RISING INSANE

track-list:
Reign
Monster
Lighthouse
Malicious
Bet On Me
Warning
Counting Regrets (Interlude)
Carousel
Burn
The Door
Wildfires

Wildfires will be available
in the following formats:
Exclusive LBR Shop LP Edition incl. orange-red marbled vinyl
(Limited to 300 copies)
LP Edition incl. white-black marbled vinyl
(Limited to 300 copies)
CD Edition in digipak
Exclusive LBR Shop Bundles
Standard Stream & Download

RISING INSANE are:
Aaron Steineker – vocals
Sven Polizuk – guitar
Ulf Hedenkamp – bass
Florian Köchy – guitar
Robert Kühling – drums

Rising Insane are back with their fourth studio album ‘Wildfires’.
The album takes an in-depth look at the consequences of our collective abstinence from empathy and challenges listeners to ignite their inner flame for change.
It is an urgent call to break out of the darkness.
While Rising Insane remain true to their post-hardcore and metalcore roots on ‘Wildfires’, the band has evolved both collectively and individually, which is clearly reflected in the new and fresh sound.
With over 20 million streams worldwide and top placements on some of the most influential streaming playlists, Rising Insane have recently caused quite a stir.
Supported by numerous tour dates, 2024 is set to be a big year for the band.
Aaron Steinecker talks about the album title ‘Wildfires’:
“Over the last two years, I have felt that there is a huge source of strife lurking around every corner. All we have to do is pick up our cell phone and we’re immediately thrown into a hate-filled sea of conflict, there’s so much hate everywhere. People are already spreading hate in an inflationary way and over every little thing. And then the next people are triggered by this hate and react with even more hate. You don’t have to give any examples. A quick read through a few comment columns on social media is enough. You get the feeling that the world around us is on fire when you add war, global warming, inflation and depression to the mix. That’s how this album got the title ‘Wildfires’. Each song on the album is about a specific trouble spot, themes and stories that have weighed on me while writing. Our goal is to create awareness through our music of how much we burden ourselves and each other instead of focusing on things that connect us and create positivity.”
The album cover of ‘Wildfires’:
“For the album cover, we teamed up with the wonderful Sandra Krafft, as we did last times. Together we went through a long process of finding the cover for ‘Wildfires’ and we are very grateful for working with Sandra again, especially for her patience! After many different approaches, we decided to visualize the very powerful title ‘Wildfires’ in a rather minimalistic way and thus create a strong contrast. On the cover is Merle Wolbersen, who was the model for this artwork. She crouches on the ground in a dark environment, looking down with a suffering gaze, caught by a glimmer of light that reaches her from above. This is how Sandra formulated the basic idea for us at the time: ‘I didn’t want to interpret ‘Wildfires’ directly as the big burning fire, which is what you have strikingly in mind with this title, but rather to depict the moment when this small fire is lit in the first place. Like when, for example, a ray of sunlight hits a shard of glass – or a ray of light hits a person in the dark and moves them to do something. We are surrounded by the great fires of our society and our time, which are bundled in the ray of light on the artwork and shine down on us, burning themselves into us. What this does to us and what it leads us to is reflected in the songs on ‘Wildfires’.”
Aaron Steinecker analyses the album track by track:
‘Reign’:
“When we were writing for the new album, we slowly but surely realized that we needed something new in our music. Moving on without moving out of the comfort zone of the last 10 years would have been like a prison for us. With ‘Reign’, we tried something completely new stylistically and felt that we had created something unique. The song embodies good vibes, selfacceptance and new courage. I remember the first time I heard the instrumental to the song that was later given the title ‘Reign’. It was immediately clear to me that this song would eventually be a single because it had that certain ‘uplifting but still in your face’ character. It just took me some time to know what I wanted to write about with that song. After a show, I had a pretty deep conversation with a fan, which I’m still grateful for today. He told me that he had lived in a prison of himself before he had his Comingout. He had to hide his true feelings, his true character and everything he wanted to be. For fear of rejection, exclusion and violence. He told me how much his self-esteem suffered as a result and how it left him depressed. That’s why this instrumental became ‘Reign’. The song is intended to encourage us to stand up for ourselves and celebrate ourselves for the people we are.”
‘Monster’:
“After we found a new style for ourselves with ‘Reign’, we dived deeper and deeper into it. We wanted to have more and more songs that had a certain feel-good character. I would never push mental health, depression, anxiety disorders and panic attacks – topics that are close to my heart – completely out of our songs. But at the same time, I also need to develop, not only musically but also mentally. And that’s how Monster came about, a song that radiates self-confidence, selfworth and positive vibes. It feels like we all get upset far too quickly when we see people who don’t behave according to our expectations. You can look at this in general, whether it’s the classic example of senior citizens getting upset about young people or the cow’s milk mafia getting angry about vegan substitute products. People will always hate on other people and the whole thing is brutally amplified by social media. So it’s completely pointless not to do and be what you feel like. ‘Monster’, to me, is the song that makes you feel exactly that way and makes you just do your thing instead of always looking left and right to bitch about others.”
‘Lighthouse’:
“Fortunately, a lot has been done in recent years to create a much higher awareness of mental health. And the more the topic has been brought into everyday life, the more people have opened up to talk about mental health. When one of my best friends told me about his depression, it tore me up inside. From that came the lyrics to ‘Lighthouse’, which was initially called ‘Friendly Reminder’ – a reminder that you are not alone and that there are friends who will willingly walk with you through the darkest times. At the same time, the song is also meant to encourage everyone to lend a hand where it is desperately needed. I think that our community cannot pat itself on the shoulder often enough, considering what we have done and achieved in recent years to make mental health an issue that has a place in our society. It’s worth noting that this journey has not yet come to an end until mental illnesses are accepted in the same way as physical illnesses. However, there is now a solid foundation on which we can build together.”
‘Malicious’:
“Sven and I wrote ‘Malicious’ at the same time as ‘Chemicals’. I sang a chorus on both songs, then we decided to put ‘Malicious’ aside and continue with ‘Chemicals’. Six months later, after ‘Chemicals’ had long been released and we had written for ‘Wildfires’, we listened through a certain folder of songs. The song immediately caught our attention and we absolutely had to continue working on it. Sven asked me if I could write a lyric about not being satisfied with anything, starting 100 things and not finishing any of them. That was actually a big problem for both of us at the time: We just weren’t satisfied with anything we did and immediately discarded everything before we even gave a single thing a chance. I think Malicious might even have been the song that turned this mood around for us, because it showed us that it’s definitely worth sticking to your ideas, even if they don’t seem as good as you first imagined. So ‘Malicious’ is actually quite an old song, probably even the oldest of Wildfires. I remember that we wrote the first version of ‘Malicious’ at the same time as ‘Chemicals’. But there was absolutely no comparison between that song and the finished product. We first had to understand what exactly we wanted and how we could achieve it. In this process we had many lows, and ironically that’s the main aspect of the lyrics: You’re not satisfied with anything, nothing is good enough, you are not good enough. Everything you start is doomed to fail. Only after I added these lyrics to the song did it become ‘Malicious’ – without the many lows, the song would never have existed.”
‘Bet on me’:
“When I heard the instrumental to ‘Bet On Me’ for the first time, I could immediately sense a kind of floating emptiness. It was like something you know is there, but you can’t grasp it. The lyric ‘I’m searching for something – It’s all and it’s nothing’ is probably the best way to explain this feeling. And I knew immediately what I wanted to sing in the chorus. It took me at least half a year to get my voice to a level where I could sing it!”
‘Warning’:
“Time and again, we humans tend to make statements that are complete trash in and of themselves. But we don’t realize it because time is running out and we don’t take the time to question ourselves sufficiently. Or we don’t have the courage to start a discussion for fear of arguments and stress, which we all have enough of anyway. The following situation illustrates exactly what this means: I was on a train to Hanover. Shortly after the journey began, an announcement was made that the train would have to stop at the next station for about 2 hours because there had been a fatal personal injury just before Hanover. A person had committed suicide. All that came to the minds of two people next to me was an annoyed groan and the words ‘That’s so selfish. Do you have to throw yourself onto the tracks? Now we’re stuck here!'”
‘Counting Regrets’:
“We’ve always wanted to do an instrumental piece or a longer intro for a song, but we’ve always put it off. This time we finally realized the idea. ‘Counting Regrets’ is the introduction to ‘Carousel’ and it was incredibly fun to experiment and write music that is somewhat reminiscent of film music.”
‘Carousel’:
“‘Carousel’ was one of the songs that had been around for a very long time in instrumental form. I personally rated it as ‘very cool’ because I really liked the verses in particular. But I hesitated for ages to start with the vocals for the song. The biggest problem for me was ultimately the chorus, because there were two ideas for the vocals and I couldn’t decide which one would be better. I was very grateful that Sven made a clear statement here and took this question off my hands. We were both quite taken with the fact that ‘Carousel’ has become a song that carries many traces of Rising Insane to the ‘Afterglow’ era. In analogy to that, ‘Carousel’ is about how we as humans, in general, are barely able to learn from our mistakes and misdeeds. We live in a perpetual cycle, like a carousel, until we consciously decide to be a change. This fact and the lyrical part of the song form an analogy: no matter how much we fight against it, in the end we are driven by the perceived mistakes or misbehavior of others to make decisions that trigger a new series of conflicts. It’s a perpetual cycle, like a carousel, until we consciously choose to be a change.”
‘Burn’:
“The idea for ‘Burn’ was born when we were wondering how we would open our next shows. We just wanted to write a song that could bring more energy to the stage than any other song. I had the idea when I had just changed my clothes, sprinted to my cell phone and recorded almost the entire song in typical ‘Dedede’ and ‘Nanana’ style. I then made a three-minute video explaining the entire song to myself so that none of it would be forgotten. A few days later it turned into Burn and we can’t wait to start live with that song.”
’10 The Door’:
“‘The Door’ is the first Rising Insane song that was written on the piano. At first I just played it for fun and sang whatever came to my mind at that moment. At some point I saw the song as a new beginning, a way to turn my back on the songs that were about my suffering. Like walking through a door that had been closed forever and finally opened.”
‘Wildfires’:
“It is quite paradoxical that the song that is stylistically the biggest outlier on the album happens to be the title track. However, the chorus summarizes large parts of the album lyrically, sprays the chaos of our mental world in its rapid tempo and, above all, is proof that Rising Insane does not limit itself to a single genre. For this very reason, it was important for us to include ‘Wildfires’ on this album. In addition, ‘Wildfires’ addresses a big issue: it’s about how individuals, driven solely by greed and power, disregard the well-being of all others and don’t seem to blink an eye when making decisions that endanger our environment and our planet, all of our lives. When I recorded the vocals for ‘Wildfires’, I knew immediately that this song had to become a single. Even though it’s stylistically the breakout on the album, it belongs in this list. I had an incredible amount of fun singing the song, somehow everything worked out in these sessions. Nevertheless, it was no easy process, because during the creation of ‘Wildfires’ we talked a lot about the structure of the song and often talked past each other, even though we actually wanted the same thing. We were on the verge of leaving this song unfinished and letting it fall into oblivion, but the idea of the fast chorus with the melodic shouts wouldn’t let go of me.”
Rising Insane’s meteoric rise is more than a band name; it’s a journey that encapsulates their evolution.
Since their self-released debut album ‘Nation’ in 2017, this Northern German quintet rapidly made waves in the metal scene.
Their presence escalated with shows alongside acts like Stray From The Path and For Today, and as support for Annisokay during their 2018 headline run.
The turning point came in 2019 at Impericon Festival, marking their signing with Long Branch Records and the release of their label debut ‘Porcelain’ in November that year.
Despite pandemic setbacks in 2020, the band persevered, releasing a well-received cover of The Weeknd’s ‘Blinding Lights’ and crafting the ‘Recovered’ EP, featuring covers spanning 35 years.
In 2021, Rising Insane surged ahead with ‘Afterglow’, an album that solidified their place in the German music scene.
Tracks like ‘Meant To Live’, ‘Serenade’, and the title track ‘Afterglow’ amassed millions of streams, expanding their audience base significantly.
Their latest EP ‘DEMONS’ serves as a teaser for the impending next chapter, hinting at their growth and promising an exhilarating new phase in their musical journey.
In 2024, Rising Insane return with renewed vigor to soar to even greater heights.