Schkeuditzer Kreuz Brings Industrial Synth Crust To Aotearoa

Fresh from an extensive tour of Europe (Sept-Oct 2023), Australian-based Industrial Synth Crust artist Schkeuditzer Kreuz, alias Aotearoa punk veteran Kieren Hills, has just announced the project’s first ever New Zealand tourdates for January 2024, with shows in Christchurch, Wellington, and Auckland. Busily garnering worldwide acclaim, the new album ‘No Life Left’ (Bad Habit Records) is the second full-length LP from Schkeuditzer Kreuz: a crushing slab of harsh, dark, post-apocalyptic industrial music; with its gnarled roots in the crust-punk, hardcore and d-beat music scenes of New Zealand, Australia and Germany.

Kieren is known to New Zealand’s punk and post-punk underground as a former member of S*M*U*T, which ultimately led to the current direction of Schkeuditzer Kreuz. Kieren traces his discovery of noisy industrial and experimental post-industrial music to his youth in Aotearoa, influenced by a previous generation of punk musicians who had begun to explore different possibilities: Skeptics, Froit Head, Lung, CeLL, Invisible Dead, and Children’s Television Workshop among them. Kieren recently explained to Undertheradar:

“I started playing in punk bands around New Zealand in about 1987, and in ‘91 I moved to Wellington and joined S*M*U*T. That was the first band I was in that toured and released music, and that’s when I really got hooked, setting off on the trajectory that I’m still on now. We toured and played with a wide variety of bands: from punk and hardcore through to goth, experimental and industrial. That’s how it was then: a lot of crossover between different scenes and genres. The first time I recorded with S*M*U*T, we went to The Stomach in Palmerston North, and recorded with Claire Pannell. Claire was playing in Froit Head at the time, and we stayed at her place. That weekend, she introduced me to a whole world of weird and wonderful music. That marks the point when I discovered the wonders of industrial sample music: a moment in time that I can connect directly to what I’m doing now. Between touring and playing with bands like CeLL and Invisible Dead, and seeing acts like Children’s Television Workshop, to moments like meeting Claire – that’s when the existence of industrial music really started to make an impact on me, and planted the seed from which Schkeuditzer Kreuz has grown.”

Speaking about the upcoming New Zealand shows, Kieren went on to say:

“I’m just so excited to see old friends and show them what I’m doing – to play in cities I lived in 30 years ago, and share my noise with them, and to see what people are doing there. New Zealand has always had amazing and inventive bands, and I’m really excited to see what people are doing there now.”

The shows in NZ promise the same diversity and eclecticism that has shaped Kieren’s musical path so far. In Christchurch at Darkroom, Schkeuditzer Kreuz is joined by quirky Avant-industrial weirdos Placenta Cookbook, and emerging musique concréte artist Wilieu. At Valhalla in Wellington, the lineup includes hardcore crust-punk extremists Forced Starvation, dark punk / deathrock outfit FOG, and noise project Narrow Utility Function. And winding up at Whammy’s Backroom in Auckland, Schkeuditzer Kreuz is joined by turbo-charged punkrock-meets-metal legends Malevolence, dark electro-industrial mainstay Creassault, and the dark, nihilistic ambience of Vihil.

Tickets are available now from Undertheradar.co.nz

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