Germany's Eurovision entry, "Lord of the Lost" held concerts in Protestant church

"They are in an incredibly existentialist mood".

For the Eurovision Song Contest 2023, Germany is sending the rock band "Lord of the Lost" to the final this Saturday. Pastor Thomas Wessel allowed them to hold concerts in his church. He is excited by the politics and theology of the music.

DOMRADIO.DE: Germany will be represented at the Eurovision Song Contest 2023 by the dark rock band "Lord of the Lost". In 2015 and 2017 they were at your church. How did that come about?

Pastor Thomas Wessel (Evangelische Christuskirche in Bochum): It was full. It was well attended. The acoustics were much less brutish. It was very symphonic, with a lot of violins.

What I remember is not so much what was on stage, but behind it, backstage. We lived together for a whole day, so to speak. I remember those two days as very relaxed and very happy and very curious. They were extremely polite. They were interested in the church and in our history and in our concept.

DOMRADIO.DE: When I listen to "Lord of the Lost" now, it's not really my taste. What is your opinion of the ESC title?

Wessel: It's not mine either. It's too brute for me. But this aesthetic combination of gothic and glam rock, I find it really funny. It's also a very relaxed combination and, funnily enough, very political. They go extremely playful and into a brutally serious debate that is going on about identity at the moment.

This dogged gender discourse alone. It's also just a form of identity politics. "Lord of the Lost" playfully set it all apart. Their aesthetic message is to be who you want to be, or at least be who you want to be for this one moment, for one song. That's the idea.

That also appears in the lyrics. We are free to change. We are our own choice, so to speak. And that's the real idea. No one is on the leash of their origin, no one is on the leash of their gender. We all have the choice to identify with that and those who are completely different from ourselves. At least for the length of a pop song.

DOMRADIO.DE: The band also takes a clear stand against right-wing populism. The AfD got to feel that. What happened there?

Wessel: A really very nice story. Frauke Petry, the ex-AfD leader, had tweeted after the band had won the preliminary round that normal citizens would hardly feel represented by these gentlemen in their pink outfits. Lord of the Lost" then tweeted back: "Don't worry, Frauke, we don't represent you "normal citizens" either. We never have. Never will.

It's a perfect retort. It's sovereign. It's funny. It's fast, it's awake. It is, after all, head-on against this identity thinking of the AfD and it connects "Lord of the Lost" in reverse with us Christians, with biblical theology. We are definitely the ones who were told to turn back, leave your father's house, leave your family, your field, your possessions. So don't be what Frauke Petry calls a "normal citizen", but instead think non-identitarian. We are more on the side of "Lord of the Lost".

DOMRADIO.DE: Now there are supposed to be people who say that such a noise or such a shouting, as in the current title, has no place in sacred buildings, especially if the title is also about hell and so on. What do you answer to people?

Wessel: Then hell would have no place in the Bible either. It's in the centre of the stage where "Lord of the Lost" played, who, by the way, also dealt with Judas for a whole concept album and with the friendship between Jesus and Judas.

But in the course of time, it actually became clearer and clearer to me. In the end, it's more about the "how", that is, the question: "How do we deal with each other?" Especially when we don't believe the same and don't think the same and don't have the same tastes. And it is really striking in this gothic and dark rock scene how much they deal with topics that we tend to wave away in everyday church life.

With themes such as death, without redemption coming immediately, or with suffering, without meaning arising immediately. With the devil, who is not immediately minimised, or evil, which does not immediately lead to good. With us in the church, it's always clear how the game ends, and in this scene it's not. They are incredibly existentialist. They take questions seriously that we otherwise tend to brush aside in our services.

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Cathcon: Not unlike the veneration of "Saint" Judas by modernists, who set up a shrine to him in Linz.