The End of the World, Soundtracked by K.I.Z.

The central question of Kannibalenlied—Cannibal Song, K.I.Z.’s return single after a long absence—is whose sound makes you wet. The follow-up is who you’d drop to your knees for without thinking about it twice. The answer to both, according to the song, is K.I.Z. Tarek, Maxim, Nico, and DJ Craft have never been modest about their position in German rap, and this track, their personal apocalypse anthem, isn’t about to change that.

The video is assembled from what looks like wartime archive footage—D-Day, the Eastern Front, the full cable-history-channel aesthetic—and it works as both an absurdist joke and a sincere frame for the song’s eschatological energy. K.I.Z. have always treated the end of the world as an occasion for a party, and the production makes that legible in about four seconds. You either find that funny or you don’t, and if you don’t, that’s probably fine for everyone involved.

I’ve been on board since Hahnenkampf, when it became clear they weren’t doing shock tactics for their own sake but building an actual aesthetic—one that requires you to hold the ridiculous and the political in the same hand without dropping either. The crude content is structural. It’s not the point, but removing it would break the thing.

What I like about Kannibalenlied specifically is how the self-aggrandizement tips into something communal. A song that asks whose music gets you off, and then answers itself, is actually inviting you to agree—to claim the answer for yourself. It’s flattery delivered as boast, which is a harder trick to pull off than it looks.

Their album Hurra die Welt geht unter—Hurray, the World is Going Under—was due in July. Whether it could hold its own next to earlier tracks like Ein Affe und ein Pferd or Walpurgisnacht was the real question. Kannibalenlied is a strong reentry. Loud, dumb in the best way, completely unashamed. The world is going under, and they’ve already worked out the playlist.