Honka, Honka, nimm dich ja in Acht...
Whimsical as the song title may be, this one is positively gruesome, as it is all about the story of Hamburg native Fritz Honka, a serial killer whose reign of terror went on for the first half of the Seventies. Honka was accused of murdering and dismembering four women in Hamburg’s red light district, reportedly using pine-scented blocks to mask the decaying odor. In the first line of the song, frontman Hermann Ostfront references “goldene Handschuh,” a nod to Der Goldene Handschuh (The Golden Glove), a St. Pauli bar in which Honka met one of his four victims, and the title of a 2016 book by Heinz Strunk which detailed the gruesome crimes.
While the first minute of this track keeps a nervous chuckle-inducing lightness and whimsicality to it, things turn to a darker note musically, turning sharply into the Neue Deutsche Härte that Ost+Front is best known for. It’s a schizophrenic three and a half minutes, all with the lyrics breaking down the finer details of Honka’s crimes, with a sonic build from comical to dramatic that keeps things tongue-in-cheek enough.
“Honka Honka” comes from the album Dein Helfer in der Not, which is available now via Out of Line Music. Stream and/or order the album here.
See the lyric video for the manic and malicious “Honka Honka” below:
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