|
|
picture by
TheUndergroundStage |
Let's go back for a
sec to the land of vegemite and never-ending lockdowns : Optic Nerve (to not be mistaken with the pre-Fuzztones american band) are hailing from Sydney, Australia, have been
around since 2019 or late 2018 and have delivered since then two great
tapes I have to tell you about!
It all started with this 4-track demo recorded live in the suburb of
Sydney in 2019. From the first seconds of Sniper it's clear that
Optic Nerve got all the right influences in the right order to
win my eternal love and lust, a lot of cool 80s USHC yes of course but
also, and that's when it gets really interesting, an unusual touch of
"clear/clean" guitar sound which gives a little something of classic
rock / country music meets early hardcore...
Ok, said this way it probably sounds pretty bad but that's not what you
think. Imagine Rites Of Spring jamming with some guys from the
first wave of DC hardcore bands (that's actually exactly what
Rites Of Spring was doing by the way) but the guitar players had
forgotten their distortion/overdrive pedals in their schoolbags...
Something like that...
Optic Nerve manage to deliver four tracks which are
simultaneously fast, catchy, well-written and enjoyable, they're
definitely punk songs but they're also songs written and played by guys
who know what they're doing and have a really smart approach to punk
music.
A lot has been said about the Australian music scene (and the indie,
punk and hardcore scenes in particular) and Optic Nerve stand at
the crossroads of these different scenes, mixing the "thoughtful" and
"sensitive" side of indie, the energy of hardcore and the emotional slap
in the face of city punk. Brilliant!
I'm going to stay courteous, not spend any time on the cover artwork and jump straight to the point, which is the music for those who thought they
were on a custom low riders fan blog.
Two years later after their impressive demo, Optic Nerve are
back with another tape, a 5-track one released on
Urge Records
this time. I've mentioned the Sydney-based label a couple of times here
before as it's released some of the most interesting recent Australian
bands, I'm thinking of
Concrete Lawn
and
Utopian.
The demo sounded quite good but it was a demo, with this EP we can finally here all "the layers of texture": the galloping riffs recall more than ever some kind of "rural rock" music whereas the vocals do not abandon its punk and hardcore influences.
Doing the "musical splits" is always a perilous exercise (many have tried...) but what Optic Nerve are doing is not exactly that, these guys are just playing some first-class fast punk and, thanks to subtle ways of simply playing with the way the guitar sounds and a handful of countryish riffs, manage to turn it into "this good old cake with a new brand of topping" if you know what I mean.
These five tracks sound good, are good and I don't get bored listening to them over and over again... so once gain it's...BRILLIANT!
Optic Nerve just made it into my year's top!
N,J'Oi!
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire