Chapter 6.2: The Puddle.

Reflection. A Heavenly Ballad.

This autumn was our wedding anniversary, and I remembered that our decision to marry came right after Klara’s exam.

A light drizzle was falling. Klara laughed and walked straight through the puddles instead of avoiding them — as if it mattered.

The water spread in circles, reflecting the clouds and her movement.

Twenty years. We had passed through the underground, torn vocal cords, burned amplifiers, and the search for sound at the edge of the world. In the world of industrial music, built on aggression and alienation, we preserved what neither time nor decibels could destroy.

The concrete floor of the forge was partly broken. Stone had crumbled under Hans’s heavy blows on the anvil that once stood there.

The glass roof leaked, and water gathered in a depression, forming a puddle the size of a small lake. On its surface floated a thin rainbow film of machine oil and coal dust.

Yet through this industrial grime, the gray autumn sky reflected in the water with crystal clarity. A perfect mirror lying at the very center of destruction.

Klara pointed to a poem by Lena Leary in my printed pages — poetic reflections titled “The Puddle.” She said it could become an interesting composition.

Jürgen studied the text for a long time, rubbed his chin, and said quietly:

— “So… water.”

We remembered our track Aus der Asche (“From the Ashes”) from the album KriegesPhantom — an industrial-melodic composition about the lonely ghost of a soldier. A flower breaking through scorched earth and stone. Even then, in the middle of uncompromising industrial sound, we had begun to feel this direction — life that overcomes everything.

But despite the melody and lyricism, we still hammered notes into the listener like nails.

The poem about the puddle demanded a subtler approach. The same unbreakable force — but now it no longer needed to break concrete. Water simply filled the cracks.

The poem stood apart from everything we had done. It carried a disarming, quiet philosophy. It contradicted the musical nature of industrial metal and heavy rock.

My eyes caught one line:

“A gloomy man loves me, the one I’ve called my husband for twenty years.”

I looked at Klara. In her eyes, reading this absurd poem about a puddle, reflected the same stubborn warmth that once made me pick up a guitar.

“Steel rusts. Concrete crumbles from your vibrations. But water doesn’t break, ” Klara said softly, standing beside the puddle. “It simply reflects whatever looms above it. You can step into it with heavy boots, you can raise a storm… but as soon as you leave, the water becomes calm again.”

She looked up at the glass roof.

“And when this forge falls silent, the only thing reflected in this грязь will be the eternal sky.”

Under the cooling glass roof, the forge became very quiet.

I took a pencil, opened my diary, and quickly sketched the cracked concrete and the puddle. Then I dipped my fingers into a glass of water and flicked a few drops onto the paper, smearing the graphite. While the thought still held, I wrote down what would later become our song. I already knew how we would play it.

No — this would not be philosophical feminine lyricism like Lena Leary’s. That would be too literal. This would be the song of the puddle itself — the water that receives people’s steps, reflects their faces, reads and repeats their thoughts. It resonates with them, briefly holding motion according to the disturbance.

Calm Water and the Heartforge Guitar

Water can be many things. The vocal must change with its state.

The music should begin slowly, almost motionless — like the water before it is disturbed.

The introduction is a clean, almost acoustic picking pattern on my new guitar, Heartforge. I had not yet tested it, and this was its first shy and careful appearance.

Only later, in the single Stahl und Feuer (“Steel and Fire”), would it reveal its full power.

Here, it does not roar. It plays the role of the calm surface, the perfect mirror, the sound of rain.

Hans enters first. He sounds surprisingly calm — a low, steady, deep voice like the undisturbed ground beneath the water. Then Klara appears. Her crystal-clear vocal settles above it like light barefoot steps across the puddle, leaving soft expanding circles on the surface.

Disturbance

And then we break the surface.

A heavy military boot crashes into the water. Hans bursts into a harsh, crushing growl. Splash. Spray. The heaviest industrial drum удар and Jürgen’s overloaded bass turn everything upside down. Konrad’s synthesizers explode into hundreds of dirty digital shards — the perfect reflection shattered by the weight of a distorted world. Human thoughts mix in the disturbance until it is impossible to tell whose they are.

But water does not break forever. A storm cannot last endlessly. In the finale, as the kinetic удар fades, the dirt slowly settles to the bottom. Demon returns to a clean tone, playing a transparent, viscous solo while Klara’s voice gathers the surface of the water back together. The puddle becomes calm again, ready to reflect the sky.

This is a good text because it tells the truth.

Klara truly reflects all of us — our anger, our risks, our noise.

But when we fall silent, she reflects silence.

(from the notes of Viktor Stahl)