Album Review: Kombynat Robotron, AANK
Posted in Reviews on July 9th, 2025 by JJ KoczanWhatever your angle of approach, the story of AANK is the songs. Because there are songs. Eight of them, in fact, on the seventh Kombynat Robotron record in seven years, running 41 minutes long. AANK is the band’s label debut on Fuzz Club Records, and with it, the Kiel, Germany, three-piece of guitarist Jannes Ihnen, bassist Claas Ogorek and drummer Thomas Handschick don’t necessarily reinvent cosmic rock as a genre, but for sure they revamp their take thereupon. To wit, the album they released in Dec. 2024, West Mata (review here), was comprised of three songs running between 11 and 21 minutes long, and worked from an entirely jammier foundation. The songs on AANK, whether blending dream and shove on “Morast” early on or having a crash-happy echoing blowout in “Sauerstoff” later on before capping with the solidified neospace shuffle of “Finsternis,” vocalized or instrumental, keep roughly between three and six minutes each, and have more defined structures.
Kombynat Robotron are by no means the first band to graduate from all-out jamming to a more refined writing style as part of their progression. This past Spring saw Amsterdam’s Temple Fang shift in a not dissimilar fashion toward verse/chorus patterning, albeit still longform, and Greece’s Naxatras have continued to evolve as they’ve found an otherworldly prog on the other side of their years of improv. One might consider since-modernized, once-retroist acts like Graveyard or Kadavar as well (not as a sonic comparison), though I don’t think Ihnen, Ogorek and Handschick are entirely done harnessing a jammy spirit in their material — not the least because that happens all across AANK — but in this collection, it is a drastic enough change from the band’s own prior-established norms that it almost feels like a second debut, though I’ll acknowledge feeling somewhat silly noting that about a band with a seven LP-strong discography. Nonetheless, the freshness of Kombynat Robotron‘s approach to this material resonates in the listening experience. It is new and it sounds new. It sounds like it’s new to them too, and the range and discovery that a short time ago were about what was coming after the next measure, part, etc., has changed to what can be found on the other end of a crafting process and what kinds of evocations can occur there.
And that is wherein the excitement lies, because Kombynat Robotron unfurl their own take on modern heavy space rock, informed in opener “Staub” by the traditions of the genre but with a next-generational point of view, daring a bit of cosmic boogie and still having room for an improv-sounding solo in the six-minute track before they bring back the hook for a noisy finish. Noise, whether it’s distortion or effects or just a crunchier riff like that of the post-something-and-I’m-not-sure-what-maybe-human “Unbehagen,” is a major factor in the proceedings. Still recording live and benefitting from that particular energy-conveyance — Felix Margraf, who mixed and mastered West Mata, helmed the recording for AANK, and they tracked in a venue space — the band remain dynamic in the roilingly heavy “Ikarus” (also the longest cut at 6:51), and are dynamic in the groove beneath the forward wash the song posits. Compared to the defined strum of “Staub” at the outset or even the likewise krautified urging of “Finsternis” — though both of those are noisy by some measure as well — “Ikarus” is way, way out, and situated at the presumed start of side B, it gives AANK a delightfully dug-in launch to the second half.
But the album is less about the vinyl split than some, and listening in a linear format, “Ikarus” is cleverly informed by the divergence before it of the title-track. “AANK” is three and a half minutes of softly picked acoustic guitar notes built out with some probably highly specific synth or effects. Either way, it is peaceful, serene, folkish, and gorgeous in a way one wishes more bands would dare to be, and it bolsters the atmosphere not only of “Ikarus” after it or “Schnee” before, but of AANK more broadly in a way that answers how it got to be the song the album was named after. Kombynat Robotron may not be a band known for subtlety, but whether it’s the interaction between the songs or the way the builds take place within them and the verses unfold across the span, there is likewise depth of mix and character for the listener to engage with, and the album becomes one where the person hearing it decides their own course and just how immersed they want to be. Can you hear the noise rock beneath all the noise in “Sauerstoff?” Do you want to? And so on. Wherever you want to meet it, AANK is there waiting.
Maybe that’s the underlying change, too. I won’t say that Kombynat Robotron‘s prior work wasn’t engaging, having enjoyed engaging with it on however many occasions I have, but the level of that engagement has changed in accord with their methodology. With AANK, the trio begin to realize the power their songs have to affect the audience, and it may well be that subsequent releases will see the band continue to develop along these lines, writing songs to put their listeners where they want them to be in place, time or mood. It’s an awfully neat story for some blogger like me to make palpable for the one or two people on the planet who might be reading, but real life is rarely so orderly. The truth of what Kombynat Robotron do on AANK is that it makes them a less, not more, predictable band, and there’s zero reason they need to choose one or the other between outright jamming and building structured material from out of those jams.
AANK may be the setting of a new pattern, and if it is, and if the band want to take these songs on the road and become a touring act of broader reach throughout Europe, you’ll certainly get no argument from me. There’s big potential here in terms of reach, and having Fuzz Club on their side won’t hurt the hype factor that’s already given them momentum. But if you’re looking for the experimentalist aspect, zoom out a level. It’s the entire album that’s the experiment this time, and the band’s success in their endeavor calls out to an international underground that may or may not know it’s been waiting for the call, but surely has been.