Bonaparte concert in Berlin: bathe naked in champagne with a cat's head

The evening starts straight away with full force and without an opening act. “Anti, anti,” sings, even shouts, lead singer Tobias Jundt, black balaclava over his head, and the characteristic distorted Bonaparte sound booms through the really full Columbiahalle in Berlin. It is the last concert of the 20-year Bonaparte birthday tour through Germany. And you can tell from the musicians and performers on stage: everyone here is keen to rock out.

Yes, not only Bonaparte has gotten older, the fans are no longer twenty, but many still brought their fluffy cat hats and other Bonaparte-like accessories with them. “I boycott everything that’s not made by my hands,” it is now said, and the show has long since begun: drag, glitter, wild costumes, cow and horse masks, strip acts, a huge papier-mâché cake on the stage from which a person emerges while dancing, half-naked people, completely naked people, a “Stop Frontex” sign and a person with their mouth taped shut, with one word on the tape: obey. Electronic sounds that mix with synthesizers and electric guitar riffs.

That's just a fraction of what goes on on and in front of the stage in the two hours. “I’m cringe, but I’m free,” sing a half-naked man full of glitter and a masked mouth in a duet. It's one of the quieter, more ballady songs from Bonaparte's latest studio album, which was released this year after a long break: "Paradise If You Can Stand It".

In 2019, Bonaparte announced their alleged departure, and now they are back as if nothing had happened. Nobody feels old and tired here. On the contrary, it feels like 2010 again, at the latest after a quieter, acoustic “White Noize” interlude and a round of birthday games on stage, the time has come. The whole crowd on the floor is jumping, shouting, poking and sweating. “You know too much, too much, too much,” they say, while you get beer and elbows in the face from somewhere. And: “We are not people, we are animals.”

In any case. Meanwhile, the “Computer in Love” are smooching on stage, the computer heads are still the same old square boxes from the last decade and yet the old texts seem almost more relevant today than they were back then. The criticism of digitalization, surveillance, alienation, the excess as a rebellion against conservative norms and against obedience - this hedonistic punk rock is more political today than the band probably ever imagined. They are now the absolute horror of every right-wing extremist.

A drag queen stage-dived over the dancing crowd on an inflated plastic swan, and later the lead singer himself did the same, after all, that's part of a real Bonaparte concert. For the anniversary, we're outdoing ourselves. At the end there is an orchestrating horse and a champagne shower. After all, what goes into an opulent birthday concert? Everything.