Das Ich co-founder Bruno Kramm dies at 58 after Granada concert
Bruno Kramm, co-founder of German dark wave band Das Ich, has died at 58, hours after the band’s September 25, 2026 concert in Granada, Spain.
Bruno Kramm
More then shocking and extremely sad news this morning. Bruno Kramm, co-founder and keyboardist of German dark wave and gothic-industrial band Das Ich, died on September 26, 2026, hours after the band performed in Granada, Spain, the previous night. Bruno Kramm was only 58. The news was confirmed on the Das Ich Facebook page.
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Bruno Kramm dies after Das Ich concert in Granada
Das Ich played Sala Planta Baja in Granada on September 25, its first concert in southern Spain according to Sonic Seducer. Kramm collapsed after the show and emergency responders were unable to revive him. Spanish police classified the death as natural and opened no investigation. The exact circumstances beyond that have not been confirmed.
The Granada date followed a Spanish run that took Das Ich to Barcelona’s Sala Upload on September 11 and Madrid’s Sala Nazca on September 12, in support of the band’s 2025 album, “Fanal”, as Side-Line reported in August. Whether a previously announced November 7 appearance at Vienna’s Schattenwelt Festival will go ahead has not been addressed by the band or its label.
Statements from collaborators and organizers
Granada promoter Distortiongirl Eventos confirmed the death in a statement: “Bruno Kramm, member of the band Das Ich, passed away after his concert in Granada. Unfortunately we could do nothing for him.”
Sven Hegewald, a close collaborator of Kramm’s through Danse Macabre Records, described the loss in a statement carried by multiple German outlets: “Last night, a big part of the scene – and a huge part of my own life story – is gone.” Hegewald asked fans and press to give Bruno Kramm’s family privacy while further details are confirmed.
Das Ich co-founder Stefan Ackermann had not issued a public statement at the time of writing.
Bruno Kramm is survived by his wife and two children. The entire Side-Line team expresses its heartfelt condolences to Bruno’s family and friends.
Das Ich’s most recent work: ‘Fanal’
Kramm co-founded Das Ich in Bayreuth, Germany, in 1989 with singer Stefan Ackermann, and the band released “Fanal” in October 2025 through Danse Macabre, the label the band founded the same year it formed. Side-Line’s review at the time called it the band’s first new album in almost 20 years, following 2006’s “Cabaret.” The album was preceded by the singles “Lazarus” in August 2025 and “Brutus” in September 2025. Kramm discussed the band’s approach to the album in a February 2026 interview with Side-Line.
About Bruno Kramm
Bruno Kramm was born on October 13, 1967. In 1989 he met singer Stefan Ackermann at the Bayreuth nightclub Crazy Elephant, and the two formed Das Ich the same year. Kramm took on keyboards, synthesizers, programming and backing vocals, while Ackermann wrote the German-language lyrics and sang lead. The duo became one of the founding acts of “Neue Deutsche Todeskunst” (New German Art of Death), a scene that paired electronic music with gothic, industrial and classical elements.
Das Ich’s debut EP, “Satanische Verse”, began as a 1990 demo tape before its official release in 1991. Unable to find a label willing to release the band’s debut album, Kramm founded his own label, Danse Macabre Records, that same year to put out “Die Propheten.” Danse Macabre Records went on to release records by numerous other gothic and alternative artists, many produced by Kramm himself.
Das Ich’s catalogue grew through the 1990s and 2000s with the albums “Staub” (1994), “Egodram” and “Morgue” (both 1998), the remix collection “Re-Laborat” (1999), “Anti’christ” (2002), the compilation “Relikt” (2003), “LAVA:Glut” (2004) and “Cabaret” (2006). The lineup changed repeatedly around its two founders: drummer Daniel Galda (1994-1999), Chad Blinman (1994-1996), Jakob Lang (1998-1999), Michael Schmid (1999-2000), Damian “Plague” Hrunka (2000-2008) and Kain Gabriel Simon (2000-2006, and again in 2016) all passed through the group. Stefan Siegl, known as Sissy, joined in 2006, and keyboardist and backing vocalist Martin Söffker joined in 2008; both remained with the band through its most recent lineup.
Beyond Das Ich, Kramm released the solo album “Coeur” in 2000 and, in 2023, the AI-themed “Die Schöpfung und andere Kurzgeschichten”, which paired dark wave production with spoken-word narration exploring, in his words, a machine “recognizing humanity as its creator.” He remixed other artists’ work, including a track for dark wave band The Guests, founded the German goth club night Generation Gothic, and wrote for the now-defunct music magazine Zillo.
In 2016, Kramm and Ackermann won a lawsuit against the German performing rights society GEMA. The Berlin Regional Court ruled that GEMA could not distribute royalty payments to publishers on works where the publisher held no genuine claim to them.
Das Ich did not release another studio album after “Cabaret” for nearly two decades. Work on what became “Fanal” began during the COVID-19 pandemic but stalled for years afterward, which both members have described as a turbulent period. The album finally arrived on October 28, 2025, on Danse Macabre Records, preceded by the singles “Lazarus” and “Brutus.” In a February 2026 interview, Kramm described the band’s original goal as trying to “denazify the German language” by reclaiming it for expressive, artistic use after decades of association with Schlager music and wartime propaganda.
Kramm was also active in German politics. He joined the Pirate Party of Germany around 2010. He served as the party’s federal commissioner on copyright policy and as its political director in Bavaria. He stood as a candidate in European and federal elections and led the party’s list in Berlin’s 2016 state election. After a weak result there, he stepped down as Berlin state chairman, left the Pirates and rejoined Alliance 90/The Greens, a party he had belonged to earlier in his life.
Kramm lived in Werder (Havel), near Berlin, with his German-Finnish wife and their daughter and son, in a house that also contained his recording studio. Das Ich had played three Spanish dates in September 2026, in Barcelona, Madrid and Granada, with a further date planned for Vienna’s Schattenwelt Festival on November 7. Kramm died in Granada on September 26, hours after the band’s show there.
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