Singer Hannes Braun reveals his inspiration for the title track of Kissin’ Dynamite’s new album
Singer Hannes Braun reveals his inspiration for the title track of Kissin’ Dynamite’s new album
Kissin’ Dynamite frontman Hannes Braun was recently interviewed on The Hook Rocks podcast. Braun was promoting Kissin’ Dynamite‘s new studio album Not The End of The Road, which was released a few weeks ago via Napalm Records.
Track List for Not The End of The Road:
01. Not The End of The Road
02. What Goes Up
03. Only the Dead
04. Good Life
05. Yoko Ono
06. Coming Home
07. All for A Halleluja
08. No One Dies A Virgin
09. Gone For Good
10. Defeat It
11. Voodoo Spell
12. Scars
In terms of his inspiration for the song “Not The End of The Road”, Braun indicated (as provided by The Hooks Rocks podcast with slight edits):
“You could say self-therapy for myself because I wrote this song just immediately after our old drummer or former drummer Andi [Schnitzer] left the band. And this was the first line-up change that we had in almost 15 years of our career. So I was pretty shocked. I was disappointed. I was also a little angry about the whole situation because we were fucked already pretty much by the pandemic. And suddenly, we had a lot of different problems to find a new band member. Because what we know is that we wouldn’t ever give up, no matter how shitty the situation is. And this disappointment and this shock that I felt the next morning after he told us quickly developed in some sort of feeling, ‘Fuck no! Kissin’ Dynamite is not giving up. This is not the end and it’s not the end of the road.’ So this title came to my mind all of a sudden and I wrote this song in hours, in just a few hours because I needed it for myself. And after I sent it over to the guys, they loved it a lot and suddenly we knew, ‘Okay, we have to do this as a first single because it is also a statement to our fans.'”
In regard to the impact that the song “Not The End of The Road” has had on the band’s fans, Braun opined: “We released that in summer last year and without knowing that it had an even deeper impact on so many people than we thought because of the pandemic. For example, because a lot of people fight depression, a lot of people fight anxieties that came with this worldwide pandemic and this song gives them hope. And we received a lot of messages even through the radio by some listeners who had tears in their eyes how awesome they think the song is and how much hope they pull out of it. So that’s actually the best compliment that you can get as an artist and that makes it very unique to us and I’m so proud of this tune.”
With respect to Kissin’ Dynamite‘s evolution, Braun indicated:”We started as a school band when we were 15 and 16 years old. We had our first record deal and you could hear that because on our debut album, we were just paying tributes to our favorite bands that I mentioned already, like AC/DC, Scorpions, Bon Jovi, etc. And it was not something that you could call our own style. And throughout the years and with each album that we did, we checked out what’s possible for Kissin’ Dynamite. We’ve walked new horizons. We experimented a little to the left and a little to the right and it really took a while until we found our very own style and also to find our message. That is the most important to us because we have always been a band that don’t stick our heads in the sand. We’ve always been a band that looks optimistically in the future, no matter which problems come our way.”
You can listen to the interview with Hannes Braun on The Hooks Rocks podcast via Apple, Google, Spotify or Amazon.
Kissin’ Dynamite‘s “Not The End of The Road” video: