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Popular Culture Review
Tracks 3 and 4, “Grund der Seele” (“Bottom of the soul”) and “Vater”
(“Father”), show clearly that Das Ich’s album Antichrist is not merely
blasphemous or provocative. Both of these tracks contain a deeply personal
discussion of religious issues and how they reverberate in the musical artists’
life. The first has simple syncopation placing most of the emphasis on the weak
and/or off beats. The industrial instrumentation includes distorted guitars and
vocals. The chorus involves the technique of Sprechgesang, a mixture of singing
and speaking. The lyrics are directed towards an unspecified du (“you”) and are
a cry for help. As Bloom showed, for Nietzsche the fact that God died and the
consequent relativism meant “an unparalleled catastrophe” (143). Similarly,
Ackermann, speaking about the bottom of his soul, where eternity is supposed to
lie, finds only pain and fear and, finally, death. The song “Vater”—Kramm
pointed out in an interview that the title does not refer to God, but to his real
father (Kaschke 2)—is also a cry of desperation, this time about the loss of
transcendence that occurs together with the