren also said:
“I’ve always loved Discharge, but this song more than most from the era has kept my attention: slow, heavy, and very, very aggressive. As a teenager, I wore a patch of the cover of this EP on the back of my jacket, until it fell from my body in shreds. It was my friend and sometime co-conspirator Spider (Death Church) who first said I should play it with Schkeuditzer Kreuz – it started almost as a joke, and then developed into what it is now: a part of every live show that always gets people going.”
A veteran of the Australian and New Zealand punk scene, Kieren began his journey into underground music in New Zealand during the 1980s, before relocating to Australia with riotous Wellington, New Zealand punk rock group S.M.U.T. in 1993. Over the years, he has played in countless underground bands and projects, while based at different times between Australia, New Zealand, and Germany. His other main project for a little over a decade now has been as bassist with Sydney hardcore band Dark Horse, and he is also a member of occasional deathrock/gothic punk outfit Death Church.
Kieren traces his discovery of post-punk, industrial, and experimental noise to his youth in New Zealand, influenced by a previous generation of local punk musicians who had begun to explore different possibilities: Skeptics, CeLL, Invisible Dead, and Children’s Television Workshop among them, leading Kieren to the music of Laibach and Einstürzende Neubauten, or Big Black and Butthole Surfers; and later, current Australian artists such as Knife, Religious Observance, and Kollaps (now based in Italy); and KUBINE from Yokohama, Japan. Difficult to pigeonhole musically, Kieren defines the Schkeuditzer Kreuz sound as “D-Beat Raw Synth Punk” – also the name of an EP from earlier in 2021.
Now living in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, Australia, Kieren records as Schkeuditzer Kreuz in a cabin that he built in the woods. The new album Isolated and Alone presents an often harrowingly bleak and raw response to the present global climate – dealing with themes around fear, mistrust, and paranoia; isolation and marginalisation; and (as with the album’s previous video single, ‘Broken’), mental illness and suicide. Originally scheduled for an October 2021 release, the first vinyl pressing of the Isolated and Alone LP at a plant in China was destroyed by local authorities, who deemed it “unfit for export” due to its alleged “subversive content”; forcing the release back to December while the album was re-pressed.
Finally, physical copies of the LP are now distributed in the UK and Europe by Pyrrhic Defeat Records, and in Australia by Bad Habit Records and Already Broken Records.
All proceeds from digital Bandcamp downloads via Dorfpunk are donated to Transcend Australia, to help support trans, gender-diverse, and non-binary kids.
Watch the video premiere on Post-punk.com: here
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