FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Music

For 45 Minutes, I Understood Die Antwoord

And I loved all 2,700 seconds of it.

Photos by Nick Karp

You don’t like Die Antwoord. You think they’re hipster bullshit. You can tell by looking at them that their music is terrible. And everyone who likes them is a moron. You hate their mullets. You hate their obnoxious sound. You hate everything about them.

Friend, up until a few hours ago, I was just like you.

Every time I came across something about the South African duo—whether it be a video, an article, or even just a simple photo—I would cringe in embarrassment that this was the level the current state of music had sunk to. I filed them away in my brain under Things I’m Vaguely Aware Of Enough To Roll My Eyes At, right up there with Lena Dunham and kale. Then at 3:45 PM Central Time on September 13 the Year of Our Lord 2014, I, Dan Ozzi, of sound mind and body succumbed to the power of Die Antwoord.

Advertisement

Having only previously heard their music coming through the tiny speakers in my laptop, I just didn’t get it. I didn’t understand the appeal, I found it grating, and thought it reeked of desperation for shock value. Today, as I watched them decimate the stage at Riot Fest in Chicago, the obvious dawned on me: Trying to appreciate Die Antwoord on a computer is like trying to appreciate the ocean by splashing around in your bathtub.

Die Antwoord are known to frequent outdoor music festivals—having played Bonnaroo this year as well as Reading and Leeds, but there was still something particularly odd about seeing them on Riot Fest’s lineup, right there in the schedule between the Dandy Warhols and Paul Weller. With a roster that skews heavily towards punk—particularly punk bands who’ve been kicking around since the dawn of music (e.g. Descendents, NOFX, Cock Sparrer), it seemed out of place to have a rave-rap group on Riot’s bill. Unlike Coachella (which Die Antwoord played in 2012), there isn’t a long list of EDM acts. There aren’t any, in fact. And aside from Wu-Tang Clan, there aren’t many rap acts either. So as varied as Riot Fest’s lineup is, Die Antwoord still managed to stick out like a sore thumb. A sweaty, neon, satanic thumb.

Because Riot Fest’s lineup is so diverse—boasting everyone from Slayer to the National to Weezer, it doesn’t bring in one specific type of music fan. The crowd wasn’t a sea of neon-clad carbon copies tripping balls and thinking Native American headdresses are funny. Unlike Coachella which attracts your standard bro and basic bitch, Riot Festers are all over the place—mohawk dudes, parents with kids, metalheads, hippies in bajas, old timers, you name it. And all of them converged on the Riot Stage (clever name) to absorb the full-body assault that is Die Antwoord’s live show.

Advertisement

From the side of the stage where I was watching, many members of punk bands playing the festival all lined up, cameras out, watching like fanboys in complete awe. Hopefully, they learned something too because as far as punk rock goes, the festival is chock full of tired bands playing decades-old songs with stale lyrics about staler politics, getting longer in the tooth by the second. Here was a band who was young, terrifying, and completely without borders.

Even among those standing to the side of the stage were—and this is fucking surreal to me—the two members of Pussy Riot who had spoken at a panel at the festival the day prior. For the moment, even they paused their quest to free the world of social injustice, and stood there very calmly, taking Die Antwoord in. Pussy Riot, snapping iPhone shots of Die Antwoord. Unreal.

Everyone in the vicinity was collectively floored by the duo’s over-the-top mindfuck—even me, who was stone sober and not the key demographic for rave-rap whatsoever. To put into perspective of how outside my wheelhouse Die Antwoord is, let me say that I was also genuinely excited to see the Mighty Mighty Bosstones.

Die Antwoord was—without question—the loudest band of the day. And while all festival music tends to sound the same—like an underwater boombox, where the garbled sound just floats out into the ethers towards nowhere in particular, Die Antwoord’s frantic scatter-beat hits you directly in the face like waves. Even through three inches of mud, it felt like there was a subwoofer installed directly under your feet, with the pounding ground making your bones rattle.

Advertisement

If you’ve never seen Die Antwoord, imagine watching your nightmares being played on a small TV that’s stuck on fast-forward. The two members—all combined 120 pounds of them—decked out in upside-down crosses and pentagrams, covering every inch of the stage with their blurred neon presence, instilling a sense of fun, but also fear, into everyone watching.

While I was trying to wrap my brain around whether this whole thing was a schtick, with the members playing characters meant to creep you the fuck out, they walked off the stage, still in their sweaty underwear, marched right past me, got directly in the back of a waiting van, and peeled off, leaving no one with the opportunity to figure it out. They were like aliens on their way back to their home planet.

Here is my friend Drew as he watched Die Antwoord peace the fuck out before their mics even hit the floor.

I’ll probably never even see them again, I don’t feel the need to learn any more about them as artists, and I’ll never listen to their music. But for those 45 brief but glorious minutes, standing there ankle-deep in pulsating mud, I understood Die Antwoord.

Dan Ozzi is thinking of shaving the sides of his head now. Follow him on Twitter - @danozzi