Farmer Boys (band)

In 1996, Farmer Boys released their debut album Countrified.^[1] All of the album's songs make reference to farm life or farm animals. It also has a cover track of Depeche Mode's "Never Let Me Down Again". The album is the band's heaviest album ever recorded and it strongly features elements from thrash metal, groove metal and gothic metal. Music videos for "Farm Sweet Farm" and "Never Let Me Down Again" were directed by Nick Lyon. Countrified sold over 10,000 copies.

They reached their peak popularity with their album The World Is Ours, released in 2000; the videos for singles "Here Comes the Pain" and "If You Ever Leave Me Standing" were put into heavy rotation by German alternative music channels such as VIVA Zwei. Farmer Boys has obtained a cult following in later years.

Matthias Sayer also provided guest vocals for Apocalyptica's single "Hope Vol. 2".

Four years after the release of The Other Side, in 2004, the group performed a reunion concert in Stuttgart on 22 December.^[2] Aside from their appearance at the 2011 Summer Breeze Open Air on 20 August in Dinkelsbühl, Germany, the band remained relatively silent and inactive.

At the end of 2016, guitarist Alexander Scholpp announced the return of the band, with three shows scheduled in Germany for the spring of 2017, as well announcing the band's plans for a new album. The album, named Born Again, was released in 2018.

Farmer Boys' musical style is a blend of Machine Head's groove metal and Paradise Lost's gothic metal; their lyrical matter on the first two albums, however, unusually to the style, revolved around the darker side of agriculture – bestiality and incest ("Farm Sweet Farm"), torture of animals ("When a Chicken Cries for Love"), suicide ("Relieve the Tension") and slaughterhouses ("When Pigs Fly").

• Matthias Sayer – vocals
• Alexander Scholpp – guitars
• Richard Duee – keyboards
• Timm Schreiner – drums
• Ralf Botzenhart – bass (–1999, 2014–)