Spleen is a young band from Leipzig, Germany, which has been
around since 2019 or something like that. Featuring members of the post
punk act
Ex-Diel
and of the dark noise-rock band
Abrichten
as well as the guy behind the
U-Bac
label, the band clearly walks the path of the local noisy punk scene,
which I'm definitely not an expert of, but point-blank I would put them
and
Gelatyne
in the same tote bag.
This Live in Leipzig from 2019 sounds actually pretty good, good enough to make me doubt that it's actually a live show record (until I saw the video below, good job guys with the recording and mix!).
Don't be mistaken by the first seconds of Brought Into Line which
smell like good old post-punk, we're talking noisy punk edging with
hardcore here.
But Spleen tracks are far from unfolding gently like an Afghan
carpet or an old boring Discharge-like song, if it starts one way
you can be sure it will end upside down, it speeds up, it slows down, it
gets lost in "noisy psyche" parts, it gets high in weird outerspace
interludes where the guitarist can finally use the nice pedal full of
effects he received for Christmas, in short it's all the punk mess I'm
fond of.
Spleen does not sound like your next-door hardcore punk band, the
mix is purposely unbalanced, yes it sounds straight forward but
well-thought also, these guys know what they wanna sound like, making it
an important part of their musical identity. I mentioned
Gelatyne before and even if it's quite different (especially the
vocals), there is the same clear will of including "noise" in their game.
And I do like it.
The hardcore parts recall the first
Exit Order EP
and the vocals make me think sometimes of the way the singer shouts on the
first track of the Krimewatch demo
(I know I tend to mention these two bands quite often but that's the sound
I like so beat it!).
The track Identity Sold was featured a few months later on the
Flennen No.8
compilation tape with a lot of other cool German bands' songs.
Really cool cover artwork for Spleen's debut tape released
mid April 2021
on the Leipzig-based label
Interceptor Editions
(on which you can find, among other cool stuff, the killer
Sirkka
tape).
Seven tracks, including the really cool Flower Basket which was
already on the Live In Leipzig, recorded by
J.B Meyrieux who's been seen behind the mixing table during a lot
of European punk bands
recent
recording sessions and sings in the Leipzig band
Bronco Libre.
Once gain Spleen's tracks sound really good, a really well
balanced mix between modern hardcore punk and a more "chaotic" noisy
sound.
The quartet likes to start it slow in a kinda of heavy psyche hardcore
way (Hide) before speeding up the tempo and marking it with regular
vocal bursts, which sound like they come from very "deep" (a lot of "air
projection" in that singing technique), giving an energy at the same time
very powerful and rather heavy.
The guitarist keeps playing with his pedal, building unusual type
of breaks or intros for hardcore punk, joining the vocals into what gives
the band's sound identity. A late 80s grunge influence?
It's hard to explain but when you listen to Spleen there is no
doubt these guys fit into the noisy punk category and yet it clearly has
nothing to do with
Bathouse, that I wrote about recently, or
the Milan bands
with a "particular" production that I also wrote about recently... in a
way the construction of the songs is relatively conventional, even if the
strong presence of "breaks" breaks the hardcore dynamic that my ears are
used to, and it's really the use of the pedal effect and the way the
vocals were mixed which give the "noisy" side to the record. Which is
good, I mean I'm all for new experiments.
On top of
Exit Order
that I already mentioned, I can think of
Flower
from NYC whose first tape got the same kind of vibe.
In a nutshell it's a really cool tape which places Spleen in a
current female-fronted hardcore punk movement while clarifying a new
definition of what "noisy" and punk can do together.
Keep it up!
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