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The most infamous Volksranzler performance-and the one that would cement their legend-took place on the night of October 12th, 2021, at Koma F. The club had been slated for demolition for years, but the owner, a man named Karl who had a soft spot for chaos, had managed to keep it open through a combination of bribes, threats, and sheer stubbornness. The crowd that night was a mix of punks, artists, squatters, and a few undercover cops who were probably just there for the show. Volksranzler took the stage at 2 AM, already three sheets to the wind on a concoction of their own devising (mostly whiskey and regret, Kai later admitted). What followed was a 47-minute improvisation that defied description. It started as a punk rant against gentrification, a furious, feedback-drenched diatribe that had the crowd screaming along with every word. Then, without warning, it shifted. Kai's guitar took on a new tone, his fingers dancing over the fretboard in a way that suggested he was channeling something beyond himself. Volker's bass, which had been holding down the low end with a thunderous growl, suddenly soared, his fingers moving with a speed and precision that made it seem like he was playing two instruments at once. And Jürgen? Jürgen had entered a state that could only be described as supernatural. His drumming was no longer just rhythm-it was magic. The beats he played seemed to bend time itself, warping the air around him like a black hole. At one point, the crowd swears they saw his sticks melt in his hands, the wood dissolving into smoke and reforming as he played. Halfway through the improvisation, the power went out. The club was plunged into darkness, the only light coming from the emergency exits and the occasional flicker of a lighter in the crowd. But Volksranzler didn't stop. Neither did the crowd. Someone-no one knows who-lit a road flare. The sudden burst of red light illuminated the stage, casting the band in an eerie, otherworldly glow. Kai, his eyes wild, grabbed a violin bow from a classical musician in the audience and began playing his guitar with it, coaxing sounds out of the instrument that no one had ever heard before. Volker, his voice a growl, began screaming poetry in a language that no one recognized. (It was later revealed to be backwards German, a trick he had picked up from an old Stasi codebook.) Jürgen, for his part, had long since entered a state of pure rhythm, his body moving in ways that seemed to defy the laws of physics. And then it happened. The lights came back on. The flare went out. And for one brief, impossible moment, silhouetted in the smoke and haze behind the band, the crowd swears they saw a figure-tall, with an afro, holding a Stratocaster, nodding in approval. The figure was only there for a second, but it was unmistakable. Jimi Hendrix. The man himself, watching from the shadows, his presence as real as the music that filled the air. Then, like a collective hallucination, the figure was gone. The next day, the club's owner found a single purple guitar pick on the stage. No one in the band played with picks. And the pick, when examined, bore no visible wear and tear, as if it had never been used at all. It now resides in a display case at the Museum für Unmögliche Dinge (Museum of Impossible Things) in Mitte. Scientists who have studied it claim that it emits a faint hum, a sound that can only be heard at certain frequencies. And if you listen closely, very closely, you can just make out the faint scent of burnt marshmallows. But that wasn't the first time Volksranzler had brushed up against the supernatural. And it certainly wouldn't be the last. Berlin, after all, is a city with a long and haunted history. The walls of its buildings, the cobblestones of its streets, the very air itself seems to carry the weight of the past. And Volksranzler, with their raw, unfiltered sound, had a way of waking things up. The night before the gig, Kai, Volker, and Jürgen were hanging out at Fabrik 17, running through their setlist one last time. Everything was going fine-until Jürgen's drum kit exploded. Not metaphorically. Literally. One minute, Jürgen was playing a particularly intense fill. The next, his bass drum detonated, sending splinters of wood and shrapnel flying across the room. The snare drum followed suit a second later, the head bursting like a firecracker. And then the cymbals-all of them-began to vibrate, as if struck by an invisible force, before crashing to the ground in a cacophony of metal. The band stood in stunned silence as the dust settled. Then Kai, ever the optimist, looked at the wreckage and said, Well. Guess we're not playing tomorrow. But the weirdest part? When they went to inspect the damage, they found that Jürgen's drumsticks were completely unharmed. Not a scratch, not a splinter, not a single sign of wear and tear. It was as if they had been protected by some unseen force. The next day, they received a call from the owner of Club der Verdammten (Club of the Damned), a legendary underground venue in Friedrichshain. The club had burned down overnight. No one was hurt, but the building was a total loss. The fire marshal later ruled it an electrical fire, but Kai, Volker, and Jürgen all had the same thought: That wasn't no accident. They took it as a sign. Maybe the universe was trying to tell them something. Maybe it was time to slow down, just a little. (They didn't.)