🇺🇦 Side-Line stands with Ukraine - Show your Support

Oberer Totpunkt has released the compilation album “Feuer” via Danse Macabre Records, bringing together 19 tracks in remixed and re-sequenced form. The album already appeared in late 2025 via Bandcamp.

“Feuer” functions as a concise overview of Oberer Totpunkt’s catalogue, focusing on the songs that are included in the band’s current live set. The material was presented during Project Pitchfork’s “Epitaph” tour in autumn 2025, where Oberer Totpunkt appeared as special guest across German dates and at the Schakelbox in Waregem, Belgium.

The compilation opens with “Rattenfänger” and moves through recent songs such as “Dia De Los Muertos”, “Alltag macht tot”, “Die Krieger”, “Imperator”, and “Maschinenherz”, before reaching later tracks including “Blutmond”, “Totentanz”, “Teufels Lehrerin”, “Zeit verfliegt”, “Untergehen”, “Geisterfahrt”, “Gevatter Tod”, “Hamburg”, “(Das ist nicht) meine Welt”, “Paul ist tot” and “Dies Irae”. Many of these titles originate from earlier albums such as “Erde ruft”, “Stiller Zoo”, “Desiderat”, “Neurosen blühen” and “Totentanz”.

All lyrics are written by Bettina Bormann and all music composed by Michael Krüger, with two exceptions: “Paul ist tot”, based on a composition by Peter Hein (Fehlfarben), and “Dies Irae”, which reworks the medieval hymn with choir parts performed by Canticum Potentem.

Mixing and mastering for “Feuer” were handled by Tom Wendt at Skating Dog in Hamburg, continuing their collaboration which was already visible on earlier Oberer Totpunkt releases.

About Oberer Totpunkt

Oberer Totpunkt is a German-language electronic project from Hamburg, formed in 2006 by vocalist and writer Bettina Bormann and drummer/composer Michael Krüger. The project’s name refers to the “top dead centre” position of a piston in an engine, a mechanical term that the band use as a metaphor for “moments of critical tension and change.”

Musically, Oberer Totpunkt combine dark electronic production, elements of industrial and EBM, and traces of rock with German spoken-word vocals. Musically they are clearly part of the Neue Deutsche Todeskunst lineage.

The duo released a string of concept albums, mainly through Danse Macabre Records. Their debut “10 Grad vor OT” appeared in 2007 on Brainsmash Records and was reissued by Danse Macabre in 2009, followed by “Erde ruft” in 2009, which blended darkwave, electro and spoken word and introduced tracks such as “Blutmond”, “Hamburg” and “Imperator” that return on “Feuer”.

In 2010 the band released “Stiller Zoo”, with a thematic focus on fairy tales and myth. “Desiderat” followed in 2014, centring on ideas of longing and desire, while “Neurosen blühen” in 2017 examined cultural unease and anxiety.

The 2022 album “Totentanz” became their sixth studio album and marked a return after a five-year break. The record dealt with personal and external “demons” and was released on Danse Macabre in digital and CD formats. In 2021 the band already launched a first single, “Dia De Los Muertos” from the new album. Side-Linealso interviewed Oberer Totpunkt in 2022. And Oberer Totpunkt also made Side-Line’s Top 25 albums of the year 2022.

Live, Oberer Totpunkt perform as a duo or with additional musicians on guitar, bass, keyboards and performance, including collaborators such as Sebastian Rack, Denis Scheither, Christiane Schmidt and Reaktor4.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil.

side-line.com

Since you’re here …

… we have a small favour to ask. More people are reading Side-Line Magazine than ever but advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. Unlike many news organisations, we haven’t put up a paywall – we want to keep our journalism as open as we can - and we refuse to add annoying advertising. So you can see why we need to ask for your help.

Side-Line’s independent journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we want to push the artists we like and who are equally fighting to survive.

If everyone who reads our reporting, who likes it, helps fund it, our future would be much more secure. For as little as 5 US$, you can support Side-Line Magazine – and it only takes a minute. Thank you.

The donations are safely powered by Paypal.