KISSIN' DYNAMITE Trivia — 62 Entries
62 sourced facts about KISSIN' DYNAMITE.
Trivia
Japan met the band one album late. The debut, Steel Of Swabia, never got a Japanese release, so the first Kissin' Dynamite record to reach Japanese shops was the second one. Universal Music Japan's discography dates the Japanese edition of Addicted To Metal to 7 July 2010, catalogue number TOCP-66957, priced at 2,619 yen including tax.
The wish took barely half a year to come true. On 10 November 2012 the band announced that the Money, Sex & Power tour had turned into a world tour, and that it would finish in Japan with three shows: 9 February 2013 at FANJtwice in Osaka, the 10th at the Apollo Theater in Nagoya and the 11th at Club Holiday Shinjuku in Tokyo.
King Records put out the Japanese edition of Generation Goodbye as KICP-1787, ahead of the international release. It carries twelve tracks — the album plus a bonus, "All Are Equal" — at 2,860 yen including tax, and King's own product page names the producer as Miro Rodenberg of Gate Studios.
Eleven years passed before the second visit. On 21 May 2024 the band announced that it was coming back to Japan after eleven years, and their Japanese label listed the dates: 17 November 2024 at THE LIVE HOUSE soma in Osaka and 18 November at Shibuya WWW in Tokyo. The Japanese edition of Back With A Bang! had appeared on Avalon as MICP-11894 on 3 July 2024.
The music video for "Queen Of The Night" was filmed in Tokyo. Writing on 9 May 2025, just back from Florida and Brazil, the band said the song had become bound up with the memories of that world tour — and that the sheer scale of Tokyo had struck them hard enough that they were determined to shoot at the Shibuya scramble crossing and around the city centre.
The sleeve of the fifth album, Generation Goodbye, carries the names of actual fans. When the artwork was unveiled on 28 April 2016, the band explained that anyone who shared their Facebook post publicly and commented on it went into the draw to have their own account name appear in the cover's "so-and-so poked you" line. The design mimics a social-media notification screen, and it was filled in with real people.
The deluxe box edition of Ecstasy contained a band biography written by the drummer. Andi Schnitzer's book, A road paved with gold, shipped alongside a limited digipak, an instrumental CD and a bandana, while the vinyl came in four coloured pressings limited to 500, 500, 200 and 100 copies respectively.
On 19 September 2018 the band announced that it had won the Metal Hammer Award for Best German Band. Five years earlier the same awards had merely nominated them in the "up and coming" category; this time they were called up as one of the country's leading acts.
For a couple of weeks after Schnitzer left, some fans assumed the band was finished. On 11 March 2021 the remaining four said plainly that Kissin' Dynamite would carry on and that every planned show would happen, while admitting they had no drummer lined up yet. The statement ends on a single line: this is not the end of the road. The next album was called Not the End of the Road.
Their relationship with Wacken Open Air began as ticket holders. On 10 August 2022 the band wrote that they had first turned up at Wacken in 2008 as teenagers, and had come back in 2022 to play the main stage. Fourteen years separate the two visits.
On 12 July 2024 Back With A Bang! went to number one on the official German album chart. The band dedicated the award to its audience, wrote that rock was plainly not dead, and framed the trophy as the result of seventeen years in which the fans had stayed at their side.
On 17 September 2025 Hannes Braun announced that he would stop being Kissin' Dynamite's singer. He opened by ruling out a break-up and confirming that he was staying in the band, then explained why he was leaving the stage after nearly twenty years and more than a thousand shows: his health. What wore him down, he said, was never the ninety minutes on stage but the constant travelling, the lack of sleep and the pressure of daily touring life. He remains the songwriter and producer — or, as he put it himself, the captain of the ship.
The self-titled 2026 record is the first release on the band's own label. Its predecessor, Back With A Bang!, came out through a large Austrian metal label; the ninth album is entirely self-run, on an imprint called Dynamite Records. Hannes Braun gave no single reason for the move, saying instead that none of them are afraid of hard work, that they want complete visibility over the whole operation, and that they trust themselves to handle it.
The seven re-recordings pulled in people the band had met over twenty years. The early favourite "Out in the Rain" gained Sweden's Amaranthe, while "Steel of Swabia", the song about their own region, brought in Ralf Scheepers of Primal Fear and a sprawling guitar solo from Dragonforce's Sam Totman.
The name comes straight off an AC/DC track listing. Guitarist Jim Müller told a Japanese interviewer in 2012 that the five of them had been arguing for ages over what to call themselves, and that during one of those arguments drummer Andi Schnitzer's phone went off. His ringtone was AC/DC's "Kissin' Dynamite". That was the whole of it, and Müller still describes the coincidence as a magic moment. AC/DC's own site lists the song on their 1988 album Blow Up Your Video.
The Tokyo date of that first Japanese visit survives in full. On 27 May 2013 the band announced on its own site that the complete show had gone up on their YouTube channel. Putting an entire foreign club gig online was not a common thing for a German band to do at the time, which says something about how much the trip had meant to them.
The 2012 interview was, as Müller noted at the top of it, the first time any Japanese outlet had spoken to him at all. Asked whether the band would ever come over, he said he wanted to play in Japan at least once and intended to make it happen — it was only a question of time. His reason was second-hand: every band he had asked the year before had told him Japan was the best place in the world.
In a long message to fans in September 2025, Hannes Braun put the band's founding at 2007, with the five years before that spent under the name The Blues Kids. In the same message he recalled the promise he, Ande and Steffen made to each other at the age of twelve — that they would really make it to the big stages. Tours, chart placings and large halls were on that list, and, he admits, so were groupies.
When Andi Schnitzer announced his departure in 2021, he traced the whole ride back to a starting point almost exactly twenty years earlier: himself and Jim, sitting on the old wooden benches of their schoolyard. For the drummer, in other words, the band began during school breaks, well before anyone had settled on the name Kissin' Dynamite.
The Japanese label's official biography pins the turning point on a four-track demo CD. It reached people in the industry in December 2007, and that settled the band's direction. By the time the debut album Steel Of Swabia appeared on 18 July 2008, the five of them averaged seventeen years of age.
Udo Dirkschneider, one of German metal's senior figures, saw how the teenagers were going down at festivals and took them out as support on his own tour in December 2009. The connection carried into the studio: when their second album appeared in Germany on 26 March 2010, Dirkschneider guested on it as a vocalist.
Money, Sex & Power entered the official German chart at number 50 on 3 April 2012. It is the oldest chart bulletin still standing on the band's own website, and it set a pattern: every album from then on got the same kind of short, delighted post the moment the numbers landed.
On 20 June 2012 the band opened for Mötley Crüe and Slash in Bamberg. The announcement went up on their own site the day before and consists of little more than a shout of delight. One of the bands Müller had found in his father's record collection as a boy was the act they were warming up for that night.
On 18 April 2013 the band announced a nomination in the "up and coming" category of the Metal Hammer Awards. No report of a win that year survives on their site. The same awards would call their name five years later, in a different category.
In 2013 the band took part in a public vote run by Europcar, with a tour bus as the prize. Marrok won it and Kissin' Dynamite went home empty-handed. The band's own response was to point at the vote count instead: finishing comfortably in the top three proved how solid their following was, and that, they said, was the bigger award.
On 16 June 2015 the band gave away a song called "In the Eye of the Shitstorm" for nothing. The only condition was signing up to their newsletter, and the track was tied to no album and no single — it simply went out on its own.
The same announcement laid out how Generation Goodbye would be sold. The standard edition held eleven new songs; a digipak added a bonus CD and a DVD of extra material; and above both sat a strictly limited fan box built around an elaborate aluminium case with a pile of extras inside.
On 20 July 2016 Generation Goodbye landed at number 14 in Germany and number 59 in Switzerland. That 14 stood as the band's highest placing until Ecstasy reached number 7 in 2018.
The first live release happened because people kept asking for one. In an announcement on 22 September 2016 the band said they had been asked for a live DVD so often that they had decided to film their Stuttgart show that year. The post was not a report on a finished shoot but an invitation: be in the room on the night.
On 5 May 2017 the band announced its first live album, summing up the road behind it as ten years as a band, five studio albums released worldwide and more shows at home and abroad than anyone had counted. Generation Goodbye - Dynamite Nights came out on 14 July that year, as either a DVD or a Blu-ray, each packaged with a two-CD digipak.
The pre-order incentive for that live release was less a prize than a house call. The band said they would pick one person who had pre-ordered, turn up at their home a week before the official release and watch the DVD with them in the living room. To enter you had to like the Facebook post, share it publicly and tag at least one friend in the comments.
Generation Goodbye - Dynamite Nights was shown on a cinema screen before it reached the shops. An announcement on 29 May 2017 set a single advance screening for 8 July, six days ahead of release, at the open-air cinema of the Backstage Club in Munich, with the band in attendance. The post is explicit that this was the only chance to see it early.
On 24 April 2018 the band posted on its own site that it had signed with Metal Blade and Sony Music. Metal Blade's own announcement, ten days later, filled in the shape of the deal: Sony's Columbia would handle Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and Metal Blade would take the rest of the world.
Ecstasy was produced by the band's own singer, Hannes Braun. Metal Blade's announcement framed it as a record that reaches back to the raw, high-energy version of the band they had been at the start, while at the same time marking a turning point in an eleven-year career.
Metal Blade's artist page spells out how the writing was divided. The main lyricist was the drummer, Andreas Schnitzer, while the primary songwriter was the singer, Hannes Braun. Schnitzer's stated view on the same page is that there is no need to reinvent the wheel, and no need to load a song with several messages at once.
Metal Blade's artist page does not romanticise the touring. It describes months on the road across Europe, Japan and Ukraine, sleeping at airports or backstage in clubs when there was nothing else going — the actual working life of a rock musician, set against the Los Angeles version of the dream. The same page notes that the career began with a major-label deal and a European tour alongside U.D.O.
Ecstasy reached number 7 on the official German chart on 25 July 2018. The band called it their best position yet, and reported two more in the same post: number 30 in Switzerland and number 52 in Austria.
After the label change the band stepped back down the bill on purpose. From 26 October 2018 they went out as special guests on Powerwolf's European tour, sixteen shows in all. Metal Blade presented it as their first tour under the new deal, and the label's artist page notes that they were returning to a special-guest slot after several headline runs of their own.
On 18 December 2018, not long after the tour together ended, the band released a video of their cover of Powerwolf's "Let There Be Night". On their own site they simply call Powerwolf friends.
On 13 September 2019 the band put out the single "Cadillac Maniac", with the German rockabilly-flavoured covers act The Baseballs guesting on it. The band sent the video out with the hope that people would enjoy it as much as they had enjoyed making it.
On 11 January 2021 the band announced a record deal with the Austrian label Napalm Records, together with Cobra Agency taking over their booking. The post signs off with the hashtag #bringbackstadiumrock — the same call to arms that Metal Blade had opened its own signing announcement with.
On 24 February 2021 drummer Andi Schnitzer announced his departure in a statement under his own name. He began by thanking the others for the respectful tone in which the split had happened, then gave his reason: over time they had drifted too far apart and no longer spoke the same language, even about things that mattered. The band added only a short note of thanks for twenty years underneath it.
The seat was filled on 6 July 2021, when the band announced that Sebastian Berg was their new drummer. The post is brief: the first rehearsals together had been fantastic, and they could not wait for the summer shows to begin. It came with the summer already on top of them.
On 5 November 2021 the band released a video for the charity single "Good Life", made with Saltatio Mortis, Charlotte Wessels — formerly of Delain — and Guernica Mancini. The announcement states that all commercial proceeds would go to the children's cancer clinic in Tübingen.
Not the End of the Road entered the official German chart at number 2 on 4 February 2022. The band celebrated it as their best placing to date, and their Japanese label went on to describe the record as the biggest hit of their career.
On 8 April 2023 the band announced its part in a charity song opposing the war in Ukraine, organised by the German radio station Rock Antenne together with Rockers United. Besides going out on streaming services, the track appeared as a strictly limited vinyl release in several colours, and a music video was shot for it.
Back With A Bang! was produced by Hannes Braun himself. The band's Japanese label makes a point of it, noting that Braun is not only Kissin' Dynamite's singer but a writer and producer for a good many other acts, among them Beyond the Black and Visions of Atlantis.
"Raise Your Glass", the opening track of Back With A Bang! and its lead single, is described by the band's Japanese label as a look back at their own beginnings — a toast to having got this far and to carrying on. When the band posted about reaching number one in Germany, the last line of the message was an invitation to raise a glass.
One dream was left to settle before he stepped down. Braun wrote that he had wanted to play arena shows with his own band since he was twelve, and made that the last goal. The Big Goodbye Arena Shows are three nights — 19 September 2026 at the ratiopharm arena in Neu-Ulm, 26 September at the Inselpark Arena in Hamburg and 3 October at the Palladium in Cologne — and the band's own site puts each at a capacity of four to five thousand, with all three close to sold out.
Ande Braun explained why the ninth album carries the band's own name. The record revisits their beginnings and carries the story forward, he said, while at the same time closing the era people have known as Kissin' Dynamite, because it is the last album with Hannes singing. Given all that, the title settled itself almost immediately.
The sleeve of the ninth album is the band's name drawn out as a picture: a pair of bright red lips kissing an equally red stick of dynamite. The band's own site calls it a literal visualisation of both the group's name and the album title, and goes as far as imagining the motif on T-shirts, bags and cars.
The ninth album is not all new material. Six freshly written songs sit alongside seven re-recordings drawn from the band's first two albums, and Hannes Braun gave part of the reason himself: when those records were made, in 2008 and 2010, his voice had not yet broken.
On the same album "Lie for Me" was rebuilt as something closer to a campfire arrangement and turned into a duet between Anna Brunner of League of Distortion and Hannes Braun. The band's site notes that the two have been a couple for many years, and takes that as the reason the love story in the song comes across as personal rather than staged.
The new songs on the ninth album carry the record's theme of endings and restarts into the lyrics. According to the band's site, "I Salute You" reads as the frontman's farewell to his audience, built on a heavy march with bagpipes and a guest appearance from Saltatio Mortis. "The Good in Goodbye" is about the pain of a parting that had become necessary, and about life continuing in a different shape; "Nothing Breaks Like a Heart" deals with empty promises and the heartbreak they leave.
The ninth album exists because people asked for it. Hannes Braun has said that so many fans expressed a wish for one final record with him on vocals that the idea for this one grew out of those requests. The retirement was announced first; the album followed.
Hannes Braun ended his retirement statement with an open call. A new era would begin for the rest of the band afterwards, he wrote, with a different face on stage instead of his — and then he addressed the young talent out there directly and asked them to step up and write to the band. It was, in effect, an advertisement for his own replacement.
By Müller's account the band is not one group but two that ran into each other. Everyone had picked up an instrument at around the age of ten; the Braun brothers, Hannes and Ande, had a band of their own, while Müller and Andi Schnitzer had another going at the same time. Steffen Haile joined the brothers' side later, and the two outfits merged into the five-piece that exists now. Müller dates that merger to 2006.
Müller can name the exact moment he became a guitarist. He was ten, and after school Andi Schnitzer showed him an AC/DC DVD. Watching Angus Young work a stage settled the question of what he wanted to do with his life. It took another two years for him to discover that bands other than AC/DC existed, after which he worked his way through his father's old records and fell for Mötley Crüe, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Accept.
Swabia, in the debut album's title, is simply the English name of the region the band comes from — the south-west corner of Germany. Asked about the local metal scene, Müller reckoned that around half the young people there knew who AC/DC were, which, he joked, was a high figure for 2012.
The third album, Money, Sex & Power, is where the band decided what it was. Müller admitted that the first two records had been a sort of search for themselves, made without any settled style, and said that every band eventually has to ask who it is and where it is going. Two years of chewing on that question produced their own label for it: sleaze metal.
There was no careful balancing of the running order on Money, Sex & Power. Müller said they had something like fifty songs and ideas on hand and simply took the best of them, on the reasoning that an album with enough good songs on it cannot end up boring. That was the entire method.
The title track of Money, Sex & Power was drawn from the political scandals filling the news at the time. Müller named Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Silvio Berlusconi, and described the song as an ironic salute to Berlusconi's parties. Its narrator is a megalomaniac businessman whose stated view is that only money, sex and power matter in this world.