Josef Maria Klumb
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Josef Maria Klumb (born 1962) is a German musician who has been a member of a number of punk rock, industrial, and darkwave bands in the "dark culture". He is best known for his work with Forthcoming Fire and Von Thronstahl. He frequently causes controversy, mainly due to his interest in fascist aesthetics and symbolism, and sometimes also due to his European nationalism and Catholic conservatism.
Klumb founded the punk-rock band Aus-98 in the early 1980s, which fairly quickly morphed into Circle of Sig-Tiu. Here he met Raymond P., with whom he would later collaborate in Von Thronstahl. By the mid 1980s, Circle of Sig-Tiu began incorporating gothic rock and darkwave aspects; the band broke up in 1988. During its career, the band gained some notoriety for its symbolism, not least for its use of the sig and tiu runes when spelling its name.
In 1990, Klumb formed Forthcoming Fire, a more outright darkwave band with danceable elements (vaguely in the style of The Sisters of Mercy). The band enjoyed some popularity in the early 1990s German darkwave scene. The band's symbolism was, like that of Circle of Sig-Tiu, often apparently inspired by fascist aethestics; in addition, the lyrics espoused conservative and vaguely nationalist themes, both extremely unusual in mainstream German music. Since Forthcoming Fire was for a period quite popular, the controversy made newspaper headlines in Germany; however, the band's music was not deemed illegal or worthy of adding to the Index of media harmful to minors. The band later began moving away from darkwave, and became somewhat less popular.
In 1995, Klumb, along with his brother Burn (also from Forthcoming Fire) formed Von Thronstahl, a martial industrial group. Later Burn would leave the group and instead former Circle of Sig-Tiu bandmate Raymond P., Marcel P., and Rene joined. The aesthetics of this group were again controversial, combining fascist aesthetics with those of high fashion, along with a militaristic sound.
Klumb has also been a member of the bands Weissglut and Preussak.
