The cult club moves into its new domicile in Chemnitz Wirkbau. A “secret headliner” consisting of five cosmonauts will play at the opening.
The legendary “Atomino” in Chemnitz is about to reopen for the fifth time: After several closures in the last 15 years, the club will now be revived in the Wirkbau on Annaberger Straße. This will be celebrated with a festival from August 31st to September 4th, culminating in an open-air concert on September 3rd. And that should have it all: The Berlin newcomer Leepa, the Chemnitz shooting star trio Blond (who just announced the release of their second album “Perlen” for April 2023) – and a “secret headliner” have been announced. This is advertised with a photo of five cosmonaut suits – so the only surprise would be if it weren’t Kraftklub: The Chemnitz band, now one of the most sought-after festival greats in Germany and on the road this summer, will release their new one in mid-September Album “Kargo”, from which three singles (“One song is enough”, “Wittenberg is not Paris” and “Fahr mit mir”) have already been released.
Guerrilla concerts in their hometown are a tradition at Kraftklub – not only, but especially in the context of a new album. In addition, Chemnitz is not officially on the “Kargo” tour schedule in November and December – not performing at home would be an affront to the fans of the first hour, who have crystallized around the “Atomino”. One of the group’s last “regular” appearances was in 2011 at Chemnitz AJZ. That’s where the band stopped for their “Autobahn zum Hölle” tour.
Since Kraftklub’s meteoric rise from their debut album “Mit K”, which was released in January 2012, the band has played in their hometown again and again – albeit always with very special shows, but never again “conventionally” with proper announcement, advance booking and at a suitably sized venue. Good Friday 2012 marked the start of this tradition: Kraftklub suddenly stood up for a free show on the roof of “Terminal 3” opposite the Karl-Marx-Head and, together with KIZ, gave a whistle on the ban on dancing. Because of the rush of fans, the Brückenstraße had to be closed, and the ensuing trouble with the public order office had to be smoothed over personally by Mayor Barbara Ludwig. A year later the band founded their own festival: The “Kosmonaut” at the Rabenstein reservoir. It was named after the first headliner – most fans quickly noticed that Kraftklub was behind the “Kosmonauten”. Secret headliners also became a tradition in the series – as did a Kraftklub appearance every two years
In September, Kraftklub celebrated the second album “In Schwarz”, released in 2014, with a free concert on Hartmann-Platz in Chemnitz – from the roof of a bus and with a system that was clearly too small for the around 20,000 fans. With the record, the band managed to make it into the big halls – the regular Saxony guest performance took place in the Arena Leipzig. Legendary: The hopping Kraftklub fans triggered an earthquake warning. The band also took the lyrics of their included song “Meine Gang” seriously: “And everyone lives far away, but we’ll be back for Mania”. In the following years, the “Cosmonauts” performed again and again at the Mania concert series on the Christmas holidays in the Atomino. In 2017, an unreleased song about a suicide was even played: “Fliegen Wie ein Stein” has been haunting the internet as a video recording ever since. Before that, however, there were other special concerts, such as the “Action Gutmensch” in the AJZ in October 2015, for which admission was charged and donated to help refugees. The tickets were gone in no time.
“No Night for Nobody”, the third album, was also celebrated by Kraftklub in Chemnitz with a concert at the Karl-Marx-Head. A year later, on September 3, 2018, the band organized the “We are more” free concert with the Toten Hosen, Feine Sahne Fischfilet and KIZ, among others, which attracted around 65,000 people to Chemnitz. So is it really a coincidence that the Atomino opened four years later on the same day?