About

The Origins of Collapse Under The Empire

The Collaborative Efforts of Chris Burda and Martin Grimm.

two men are standing next to each other in a dark room .

"... we both needed the space to explore creatively ..."

In the summer of 2008 , we met while looking for bands to collaborate with to keep our creative juices flowing. We had both moved to Hamburg, Germany for work and because of this, we had to give up our former bands from home. 

We both found working with several band members at a time in a traditional band setup restricted our vision and creativity, we both needed the space to explore creatively, we seemed to have a unified creativity and vision and a year later Collapse Under the Empire was born.

That's what we stand for


We are fighting for the environment and animals for years. Humans have to realize that they have to change their lifestyles, attitudes and behaviour - now! We are just at the beginning of a global climate catastrophe. If world politics and people do not understand how serious the situation is and do not work together, there will be no bright future for the next generations. For more than 50 years, climate scientists around the world have been warning of exactly these events. Society has come to a standstill, greed and environmental destruction have deprived the earth of resources, leading to the extinction of entire species of animals.


Support our charity campaigns:


Save the rainforest: rettetdenregenwald.bandcamp.com

Save the sharks: sharkproject.bandcamp.com

Fight against corona: https://www.collapseundertheempire.com/corona

Our Soundscapes


At first, we didn’t know exactly where we were going musically, but we started with a sort of deconstruction of Post Rock fundamentals and reconstructed them into our unique sound and conceptualisation. In the beginning, we used traditional vocal accompaniment but soon realised that the focus of a song centred on the vocals. We wanted the focus to be on the music itself. Creating a story through sound and connecting with epic and expansive concepts that describe the human condition were important to us. We wanted the music to tell the story and to leave our music open to the interpretation of our listeners. Some of our tracks have some choir vocals, but they are added to enhance the experience of the music rather than as a focal point of the song. There are times when vocals aid in the feelings of hope and progressiveness within our songs.


Our unique soundscapes come from evoking the tension and release of human emotional experience through resonating bass lines, electronic music , dark ambient sounds,  tremelo guitars and dystopian industrial drum beats. We often experiment with and express feelings of isolation, abandonment, and death but offset those expressions with uplifting joy and hope. These concepts encapsulate the enduring human experience and are relatable to so many different listeners by enabling a personal connection to the work we do. Our work is often described as soundtrack music , and that makes a lot of sense because soundtracks within films encourage the viewer’s emotions to help them experience what the characters in a movie are going through and that is exactly what our music aspires to, telling a story that all of us can relate to. We create music that gives an outlet and a musical description of these emotions we all feel.

Our Style and Influences as Post-Rock Band


With our melancholic melody constructions, we resemble Post Rock, but our style goes way beyond the usual Post Rock instrumental band. Drawing influences from Trip Hop, Shoegazing, Synthpop and Progressive Rock we are really about pushing the boundaries of Post Rock by creating interpretive soundscapes that inspire listeners and fans to construct a personal narrative. We use aspects of film music, instrumental rock, dark and electronic rock to produce tracks that tell a story and tie into an overall larger concept. These concepts are relatable to fans because they speak of the trials of human existence.

The Origin of our band name


We get a lot of questions about our name Collapse Under The Empire , and we love how fans interpret the name in ways we never thought of as it gives listeners another narrative to personalise along with our sounds. The name Collapse Under the Empire was born from the acronym C.U.T.E. But p ost-rock bands aren’t exactly synonymous with the word cute, Post Rock is hard, and the word cute is soft. We loved the irony. We set about giving the group a title that used the irony of C.U.T.E. In 2008, the world was in a financial crisis affecting millions of ordinary people and Collapse Under the Empire just fell into place and felt right. The name Collapse Under the Empire conjured up dystopian imagery and felt prophetic about the fate of the world and our place in it.

Share by: