About Orkus

Orkus

Orkus (stylized Orkus!) — the German alternative music and culture magazine, published monthly by the Zoomia Medien-Gruppe — is one of the top three music magazines of the German dark scene, alongside Zillo and Sonic Seducer: the monthly for the Schwarze Szene, covering metal, medieval rock, Neue Deutsche Härte, alternative rock, electro and future pop, and the namesake of the annual Amphi Festival.

Overview

Orkus is an alternative music and culture magazine in the German language, published monthly by the Zoomia Medien-Gruppe. Despite its subtitle — "Gothic – Romantic – Industrial – Electro" — and its web tagline ("Das Magazin für Dark Rock-Electro-Gothic Rock-Dark Metal & More"), the magazine covers primarily music genres such as metal, medieval rock (Mittelalter-Rock), Neue Deutsche Härte, alternative rock, electro, J-rock and future pop. The gothic rock, dark wave and industrial genres have occupied only a minor place since the end of the 1990s — a paradox the magazine has lived with for a quarter-century: the subtitle promises the classic dark genres, the contents deliver the scene as it actually is. The magazine's editorial director is Thomas Sonder; the editor-in-chief is Claus Müller, the magazine's founder. Its ISSN is 1863-5350 and its website is orkus.de.

Orkus gave its name to the annual Amphi Festival, organized by an external company — the magazine is the festival's official sponsor and releases DVDs of the event in its year-end issues.

History

The magazine was founded in 1995 by Claus Müller and initially appeared free of charge in A5 format — a fanzine-scale beginning typical of the scene press. The thematic focus was initially on wave, gothic, electro and industrial — the classic Schwarze Szene genres of the mid-1990s, when the German dark scene was at its most distinct and its most productive. With the third issue in May 1996, the magazine became paid and was published in A4 format — the step from free fanzine to commercial magazine, taken within a year.

From 1997, the gothic and wave sections were largely replaced by other music genres, and the thematic focus shifted temporarily toward the metal environment — though the magazine also opened itself at times to other directions such as Goa trance, IDM, ambient, drum and bass and techno. The shift mirrored the scene's own transformation: the late-1990s partial commercialization of the Schwarze Szene, when the "Gothic" label — without regard for its original meaning — was picked up as a marketing tag and extended to comparable and entirely independent cultural currents and music forms. Bands from the metal, alternative-rock and crossover environment — HIM, Nightwish, Cradle of Filth, Rammstein, Oomph!, Marilyn Manson, Evanescence, Xandria, Subway to Sally, ASP, Eisbrecher, Samsas Traum — were associated with gothic culture by the commercial media, including music magazines like Orkus, Zillo and Sonic Seducer. Many of these groups came directly from the metal and alternative milieu and charted in the Deutsche Alternative Charts; for the gothic culture and its music they were not representative — but they were what the scene was actually listening to, and Orkus followed its readers.

Currently the magazine covers precisely the bands and typical festivals of the dark scene — the Wave-Gotik-Treffen in Leipzig, the M'era Luna, the Amphi — the events where the Schwarze Szene gathers, and the bands that play them.

Since 2005 the magazine has associated its name with the Amphi Festival — the annual alternative-music festival held over two days at the Tanzbrunnen in Cologne, whose lineup features many bands supported by the magazine. In 2006 Orkus also launched internationally, with an independent English-language edition sold in the United Kingdom, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Spain and the Benelux countries.

Content and Concept

Alongside interviews, concert reports, short portraits and reviews — particularly from the death-, dark- and black-metal environment — the magazine carries music-distant topics that give it its distinctive cultural voice: illustrated reports on cemeteries and their backgrounds (an idea of Michael Gareis-Lahde) — the graveyard as cultural history, photographed and explained — series on mysticism in "everyday life" (vampires, mythology, dreams), columns by musicians (Oswald Henke of Goethes Erben, Alexander Kaschte of Samsas Traum) and pages with poems by readers. This mix — the metal reviews alongside the cemetery reportage, the scene news alongside the reader poetry — is the Orkus formula: the dark scene's culture in the round, not just its music.

Each issue came with a CD featuring new songs and remixes of the bands presented in the magazine — until March 2020, when the physical sampler era ended. The compilation CD Orkus Collection 2 reached number 1 on the 2002 Deutsche Alternative Charts — the magazine as chart-topping curator. The current formula runs to some 130 pages plus the sampler tradition's digital successors. Each month features a goth-related cover, often with a semi-nude female model — the magazine's visual signature, unchanged through the genre shifts.

Coverage and Audience

Orkus appears monthly, in German. Its audience is the Schwarze Szene — the German dark scene: fans of gothic, metal, medieval rock, Neue Deutsche Härte, electro and alternative music, the subculture of black-clad festival-goers, Wave-Gotik-Treffen pilgrims and Amphi regulars. The magazine is generally considered one of the top three music magazines of the German scene, alongside Zillo and Sonic Seducer — the three titles that have defined dark-scene journalism since the 1990s, each with its own profile: Zillo the veteran (1989), Sonic Seducer the competitor, Orkus the monthly that followed its readers from gothic through metal to the scene's current diversity.

The Amphi Festival sponsorship gives the brand a live presence: the annual Cologne festival at the Tanzbrunnen — two days of alternative music, with many bands supported by the magazine on the lineup — the year-end DVDs in the magazine's issues, and the editorial coverage form an integrated print-live ecosystem for the dark scene. The festival, organized by an external company under the Orkus name, extends the magazine's brand from the newsstand to the stage.

Ownership

Orkus is published by the Zoomia Medien-Gruppe. The magazine was founded in 1995 by Claus Müller, who remains editor-in-chief (with Thomas Sonder as editorial director) — the founder still leading his magazine three decades later, a continuity rare in the German music press. The 2006 English-language edition extended the brand to the UK, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Spain and the Benelux — the German dark scene's magazine, exported to the world's gothic underground.

Digital Presence

orkus.de extends the magazine's dark-scene journalism online, where interviews, reviews and scene news compete with social media, band-owned channels and streaming platforms. The brand's digital operation serves the Schwarze Szene between the monthly issues, while the Amphi Festival and its DVDs keep the magazine anchored in the scene's live culture. The monthly print issue remains the brand's core — the physical magazine for a subculture that values the tangible, the collectible and the ritual of the newsstand.

From a free A5 magazine in 1995 to the namesake of the Amphi Festival: Orkus has accompanied the German dark scene through three decades of transformation — from wave and gothic through the metal years to the current scene's diversity. The subtitle still says "Gothic – Romantic – Industrial – Electro"; the magazine itself has long since become the chronicle of everything dark in German music. Founder-led since 1995, monthly, and still the scene's own magazine: Orkus! remains the exclamation mark of the German Schwarze Szene — monthly, founder-led, and dark since 1995, every single month.