A short one today about this new band from Paris, France, called
Turquoise.
Consisting of members from the past and present
Krigskade,
Rats Blood,
Barren?,
Going Away Party,
Ansiax
and
High Vis, these guys have decided to go soft and pop and play some fast and
ripping scandinavian D-beat.
The band's frontman is Romain who runs the excellent
Terminal Sound Nuisance
blog (most probably the closest thing of a PHD in crust and D-beat you'll
ever see, check out his post about
90s swedish D-beat) and is also a regular contributor to the
DIY Conspiracy
website (which published
a very thorough post about Turquoise
from where most of my information actually comes from).
Turquoise's debut LP is called Hantise (meaning
haunting in an obsessive way) and is a joint released of the two French
labels
Les Choeurs de L'ennui
(from Paris) and
Symphony of Destruction
(from Brittany). Within eight tracks sung in French (good move guys, I am
strongly in favour of bands singing in their own languages), the four
French guys deliver top class D-beat which energy and anger will
definitely rip you apart.
Stomping drums, killer fast guitar riffs, screamed heavy vocals... the
recipe is perfectly respected! D-beat is a genre which is, obviously,
extremely conservative from a musical point of view and I am not so much
into it but from time to time a band catches my attention, and it usually
means that this particular band clearly flies above the average.
And Turquoise is one of them.
On top of the obvious scandinavian influences (Totalitär,
Skitslickers
and their spanish fans
Totälickers) I think also of other French D-beat bands like
Deletär,
Bombardement,
Diktat
(that I discovered on the very good compilation
Bordeaux Boredom Vol.2) and of course
Gasmask Terrör. As I was saying I'm not in expert of the genre so that's the few bands
I found worthy of interest.
What I like in Hantise is, first, the sound which is at the same
time extremely powerful and overwhelming but not metallic or polished and
second the music of course, which takes all the good side of the genre and
leaves aside all the bad taste that can sometimes be inherent to a too
great proximity with Metal (thank you for that guys).
And finally I like it because it's in French, but don't get me wrong it's
almost impossible to understand anything of the angrily screamed lyrics
but it sounds good to my Frenchman ears anyway. I love in particular the
"quiet" part on Si Uniques? (So Unique?) where Romain's
words can finally reach my brain to deliver its message about fake human
empathy in a doomed capitalist world.
ah and that haunting (but somewhat obscure) sentence repeated over and
over again on Lâcheté: "crevé par la vie, trop peureux (trop heureux?) pour mourir" which could be translated into "exhausted (or killed) by life, too
scared to die".
Well obviously Turquoise doesn't approach existential questions
from a very optimistic or positive angle, I guess the genre limits the
answers to a rather catastrophic vision anyway, and catastrophism becoming
more and more the rational forecasting, I suppose that's part of the
reason why I'm more and more attracted to the genre...
With songs named Détestable (Obnoxious),
Hantise De Vivre (Fear Of Living),
Lâcheté (Cowardness) and Apocalypse for example I
think it's safe to say that the overall tone of the album is quite dark
(ahah it would be really fun to make a super raw D-beat album with only
super positive and cheesy lyrics).
In the meantime, jump into bleakness and depression, make yourself a
favour and listen to Hantise (probably one of the best punk album
to come from France in the beginning of this new year), it gets better and
better with each spin on the turntable.
On the other hand, there is one negative point that must be
addressed... the artwork. Ok it's a good idea to not have another
black&white cover with piles of bones and skulls in a nuclear
holocaust scenery (thank you for that guys), but this one is just... I
don't know, there is something missing here... it doesn't do justice to
the record to be honest.
Well it had to be said.
Keep up the noise and fury guys!
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