Community

Metalfans4Metalbands is a collective from the Hunsrück that doesn't just celebrate the underground – it builds the infrastructure for it. The house rule is right there on the homepage: no pay-to-play, no buy-in, no merch cut. It has grown into a small ecosystem:

• Their own shows: such as Rotten Feast in Oberhausen or the Rock for Dogs benefit series for animal welfare
• F4B Ticket & Support Shop: no portal fees – apart from PayPal, the shop says every cent goes to the underground; other underground promoters sell their tickets here too
• Laut4Future: benefit concerts whose proceeds fund instruments and music lessons
• Blog with interviews and the weekly F4B Tiefenradar, plus a community forum and a WhatsApp channel with gig info

Anyone who claims nothing happens in the underground just hasn't looked here yet.

Almost every home has a guitar somewhere that nobody has touched in years. That's where Das FAME Projekt comes in – short for Furtherance of Art and Music Education: Basti Scholz from Gummersbach collects retired instruments, gets them playable again and gives them away free to children, teenagers and social institutions.

It all started with a single acoustic guitar for a friend's daughter. By now it's more than 90 instruments, from a drum kit for a youth centre to an e-drum set for music therapy. FAME is also one of the projects supported by the Laut4Future benefit series. Got a dusty amp in the basement? This way.

Koblenz has more metal than the postcards of the Deutsches Eck would suggest: the city gave us Desaster and Heldmaschine, plus young bands putting out their first EPs and nights at Florinsmarkt or Café Hahn. Koblenz Metalszene gathers it all on Instagram and Facebook under the motto "by fans, for fans": releases by local bands, gig tips, support for the scene in and around Koblenz.

They pitch in heavily on KRACH too: adding concerts, correcting dates and line-ups, and keeping band and venue pages up to date. If the Koblenz gig data here is right, chances are someone from the Metalszene helped.

From 2004 to 2012, Metal For Mercy was a benefit festival, mostly at Witten's Werk°Stadt and twice at the Matrix in Bochum. Die Apokalyptischen Reiter, Xandria, Holy Moses, End Of Green and Crematory were among the bands on stage – proceeds went to causes such as the Olpe children's hospice, the Ruhr children's hospice service and Aktion Teddybär.

Since 2010 a registered non-profit association has been behind it, supporting young bands. At the On Stage nights, three or four bands play the Werk°Stadt and other venues in the region, at ticket prices nobody needs to think twice about. Through E.-Youth, young people learn to organise concerts entirely on their own. The association has put on over 200 shows so far.

Metality is what happens when you run Wacken campsite solidarity all year round. Kicked off by the W:O:A founders and set up as an association in 2020, it's now a network with several thousand members and chapters as far as Hawaii. The motto: Extreme. Nice People.

Behind it is serious work: 666 Schlafsäcke (sleeping bags for homeless people), Black Dog against the silence around depression, You Never Rock Alone for fans with disabilities (including "Friday is Flyday", which lets people with disabilities crowdsurf at Wacken) and ME:TALENT, which funds instruments and lessons for teenagers. Plus grants for small festivals – the amount, of course, being 666 euros.

Named after the most disgusting thing founder Felix "Fö" Wirtz could think of – the juice that collects in sausage packs left too long – bierschinken.net has been writing about punk rock "gutter style" out of Dortmund since 2000: unconventional, subjective and, by its own admission, "sometimes pretty daft". Behind it are hundreds of gig reports, a fat events calendar and a community that happily writes along.

On top of that there's the Bierschinken podcast with rotating hosts and series like "Pop, Punk und Politik", Bierschinken TV, and the Bierschinken eats FZW bash, where bands from every fringe of punk share two stages at Dortmund's FZW.

When Rock Hard parted ways with its long-time editor-in-chief Götz Kühnemund in early 2014, several people left with him – and that summer the first Deaf Forever hit the newsstands in Dortmund. The name comes from Motörhead, the subtitle says the rest: metal and hard rock for true believers.

The magazine comes out on paper every two months and takes its time: long interviews, a hefty review section and columns like "Forgotten Jewels" or "The Dungeons Are Calling" that dig up forgotten records. Musicians such as Darkthrone's Fenriz are among the writers. There's also a shop and subscriptions and a reader forum.

Metalinside calls itself a "web fanzine by metalheads for metalheads", and it fits: around 30 people from Switzerland and neighbouring countries write reviews, shoot from the photo pit and do interviews. Nobody gets paid – "We all do this together because we love metal."

Besides news and reviews there's an event calendar and an index of bands, genres and venues, handy for looking up who played where and when. Metalinside is a media partner at many Swiss concerts and festivals.

Plastic Bomb has been coming out of Duisburg since 1993 – founded as a fanzine by Micha and Swen, later making it onto station newsstands without leaving its attitude at the door: punk, hardcore, Oi!, ska and wave, plus politics from a decidedly left, antifascist scene. Four issues a year, more than 100 in total, for a long time with a free CD.

A label and a mail order grew out of the zine early on, because punk bands in the early nineties could barely get record deals. The fanzine has always stayed at the core, though – because, as they put it at Plastic Bomb, smartphones can't smell like a basement.

Niels Hansen started it in Bonn in 2001, with FrontPage Express and an entirely selfish goal: never to miss a show again. It grew into PUNKSTELLE – the gig calendar for "punk and punk rock in and around Cologne and Bonn", with punk and hardcore at its core plus whatever else Niels finds bearable, from garage to post-punk to ska.

The calendar is fed by a network of tipsters, sorted by month, with venue and start time for every show. Niels once explained the idea to TRUST fanzine: the Punkstelle should simply be a multiplier for the local punk rock scene in Cologne/Bonn and around – "nothing more, but nothing less either". Its 15th birthday was celebrated with three days of gigs at the Sonic Ballroom, and the site's motto still stands: Going to gigs makes you sexy!

Since 2003, sachsenpunk.de has been collecting gig dates for punk, hardcore, Oi!, ska and anything else loud and sweaty – from Chemiefabrik and AZ Conni in Dresden to Conne Island in Leipzig. The person behind it, simply "seb", stays firmly in the background. The site cheekily calls itself "sucksenpunk", "(non) est. since 2003" according to its header.

A few things have grown around it, such as a thoroughly subjective gig diary and a shoutbox for short-notice shows. If you want to know where the pit is in Saxony this weekend, you'll end up here sooner or later.

Since 2010, a large crew of volunteers has been writing about heavy music at Time For Metal without earning a cent for it. The webzine is backed by a registered association that wants to make metal visible as part of our culture. Its roots are on the Lower Rhine in Willich and Korschenbroich; these days the mail goes to Jever in Friesland.

The site offers news, reviews, interviews, concert and festival reports, a release calendar and a festival guide. With the Underground Award the team puts unknown German bands in the spotlight, and the podcast Leise war gestern covers everything from battle vests and festival nostalgia to AI in songwriting.

The first issue came out in Augsburg in July 1986, inspired by US zines like Maximumrocknroll. Since then TRUST has appeared every two months – by its own account without ever missing an issue – and has been made in Bremen since the nineties. Co-founder Dolf Hermannstädter is the publisher, and the writers don't see a cent for it.

Inside: long interviews, blunt and flippant record reviews (streams and MP3s are never reviewed, on principle), columns, politics, animal rights. Editorial and advertising are kept strictly apart. The motto: they feature what they want – the others feature what the music industry wants. Back issues are available as searchable PDFs.

On 28 February 2021 at 9 pm, a web radio station from Grevenbroich went on air with a simple idea: play songs by bands you'd otherwise only hear live. It started with around 50 bands and now has over 450 acts on its playlist – mostly from NRW, but also from the rest of Germany.

Listen via laut.fm, radio.de, TuneIn and pretty much any Wi-Fi radio. Bands submit their music through the website, and the rules are clear: nothing racist or hateful. No format radio, no heavy rotation of bands that play everywhere anyway – instead, the band from the youth centre down the road.

Since 2000, Radio Ostfriesland has carried an hour that has nothing to do with format radio: Radio Mähdrescher, every two weeks, with death metal, thrash and grindcore. It has its regular segments, like the "Triple Thrash Threat" with three thrash tracks in a row and the "Grindattack" with three grindcore songs back to back.

Between the songs there's news from the East Frisian scene – gigs, new records, local bands – and special shows for special occasions. Listen on the radio in East Frisia or anywhere via the live stream.

Three guys from the Ruhrpott, one mic and a great many records: Stefan, Nils and Dennis have been musing about metal, hardcore "and other stuff from the last few decades" since 2022. It sounds like the bar after the show, just with better audio.

Formats include year-by-year retrospectives (1992, 1993, 1994 …), the knockout tournament Schlacht der Platten – final: Slayer vs. Morbid Angel, yes really – and an episode about Bochum's Matrix club. Plus conversations with scene people such as Heaven Shall Burn's Chris Bass or a Century Media label manager.

Two guys, two mics, plenty of time: since late 2020, Christopher and Jobst have been talking on Und dann kam Punk to people for whom punk and hardcore "somehow played or still play a role". That's far from just bands – label people, producers, authors and activists too; TRUST publisher Dolf Hermannstädter was at the table in one of the very first episodes.

The conversations easily run past two hours, feel more like a pub table than a press junket, and after more than 250 episodes the motto still stands: Punk not perfect. Also on Apple Podcasts and everywhere else.

If you're standing in front of a stage in a club somewhere between Oberhausen, Duisburg and Wuppertal, chances are Heike Leppkes is already there – for every band, not just the headliner. Always all the bands is her motto. She has been shooting rock and metal shows since 2014, with a clear soft spot for the underground, where she says she can still feel the heart bands put in.

Her website is an archive sorted by month, with galleries from places like Helvete and Kulttempel in Oberhausen, plus band shoots. She also shoots and writes for Time For Metal and is a member of Metal For Mercy.

Florian Grill started out in 2006 with a fanzine called Thrash Attack. In 2009 came the label Dying Victims Productions in Essen – now a go-to address for anything that sounds like battle vests, bullet belts and 1985: heavy, speed, thrash and first-wave black and death metal.

Releases come mainly on vinyl and CD, with lavish packaging at fair prices, and the roster is international: bands like Iron Curtain, Coltre and Witching Hour are on the label. Add a large mail order, the reissue sublabel Relics from the Crypt and the Dying Victims Attack! festival at Essen's Turock, where only label bands play. Even US magazine Decibel has run a portrait of the label.

Green Hell started the classic way: in 1993 with crates of records at gigs and a mail order in Münster, mostly punk and hardcore back then. Today the shop sits on Winkelstraße, a few minutes from the main station, with over 80,000 items in stock. The range now stretches to jazz and hip-hop – but at heart it's still punk.

Can't make it to Münster? Order via greenhell.de or Discogs, or catch the crew at their stall at festivals and record fairs. The sister shop in Cologne is Underdog Records.

On 1 February 1987, Sir Hannes Smith, singer of Dortmund punk band The Idiots, opened his record shop behind the main station. He had been selling records before that – out of his bedroom in the Nordstadt. Since 1992 Idiots Records has been at Rheinische Straße 14, opposite the Dortmunder U, and it is Dortmund's oldest record shop for metal, punk and rock.

On the shelves: metal of every kind, punk, Oi!, Deutschpunk, crossover and stoner, plus shirts and patches. Can't make it to Dortmund? Order from the online shop. In February 2027 the shop turns 40 – with a party at FZW.

Thrash Out is a small DIY label from Düsseldorf with an address book reaching South America. It puts out everything between d-beat, crossover, metallic hardcore and thrash – "punk, hardcore, metal and (almost) everything between", in its own words. The roster puts skate punk from Piracicaba next to crust from Bogotá, street punk from Austria and rage from Wuppertal.

The criteria: a DIY attitude and a live show you won't forget. So it doesn't stop at vinyl – the label also brings its bands on tour across Europe itself. Records are on Bandcamp.