Agonoize interview: ‘I have nothing to prove to anyone except myself’
Chris L of Agonoize on new material, writing again after illness and refusing genre labels, ahead of the 25 September show in Wroclaw, Poland.
More than twenty years after Agonoize emerged from Berlin, there is very little ambiguity left about what the name represents. The band built its identity around severe electronic rhythm, distorted vocals, confrontation and a live language that made physical excess part of the music rather than decoration around it. Their own terminology, Hellektro, became closely associated with the harder end of dark electro and aggrotech, combining EBM, industrial and dark-electronic structures with an unusually direct lyrical vocabulary. Agonoize themselves have never seemed especially interested in respecting the borders of those labels.
That history also explains why a short conversation with Chris L in 2026 becomes more interesting than a routine tour update. The existing catalogue carries considerable weight, the visual mythology of the band is instantly recognisable, and songs written years ago remain embedded in club culture. But Chris is not speaking about preservation. After a serious illness interrupted both his physical momentum and his songwriting, he is working on new Agonoize material again, while approaching the band with a strikingly uncomplicated principle: he still makes music because he wants to.
Ahead of Agonoize’s 25 September appearance at Klub Łącznik in Wrocław, where they play alongside System Noire and Antibody, I caught up with Chris L about returning to songwriting, refusing genre boxes, anger as creative material, performing after illness and why getting older has done very little to make Agonoize more polite. The Wrocław event features full sets from Agonoize and System Noire, with Antibody as special guest and an Angst Factor aftershow with DJane Nox Occultae and DJ Bjørn.
Chris L on Agonoize in 2026
Karo: Agonoize have existed for more than two decades now. What does the band need to mean to you personally in 2026 for it still to be worth continuing?
Chris: Why shouldn’t it be worth it? I make music because I love it. That’s really the most important reason. As long as I still have something to say and the passion to do it, it will always be worth continuing.
Karo: “Revelation Six Six Sick” is already five years old. Are you actively working towards a new Agonoize chapter, and if so, what has changed in the way you want the band to sound?
Chris: Five years ago, I was knocked off my feet by a serious illness. It took a long time to find the strength and inspiration to write new songs again.
Now I’m working on new material.
Time will tell…
Karo: “Adios, Goodbye!” with Antibody was one of the more recent glimpses of your writing outside the existing Agonoize catalogue, and now you are sharing the stage in Poland. Did that collaboration open any ideas you would actually like to take further?
Chris: “Adios, Goodbye” is not a musical composition by Agonoize. It’s simply a lyric I wrote. The finished song then sat unused for more than a year, for whatever reason. Jan from Antibody is a permanent part of Agonoize, but this song has nothing to do with the Agonoize album that is currently in the works.
Karo: Aggrotech has gone through periods of enormous visibility and others when people almost seemed embarrassed by the term. Do you still identify strongly with that scene, or has Agonoize outgrown the usefulness of the label?
Chris: I’ve never tried to put a specific musical label on Agonoize. Agonoize is Agonoize. We make our music the way it feels right to us, and I’ve never been interested in putting the band into a box.
Karo: I first saw you at WGT many years ago, when there was literally a warning that “there will be blood on the dancefloor.” Back then, the provocation felt genuinely confrontational. Has your own relationship with shock and theatrical violence changed as both you and the audience have grown older?
Chris: Agonoize has always been known for addressing subjects that other people don’t dare to talk about. I’m loud, I’m uncomfortable, and I think that’s a good thing. Being different has always been important to me. I don’t have to please everyone. I am who I am. And that has nothing to do with age either. Our fans range from 8 to 70 years old. Music doesn’t have an age limit.
Karo: A show with such a recognisable visual language can eventually become something audiences expect rather than something that unsettles them. How do you stop an Agonoize concert from turning into a ritual recreation of its own mythology?
Chris: The lyrics I write speak a very clear language and create a very clear picture. I don’t want to hide things behind unnecessary metaphors or sugarcoat them. If I have something to say, I say it directly.
Karo: Your lyrics have always used anger very directly. What genuinely makes Chris L angry enough to write about in 2026, and has that anger become more focused with age, or less?
Chris: Just look at the world around you. Everything that is happening out there becomes part of the stories we write. We live in a terrible world, and in many ways it seems to be getting worse rather than better. There is just as much anger, frustration and darkness in the world as there has ever been. Of course, all of that finds its way into my lyrics and, ultimately, into my music.
Karo: You played M’era Luna again this summer and will soon move into a much more immediate club setting in Wrocław. Does the scale of the room actually change the way you perform, or is Agonoize supposed to overwhelm the space regardless of its size?
Chris: I’ve always preferred playing small clubs. There’s something special about being close to the audience, with no barriers and no distance between us. That direct connection is what I love about live shows. And ultimately, it doesn’t depend on the size of the venue. We perform in front of 10,000 people with the same intensity as we do in front of 150.
Karo: Agonoize have a catalogue full of songs audiences expect to hear. When constructing a set now, how do you balance that collective memory against your own need not to spend the evening reproducing the past?
Chris: Every show is different. The combination of old and new songs is important, and that mixture should be something people can feel at every show. In the past, two-and-a-half to four-and-a-half-hour shows were not unusual for me. Because of my illness, that’s unfortunately no longer possible. But a shorter show can still be just as intense and uncompromising.
Karo: Looking ahead, what do you want the next phase of Agonoize to prove, not to people who already know exactly what “Bis das Blut gefriert” means to them, but to somebody encountering the band for the first time now?
Chris: I have nothing to prove to anyone except myself. I just want to be able to do what I’ve always been best at: making music. Ultimately, that’s all I want.
About Agonoize
Formed in Berlin in 2002, Agonoize became one of the most recognisable names in the harder European electro scene. Their official biography describes the project through a collision of industrial, EBM and dark electro, while the band has long used the term Hellektro for its own particularly abrasive variant of that language. From the early “Paranoid Destruction” period through records and releases such as “Assimilation”, “Blutgruppe Jesus”, “Bis das Blut gefriert” and the later “Revelation Six Six Sick”, aggression has remained central, but so has Chris L’s insistence on direct language and subjects designed to create discomfort rather than polite distance. Side-Line previously spoke with the band in 2020 for the ‘Click Interview’ with Agonoize.
The theatrical violence of the concerts, including the band’s notorious “Blutshow”, became part of that identity, but the interview above suggests something more useful about Agonoize in 2026: beneath all the blood, noise and provocation, the continuation of the band still depends on something remarkably basic, Chris L wanting to write music again.
Agonoize live, upcoming dates
The band’s site marks the Wrocław and Bärenstein dates specifically as Blutshows.
- 25 September 2026 – Klub Łącznik, Wrocław, Poland (with System Noire and Antibody, doors 19:00, Angst Factor aftershow with DJane Nox Occultae and DJ Bjørn) – Blutshow
- 24 October 2026 – Dark Dance Treffen, Mannheim, Germany
- 11 December 2026 – Unholy X-Mas, Bärenstein, Germany – Blutshow
- 12 December 2026 – Unholy X-Mas, Bärenstein, Germany – Blutshow
- 25 December 2026 – Dark Storm, Chemnitz, Germany
- 9 January 2027 – Fabrik, Bruchsal, Germany
- 6 February 2027 – From Hell, Erfurt, Germany
- 16-18 April 2027 – Dark Malta, Malta
- 16 October 2027 – ORWOhaus, Berlin, Germany
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Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.
