Dramatist

In the organizer's words:

There are debuts that carefully feel their way forward. And there is "Wasting Words". An album that didn't ask to be there, but entered the room with full force on 23.01.2026. Back in 2025, DRAMATIST entered the Wasteland Stage at Wacken Open Air without a single released note - and played as if they had been entitled to this ground for decades. No myth, no marketing: they tore the thing down.

With producers Gregor Hennig and Kurt Ebelhäuser at the controls, they created a debut that doesn't feel like a beginning, but like a manifesto. A postcore statement, raw and unforgiving, carried by three guitars that cut rather than accompany, and lyrics that refuse to hide behind metaphors. "Wasting Words" is an album that doesn't want to please - and that's precisely why it hits.

The opening track "Black Hole" draws the listener into its own gravitational field: nights as places of refuge, anger as a tool, uncompromisingness as an ethos. "Disappointed" wrestles with ageing, with expectations that vanish into thin air. "The League" strikes as an angry, feminist sledgehammer - inspired by the voices of the Iranian diaspora who refuse to remain silent. "Glasgow Nights" looks the world in the ugly face and still finds a spark of romance in it.
Eight songs, not an ounce of fat. "Unknown Hero" is the only moment in which DRAMATIST take a quick breath - a chorus like a collective drag on a cigarette, before "Loathing" kicks in the doors again. The closing "Go" burns itself into the silence for over six and a half minutes, a bittersweet farewell that lingers for a long time.

Singer Marco Van Gete describes Wasting Words as the first album in his 30-year career as a musician that he can "stand behind 100%". No cryptic escapes, no ironic veils. The lyrics are outlets: for fear, for anger, for political fatigue and personal ruptures. "I sing about it - it's not as if I could go out and kill them all," he says. A sentence, half-joke, half-truth about the cathartic power of this music.
Musically, "Wasting Words" is an unpredictable guitar album, fed by unusual tunings, open moods, friction as a principle. Producer Ebelhäuser occasionally despaired of this, but it is precisely this friction that makes the sound: a live feeling that could break apart at any time and therefore seems so lively. The foundation was laid by Moritz' drumming, recorded in Studio Nord with Gregor Hennig, where the raw pulse of the album was created.
The band itself is a new start. After years in the previous band Stun, after creative stagnation and side projects, DRAMATIST formed as a second birth. Suddenly labels were interested, suddenly stages opened up. "Everything feels just right right now," says the band - and you immediately believe them.

The artwork by Wayne Horse Willehead Eilers translates this attitude into images: not beauty, not comfort, but a mirror of inner and social ugliness. A commentary, not a promise of salvation. A visual echo of the themes that DRAMATIST dissect musically.