Alligatoah wants to be more than just a musician: new hardness, old irony

Alligatoah at least tried at his concert in the Berlin Uber Arena. It quickly becomes clear: The man, who is actually called Lukas Strobel, wants to be more than “only” musicians. He is a art figure, satirical mirror of pop culture and society, juggler between irony and seriousness. For years he has been commuting between Rap, Chanson and most recently Metal, with a sense of negotiating human abysses in pointed texts.

Little space for nostalgia

For some fans from the very beginning, this evening should be a challenge. Anyone who grew up with the Alligatoah, who united merciless situation comedy with melodic singing, is now confronted with unusually hard sounds.

The aesthetics of the album “Off”, which was published in 2024, becomes a brute force live. Some of the new songs use classic metal elements so much that they act more in places like a stylistic exaggeration than organic further development. A balancing act that is not always in line with the otherwise subtle irony of the artist.

And the courage to provocation, which alligatoah once distinguished, is also partly lost. Especially in moments that could offer space for spontaneity, the show looks through choreographed.

So the artist slips into the role of the “Metal Health Coach”, which calls the audience: “Berlin, I feel blockages. Could it be that you are not yet in harmony with your inner child? ”And it encourages breathing exercises and stretches – entertaining, but rather predictable and certainly not rebellious.

But there are always quieter moments between the massive songs. “Nobody”, a melancholic reflection on loneliness and a lack of belonging, has an even more intensive effect in the reduced live version.

“I am nobody, nobody wants to be,” sings Alligatoah in a brittle voice, accompanied by his own acoustic guitar. The hall becomes quiet – one of the few moments in which the artist seems more obvious.

Another highlight is clearly “partner in crime”, a hymn for toxic accomplice – recorded with Tarek Kiz. And of course the hope of the audience is not destroyed: Alligatoah does not perform the track alone.

The energy between the two artists is noticeable, their interaction on stage seamlessly. “I stay your partner in crime, shit ‘on the consequences,” raps Tarek and Alligatoah alternately as if they had never done anything else. The audience sings, dances and celebrates.

Break with an announcement

“Do you want to do drugs with me? / Then it will rain red roses / I saw it in a soap / Do you want to take drugs with me? ” – lines where an entire generation immediately has the right melody in your ear. Hardly a song is as closely linked to Alligatoah’s career as “you want”. The euphoria is correspondingly high when the first tones sound.

But instead of the familiar, melancholic ballad, it puts a thundering reef accompanied by heavy drums. Suddenly the song no longer looks like a winking idea, but like a dark liberation. A moment that divides the audience: While some enthusiastically go, others seem too much to others; Of course, there is still a singing, the lyrics are finally sitting.

The concert finally confirms what was already indicated on “OFF”: Alligatoah has developed musically radically. The former satire rapper, which pointed to society with the ironic index finger, has become tougher, louder-and at the same time not necessarily more uncompromising. Can the fresh sound in the long term protect the complexity that once distinguished it?

Some of the new songs are powerful, but the stylistic orientation seems too calculated in places – as if the experimental spirit, which shaped Alligatoah’s early work, has given way to a defined concept.

What alligatoah definitely proves that evening: he prefers to reinvent himself rather than lose himself in nostalgia. The show is a spectacle, you just want fewer theaters, a touch more chaos.