Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft

Thick, pounding, dystopian: if there's a synthetic tone that, in terms of sheer aggression, can go toe-to-toe with even the heaviest guitar, it's without a doubt the muscular arpeggiator of “Der Mussolini”. An assault march, a piston gone haywire, a flow of molten sludge, the dance of an android: it's hard not to associate it with a violent image. It feels like being whipped in a bunker during an air raid, damned both outside and in. The viciousness is pure punk and the Will to Power is pure youthful drive, but above all it's the result of a cathartic release: the industrial-constructivist ambitions of the first two albums melt down into this danceable hysteria like steel in a furnace. “Alles Ist Gut”, starting with its self-mocking title, represents the ebb after the militancy, hedonism after commitment, physicality after abstraction, all pushed to a level of obsessiveness so unbearable that it triples the nihilism quotient, erasing in one stroke the conflict between the mosh pit and the dancefloor.

For three minutes and fifty seconds, not an inch is given. Voice, synth, drums and nothing else, as if intoning the sepulchral, definitive mechanical requiem for classic rock: music as bare as a naked, sweat-drenched body, in that murky no-man's-land between hyper-technology and ultra-primitivism. It's an inexpressive fury, where it's the dancing, if anything, that will paint the picture: robotic yet uncoordinated, a spastic thrashing about in which you seem to break a bone with every step. It all lies in that precarious harmonic wobble, always seeming on the verge of falling apart: Robert Görl despised the “cleanliness” of synth-pop bands, and in response he boasted of never tuning his electronic beast, achieving a swollen, immensely powerful sound. That grim, oppressive press-machine of a sound would remain one of the great status symbols of the apocalyptic '80s, the soundtrack to a video game you can only lose, the counterpart to Gabi Delgado-López's menacing declamation.

While the influence of Kraftwerk and Suicide is still plain to see, the destination is entirely new and still unsettling today: only Screamers dared to make synthesizer music this powerful and forceful. Electronic-Body-Music: they couldn't have landed on a more fitting label, and it's no coincidence that it went on to become a genre in its own right. Music “designed to be German” and ostentatiously Teutonic in its metronomic inhumanity (voiced, however, by a Spaniard: one of the many contradictions the Düsseldorf duo loved to play with), yet destined to influence the much-despised Anglo-American dance music, especially its Black strains. The path for techno was already marked out, if not already well trodden.

Then, of course, there's also that title and those lyrics. Almost marginal, given how much is said through the music alone, but decisive in making the track a hit then and a cult favorite now. It would, however, be wrong to dissolve them into the cliché of right-wing fascination: theirs is a systematic desecration of every taboo, an ambiguity as sharp as a razor, morbidly drawn to anything that reeks of extremity. Is it a coincidence that the acronym DAF can be read not only as Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft but also as Donatien-Alphonse-François (de Sade)? It's hardly worth pointing out, on the other hand, that this paroxysmal, Genet-esque exaltation of physical force reads as more homoerotic than fascistic, and that those dark uniforms evoke a sadomasochistic/fetishistic imagery rather than a military one. A brutal sexuality that, paradoxically, ends up outlining a tragic sensuality, the flower of a youth suspended between absolute pleasure and total sacrifice, with frontline ardor and vital drive carrying an inevitably deathly undertone.

Never had a song with such controversial content climbed so high in the charts, going on to dominate dancefloors all over the world. Today it would be unthinkable; perhaps it was back then too. The point is there's little to think about here and a lot to dance to, down to the very last drop of sweat, to the relentless rhythm of a Power in which to lose yourself with depraved pleasure.

Geht in die Knie

Und Klatscht in die Hände

Beweg deine Höften

Und tanz den Mussolini

Tanz den Mussolini

Tanz den Mussolini

Dreh dich nach rechts

Und klatsch in die Hände

Und mach den Adolf Hitler

Tanz den Adolf Hitler

Tanz den Adolf Hitler

Tanz den Adolf Hitler

Und jetzt den Mussolini

Beweg deinen Hintern

Beweg deinen Hintern

Klatscht in die Hände

Tanz den Jesus Christus

Tanz den Jesus Christus

Tanz den Jesus Christus

Geh in die Knie

Und dreh dich Nach rechts

Und dreh dich nach links

Klatsch in die Hände

Und tanzt den Adolf Hitler

Und tanzt den Mussolini

Und jetzt den Jesus Christus

Und jetzt den Jesus Christus

Und jetzt den Jesus Christus

Klatscht in die Hände

Und tanz den Kommunismus

Und jetzt den Mussolini

Und jetz Nach rechts

Und jetz nach links

Und tanz den Adolf Hitler

Und tanz den Adolf Hitler

Und jetzt den Mussolini

Und jetzt den Mussolini

Tanz den Jesus Christus

Beweg deinen Hintern

Und wackel mit den Höften

Klatsch in die Hände

Und tanz den Jesus Christus

Und tanz den Jesus Christus

Und jetzt den Mussolini

Und jetzt den Adolf Hitler

Geb mir deine Hand

Geb mir deine Hand

Und tanz den Mussolini

Tanz den Kommunismus

Tanz den Kommunismus

Und jetzt den Mussolini

Und jetzt den Mussolini

Und jetzt den Adolf Hitler

Und jetzt den Adolf Hitler

Und jetzt den Jesus Christus

Und jetzt den Mussolini

Und jetzt den Kommunismus

Und jetzt den Adolf Hitler

Und jetzt den Mussolini

Und jetzt den Mussolini

Tu den Mussolini

Tanzen wir den Hitler

Tanzen wir den Hitler

Und gehn in die Knie

Beweg deine Höften

Klatsch in die Hände

Und tanz den Jesus Christus

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30/03/2026