Das Bunker - Los Angeles Industrial Megaclub

This past Friday was our annual Star Wars party. Each year it gets bigger and bigger - and this year was the biggest and best one yet! More props, more costumes, and of course more people!

We posted a TON of pics on our facebook page, and LA Weekly has a nice slide show too.

In the year of Nineteen Hundred and Ninety Six, the German industrial/EBM duo of DAS ICH set out across the land for their first ever North American tour. That same year, a group of like-minded Southern California industrial music aficionado’s planned the creation of a place where this very unique style of art and culture could be enjoyed and celebrated. They named it Das Bunker – to both signify it as a place that was a safe haven for  

 Things are very different now. DAS ICH are legendary figures in the dark music world, specifically for their intense and powerful live shows that leave the audience member both questioning exactly what they witnessed and an overwhelming sense of sensory overload from the magnificent performance. Das Bunker has also changed quite a bit since then, cultivating a an place where generations of fans can celebrate our Germanic electronic music culture, and cultivating a home for artists exactly like DAS ICH.

 This Sunday, DAS ICH return to Los Angeles, to play a show that no one ever thought would happen. It wasn’t long ago that each member of the duo was fighting for their life after a pair of unrelated and random medical emergencies, each of which making it increasingly more apparent that DAS ICH was finished for good. Yet sometimes miracles happen. And while we hope that this weekend isn’t the bands final SoCal performance; we are entirely prepared for that to be the case. And if that is so, we look forward to spending one more night celebrating two decades of DAS ICH and Das Bunker. “Gottes Tod”, but Industrial music is forever.  

 Das Ich perform this Sunday night at Complex.

While the rest of the country suffers six more weeks of winter due to the curse of the rodents shadow, Los Angeles finds it's self with three outstanding industrial music events to choose from this Friday. 

First up, 3TEETH -  the men single-handedly responsible for digging industrial metal out of its mid 90s tomb take their post-surveillance era message to the strip of glam and the den of snakes.    

Meanwhile, in the heart of the city the one woman sonic wrecking crew PHARMAKON lays sonic waste to our former home with DB resident DJ's G. Holger's HIVE MIND + squad. 

And if post millennial nostalgia is more your thing, Sonoran noise turns synthpop trio ALTER DER RUINE join a massive crew (including our own Franck H-Bomb) at the faux-mountian village/craft beer mecca by the sea in a celebration of pre-Napster CD culture. 

1995 was a very different time in Industrial music-land. The WaxTrax era had come to a close and the seeds were being laid for new styles (and a new Los Angeles based dance club). Music was hard to find and even harder to share, and it wasn't un-common to see all the local DJs + lots of hard core fans hanging out at the record shop on Tuesdays waiting for all the new (and expensive) import CDs to arrive. Here are our pics for the top ten industrial albums of 1995.  10. - Syntec - Upper World A bit of a lost classic now, Syntec's second and final album had what was easily their biggest hit - Talk to the Upper World. I wish I knew more about these guys or what happened to them, but I have many great memories of hearing them n the dance floor at Kontrol Faktory. 

9. - Front Line Assembly - Hard Wired This record was EVRYWHERE back when it came out - except the club. you would hear this at parties, in peoples cars in the parking lot at shows, dudes wearing the t-shirt -  but none of the tracks caught on witht eh DJs. Good for FLA, the single that came out right after this had the club bangers Plasticity and Replicant on it.  

  8. - KMFDM - NIHIL KMFDM hit their peak in 1995 with the release of the top selling 'Nihil". Supported with two US tours, the bands best overall line up, and the monster single Juke Joint Jezebel, "Nihil" captured the spirit of the mid 90s as well as launched KMFDM to permanent stardom. 

7. - S.P.O.C.K. - Alien Worlds The Swedish sci-fi synth pop trio's sophomore release established S.P.O.C.K. as more than just a comedy act and proved that they had both staying power and dance floor cred with the albums lead single, "All E.T.'s aren't Nice". Hopefully one day they will return to Earth and play another LA show.  

6. - Suicide Commando - Sorted Images The second of the trilogy of albums that define the early portion of Suicide Commando's career, Sorted Images laid the foundation for SC's coming dance floor dominance with the massive hit "See you in Hell!".

5. - Haujobb - Freeze Frame Reality Haujobb really came into their own with their second release, Freeze Frame Reality and set the stage for their rise to the the top of the industrial music world. Check out our favorite from that album, World Window. 

4. - PAL - Signum it's not even a remote stretch to say that Das Bunker would not exsist it it wasn't for this album. PAL (along with Synapscapes debut record - also released the same year) kicked off the modern Rhythmic noise genre, and is still a dance floor favorite to this day with his monster track Gelöbnis. 

3. - Project Pitchfork - α Ω Already superstars in Europe, Project Pitchfork broke out to US audiences with their 1994 (IO) and 1995 (α Ω) releases. With so many huge jams (like title track Alpha Omega) it's shocking that we were half a decade behind on this outstanding act. 

2. - :wumpscut: - Bunkertor 7 It was hard not to pick this album as #1. REALLY hard. :w: was hands down the most popular act at the club in 1995. you could not go anywhere without seeing huge ;w: stickets on cars, back patches on jackets, t-shirts everywhere, and a good 8-10 different tracks in rotation. I had a really tough time even picking the track to feature here, and I chose one you DIDN'T hear in the clubs - but still had its own shirt and poster, Capital Punishment. 

This weekend is is a great one for fans of synthpop – dark synthpop to be exact. But even in such a narrow defined genre there is a ton of room for differentiation, and we have live performances from two of the most different syhtn artists we can think of , both playing their first LA shows ever– and they will both be amazing.

  Friday night we welcome Rummelsnuff – described by Alex of I Die: You Die as “Enormous German body builder / Sea Captain sings synthpop, tears phonebooks in half” – and this is a accurate description, it doesn't begin to touch on the complexity of Germany’s most unique artist as Rummelsnuff sings songs about everyday life in the manliest ways spinning takes of life at sea, fixing broken down automobiles, and BBQ tongs. Combined with a very subtle humor and a ever changing live show that at one point has involved one armed pushups and weightlifting routines, Rummelsnuffs self-described ‘Rough Electronic Music” has attracted a wide audience of all backgrounds. We are presenting this show in conjunction with the Music/Fashion collective Weltenbuerger Music and is a free show. Friday at Complex. 9pm.    

The first incarnation of Das Bunker was very different than the one most of you know of today. It was a small club, a bit outside the usual part of town, and focused on the cold and dark side of industrial music. Franck H-Bomb and crew focused on a mix of classic European labels like Antler Subway, PIAS, New Zone, and Zoth Ommog  - while at the same time bringing the sounds from a new wave of young acts, to the hungry and eager audience of Southern California.  And it was from this passion for music that we all fell in love with stuff like Suicide Commando, Wumpscut, and the entire Power Noise Movement and the commitment to giving new great bands a place to perform that gave us the reputation for being THE place for industrial music.

  We have evolved quite a bit in the almost two decades since then, but the passion for icy and harsh remains strong in the hands of MALDOROR. Inspired by the fictional “Bar Maldoror” where Current 93 recorded their classic live album, the club is a monthly event inspired by the same things we were  - and they deliver a amazing unique experience every time. The DJ’s (promoters G. Holger & J. Short of LA's phenomenal Pure Ground) will spin everything from classics by XMPT, Absolute Body Control, and Clock DVA to fresh industrial, minimal synth and new body. And having already hosted shows by Burial Hex, Youth Code, and Sleep Clinic and upcoming shows with Max + Mara, High-Functioning Flesh, and Inhalt, Maldoror has firmly planted the flag as the place to see and hear the darkest and freshest that industrial music has to offer.    

Maldoror is one Sunday a month at Complex.  

The response to our announcement that we would be ending the weekly Das Bunker events at the Catch One was overwhelming to say the least, and we truly feel that the last eight weeks of our run will go down as one of the greatest two month spans in industrial clubbing history. We have all of you to thank for this, and we could not say thank you for all the years of support nearly enough. That said, the question everyone has is why we decided to pull the plug and we promised that once we had wrapped up the final event we would answer.

In the spirit of full disclosure, we do not like to discuss business or behind the scenes stuff in public. It’s almost always bad for everyone in the long run and we strongly feel that you have a better time when you come to the club to have fun and are not exposed to any issues happening behind the scenes. But we also feel this is a special case. You have supported us for so long and made Das Bunker such a part of your life that we owe you a completely transparent explanation.  So here we go.

 The truth is, there were a lot of factors that went into our decision. The industrial club world is not what it was when we started, when we moved to The Catch One, or even what it was five years ago. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it did cause us to re-evaluate a lot of things – including whether the world (or at least LA) needed a Das Bunker anymore. More on this later. But all this is ancillary, as far and away the biggest factor in our decision was that Jewel’s Catch One is no longer a suitable home for Das Bunker. We have been aware of this for some time now, and did everything we can to change the situation and preserve the club any way we could and for as long as possible. But the one thing we would not- could not allow was you, our patron, our supporter, our friend to be mistreated or taken advantage of. So we are leaving.

 Things were never a perfect fit at The Catch, but for a long time we made it work. Most people would even say we did a pretty great job at it, but it was never easy. The club has very little equipment that pretty much every night club in the world has standard (DJ equipment, monitor speakers, fog machine, sound system for one of the rooms –the list is long), so we had to buy our own. The venue has no sound equipment or lights for live shows, so every time we had a band play (upstairs or down) we had to spend thousands renting it (as well as hire people to run it), and these costs had to be passed onto you in the form of higher ticket prices, and quite often bands had to take a lower fee to perform then they would normally get because of this. We were never really OK with that.  

 And what little equipment that do have is older than most people who attend the club and breaks all the time, and it is often left up to us to repair it. For the small number of you that have been inside the club before we open it’s not an uncommon sight to see DJ Trauma with a headlamp and tool it climbing up a ladder or into some dark corner in an attempt to fix something while you wait in line outside waiting for us to open the doors. Probably the worst part is that even when we did buy some expensive piece of equipment that the venue should have provided, it would quite often get broken or damaged by one of the other events at The Catch – and not only would it not be repaired or replaced, they wouldn’t even tell us about it – we would find out when we came in to get the place ready to host DB. And if you have any idea how hard or expensive it is to replace a fog machine strong enough for the upstairs at 10pm on a Friday night you know how much this sucks.

 But looking at the big picture, none of this was that big of a deal. Or at least we chose to tell ourselves that, as we ran DB under these conditions for over a decade. Ever go near the noise room and discover a terrible smell or a scary looking flood coming out of one of the restrooms? Of course you did, it happened almost every Friday for ten plus years. All because the catch would not put proper toilets in down there, telling us it was cheaper to just clean it up every week than get it fixed right. Sadly the fact that it is super gross was never really taken into consideration.

 But things really started to go south about three and a half years ago. For some reason, The Catch One’s owner decided to get rid of all the staff that had been with the club since we moved there. The bartender that knew what your drink was before you ordered it because you had been getting it from them for years were all let go. The security guards that knew your name whose first thought was to keep you safe too. And the guy who had kept the building together  - fixing everything from the speakers to the electrical to the AC was chased out. And every good manager the place ever had was sent packing. All of the people that understood what Das Bunker was about and loved us and you and wanted to make the club a better place  - gone. No notice, no explanation, nothing. It became a not very funny joke among the DJ’s to guess how many new bartenders and security guards would be working every week when we arrived. We would understand if it was one, or two or three people – but it was almost the entire staff.

 All of a sudden we had overaggressive security guards throwing people out for no reason. Your favorite bartender was gone, and most destructive, no one there to fix anything anymore. This is when we quietly started discussing our options for if we had to leave The Catch. A month later we were informed that for one week we would only be allowed to use the upstairs area of the club because the owner had rented the downstairs out to a movie shoot and it could not be disturbed till it was complete. And of course she still wanted to charge us full rent and charge you full price. Turns out the shoot could have been scheduled to end in time for us to do the club, but it would have disturbed the venues Sunday morning yoga class. When we protested we were told that if we didn’t like it we could take the week off and she would book another promoter in for that Friday – but warned us that if it went well we could lose the venue for good. We took our chances and had to tell everyone that the building was closed for repairs. This wasn’t the first time we had to lie to cover up for something shitty the venue did – but we really wanted it to be the last. This is when we started looking at other venues to see what our options were.

 If anyone remembers our first Star Wars night then you remember how great the outfits were, how it was the biggest crowd we have ever had, and … how long it took to get a drink. There were people complaining that it took over an hour to get a drink and even longer to close their tab. usually when people say stuff like that there is a bit of an exaggeration – but this time it was the truth. This is for two reasons, the first being that The Catch One doesn't have a lot of very good bartenders who want to work there (because in order to work at DB you also have to work some really awful events) and the much scarier second reason, one of the bartenders was electrocuted during set up that night when she went to plug in a DVD player. Remember six months earlier when the guy who fixed everything was chased away? Turns out the venue needs thousands and thousands of dollars in electrical repair work – and the only person who could temporarily patch it together no longer worked there. So you were waiting hours in lines at the bar while the poor bartender was at the ER getting treated for when her arm caught on fire. Now we really began to worry.

 Fast forward another five months. After thirty years of waiting Das Bunker is hosting Suicide Commando, and the club is sold out. We set up early, opened early, and hired tons of extra people for the night to make sure everyone got in fast and things went smooth. We did everything right, but we didn't about one thing – the ailing electrical system that had now gone over a year without any repairs to it – even though we were told it was “all fixed” after the situation on Star Wars night . Soundcheck had gone OK, but when it was show time and the sound, video, and lights were all finally on at the same time the power failed us. It was so bad that in order for the show to be completed we had to pull the power from all the stage lights and divert that to the sound so the band’s audio wouldn't reboot its self. The busiest night in our history and it was a disaster because basic repairs had not been made to an unsafe electrical system. And again we had to not exactly tell the whole story to all of you in order to not throw the venue under the buss. Even if that is where they belonged for it.  

 We now had a huge problem. We could no longer book any bands at this venue that had a heavy tech requirement. But this was also our most popular nights, and we knew reducing our live bookings would change the culture of the club that had existed since our first event 17 years ago. We looked at a lot of options to move Das Bunker to another location but in the end every venue that we looked at had its own set of challenges that would make keeping any place we move as a long term home near impossible. So we did the only thing we could do to keep Bunker going as a 18+, three room, weekly industrial dance party – cut way down on bookings and made almost every week a dance night.  

 About this same time we also got a new security staff… again. All of a sudden getting in the building was a lot more like TSA at LAX then at any other venue in town. Turns out on our Anniversary with Suicide Commando the janitor found a bunch of small empty bottles of liquor around the club and the owner freaked out. From this point forward everyone entering the club would get a search just short of bring out the rubber gloves in order to keep any and all outside substances from entering the venue. Now we get it, it’s illegal for people to bring that stuff in and the venue loses money if you are not buying drinks, but at the same time it was about to lose even more money if people stopped coming because they were getting violated prior to being allowed in. And that’s exactly what happened.

 A few months after this we came in one Friday night and discovered the venue had been (in their words, not ours) “remodeled”. Sadly this didn't mean fixing the electrical system. Or any of the lights that had been non-functional for months. Or the twenty year-old speakers in any of the rooms that sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. Or even the toilets downstairs that always clog and cause a flood. It meant painting the upstairs in a burnt orange southwest motif and replacing the purple neon lights with orange ones. To the clubs credit, they did fix the stair that leads to the stage that had been broken for over two years., but there was still tons of things that made the space truly unsafe (Mold, broken stairs/handrails, etc.) that went ignored. We were not OK with this.

 At this point it became clear (or clearer) that the venue no longer valued Das Bunker or our patrons. And it wasn't just you that the Catch wanted to take advantage of – the long time Saturday night promoter left about a month before we did (while going on a sad but kind of funny Instagram tirade in the process). We understand it’s a business and we occupied only one of seven nights of the week – but to not fix any one of the glaring safety issues about the space but instead paint it in terrible colors is a slap in the face to all of us. And the worst part is we were not allowed to do anything to cover this up. Every proposal we made was shot down – banners, wall coverings, lights, video projections – all rejected. At this point we knew something had to be done – and soon.

 About this same time, we were given notice that our rent was going to be increased and that drink prices were going to be raised starting at the beginning of 2014. We now had a deadline to make a decision on the future of Das Bunker, and we went to work on setting up the end of our weekly event.

 There were some other factors that played into this as well. When we moved to The Catch there were a small number of clubs in LA and they were all doing pretty much the same thing. We launched as a place to host bands and where we could push new music. There are lots of clubs and events these days (64 industrial/ebm/goth/fetish events in LA in November 2013 alone) and while a lot of them are of very questionable quality a few of them do a pretty good job at playing new music. With that many things to do a massive weekly industrial club doesn't make as much sense as it used to.

 So there it is. Our old venue is falling apart to the point where it was unsafe and the ownership made it clear they don’t care. The sound and lighting system was falling apart to the point where it was making the customer experience much less enjoyable than it had been in the past and again the venue ownership doesn't care. Our rent was going to go up (again) to the point where we would have had to get rid of the half price admission before 10:30pm, and the drink prices were going up again. The bartenders you knew for years were replaced with people who were relatives of the owner’s friends, not people who can actually make good drinks, and the security has gotten to the point where they inappropriately grab so many people there is talk of lawsuits against them for assault. This is not the kind of experience we want to be associated with, so we made the decision to end the weekly event.  

  The Future

So we looked at the situation we were in and decided to close… the weekly event. We have dropped more than a few hints about our future but here is it spelled out:

 We will continue to host smaller band nights at Complex. Since Das Bunker is 1) primarily a dance club and 2) has no live PA in any of its rooms we have traditionally hosted smaller shows at places like the Key Club, the Knitting Factory, and Safari Sam’s. We now have a partner in Complex that is more than equipped with all of the necessary requirements to host live performances, and it will continue to be our go to location for smaller live shows. We currently have announced shows here with God Module, Nachtmahr, De/Vision, and Leæther Strip.   

 We will continue to host large shows at the many fine theaters in LA. We currently have a show booked at our favorite live music venue, Avalon with Combichrist, Suicide Commando, Aesthetic Perfection, and Youth Code. It’s going to be great.

 And… we will continue with Das Bunker – but it will not be exactly the same as it was before. We are taking this opportunity to retool a bit and there will be changes. We don’t want to give away all of the details yet but we are no longer shackled to the concept of our previous incarnation. This means that we will tweak the format of each of our rooms, our DJ line up, and even the night of the week it takes place. We have a new location (more on this very soon) in place that is very excited to become our new long term home and we cannot be more excited about working with them. We will no longer be weekly, or on any regular schedule – Das Bunker will happen when Das Bunker is needed.

Das Bunker no longer will be just a club, every one will now be an EVENT that you do not want to miss. This means top level bands, DJ’s, and theme events. It will be a mix of dancing and quite often a live show of some sort. It will still be 18+, and we will still be open till 3am. We are not ready to announce any more details quite yet – but will be soon. Till then, I can say that the first event of the new Das Bunker will be our annual Star Wars event on May 2nd and the second event will be in the summer with the rescheduled FGFC820 show.   

if you want to keep up on what we are doing and be the first to get al the details, we suggest one of three ways: 1) - Sign up for our email list at dasbunker.org (upper right corner)

2) - Sign up for our sms service by texting "DASBUNKER" to 74455. 3) - or if you insist on using facebook, add this Das Bunker profile.   

  We miss all of you. And we hope to see you again soon. Three months seems like it might as well be a million years away, and we hope to see you out at one of our events or another.

 See you soon,

 Das Bunker

We have been getting this question a lot lately - and for the next two weekends at least, we have a answer for you!

This Friday, February 14th -  Das Bunker will be co-hosting the industrial area at the massive 4th annual Love & Lust Valentine's Day Ball with our friends from Perversion! If we listed all the different things going on here you would be scrolling forever but there are six areas, about a million DJ's, dancers, fire performers, aerialists, and so much more. our own Rev.John and Franck H-Bomb will be representing DB and we are very excited to take part in a event of such massive scale. You can keep up on all the info over at the Love and Lust Facebook Event page. At 333 Live.

And Next Friday, February 21st Das Bunker is hosting a show featuring God Module, The Witch Was Right, and Mordacious! We are a little sad as GodMod was originally scheduled to play at one of our Friday dance events but we are also pretty excited that we could add two more great bands to the bill! Tickets are available in all of the usual places and all the up to the minute info is over at the God Module show Facebook event page. At Complex.  

2004 was a big year for Das Bunker. Up into now we were known as that small club in Long Beach that booked the bands most people have never heard of, but now we were taking a huge chance – moving to a venue that held 7x as many people as our previous location, moving to every Friday – in hopes to establish a new home for industrial music in Los Angeles. And a lot of people didn’t think it would work. “The place is too big” they said. “Doing the club every week will diminish the vibe” they said. One frontman for a very forgettable local band even made a slightly racist crack at the neighborhood while insinuating it was a bad decision, asking “Is Bunker moving to Compton?” . But in the end, we all know how it worked out.

Das Bunker To Cease Weekly Dance Operations Eight weeks of special events to be capped by closing night on Friday January 31st.

Das Bunker, Mid-City Los Angeles’s industrial dance club is wrapping up its weekly party at the end of January with a special edition of their long running ‘Dance Night” event featuring all of their current resident DJ’s as a selection of soon to be announced guests. Proceeding this party are a selection of Das Bunker’s more popular special events designed to celebrate the culture of DB - starting with this Friday’s “History of Industrial” event.

More information regarding the reasons behind the decision to shut down operations as well as the future of Das Bunker will be released as the final event draws closer, and DB will continue to produce live concerts both large and small in scale in the future. 

“We are committed to Industrial Music” says Das Bunker founder Franck “H-Bomb” Huyghe, with co-promoter John “Rev.John” Giovanazzi stating “This is just the next step in our evolutionary process. Now that we no longer have the burden of producing a weekly event, in a set location, on a set night, 52 times a year we can turn our attention to setting in motion the next Episode of the Das Bunker saga. And while we are sad to see such an important part of our history, part of LA’s underground music scene, come to a close, we are also very excited about what we have planned next. “

Friday night, you reminded all of us why we have spent the last seventeen years crafting Das Bunker into what it is today. Not that we ever really forgot – as the one thing that has not changed is our passion for Industrial music – but seeing so many old faces and so many new faces at the same time in the same place proves that what we have here in Los Angeles could not happen any other place in the world.

  So thank you to every one of you that came out to our event. Thank you to Grendel for making their first west coast performance in almost a decade so amazing. Thank you to High-Functioning Flesh for bringing their classic sound and intense stage performance to our downstairs stage. thank you to Jasyn for debuting new God Module tracks on our dance floor. Thank you to all of our friends in other bands for coming out to support – Hex Rx, Youth Code, Tense/Vows, The Present Moment,  Nova Mura, Stallengrad, 3Teeth, Bestial Mouths, Gentleman Junkie, Aesthetic Perfection, Carved Souls, Pure Ground (please forgive any we have missed, it was a long night). Our peer’s in the world of promotion – IHC, The Overthrow, ECE, supporters from our local record shops – Vacation Vinyl & Mount Analog – the list keeps going and going. And I know we missed a ton of you. Thank all of you.

  And with our deep gratitude we make one single request – keep supporting industrial music. We are very proud of our 10+ years at The Catch One as a weekly dance club, for our shows at other venues around town, and nothing helps tis keep going as much as your support. So tell your friends about us (digitally and in person). Wear your DB shirt out with pride and encourage people who ask about it to come visit. Without the support from our community we have nothing and this past Friday we could not have been more proud.