Lumpen is back!
If you missed their 2020 EP (Desesperación) you can quickly catch up by reading
the enthusiastic post
about it I wrote one year ago.
So these guys from Barcelona (Spaniards and Colombians) are back with a
7-track mini-album (including a cover in Spanish of Ultra Violent's
Crime For Revenge), available on bandcamp only for now but which
should find its way to vinyl in the coming months I presume.
The cover artwork is, once again, made by
Mateo Correal
(active member of Lumpen) who keeps making artworks for bands from
all over the planet and offers this time something a bit more classic in
terms of punk aesthetic I would say. A skeleton, some piles of skulls, a
cemetery, some war-zone images... all that apocalypse imagery recalls a
lot of american street-punk bands' artworks and all the D-beat stuff too
of course and I find it less "attractive" than the
Desesperación's one (less original at least).
The record opens with an audio extract of a movie I'm not sure to identify well (I don't speak Spanish) but sounds like Javier Bardem as Pablo Escobar talking to someone in the 2017 movie about the famous Kingpin with the coloured shirts (correct me if I'm wrong). It would fit perfectly with a record named Corrupción from a band featuring Colombian members after all.
So Lumpen is still playing that great mix of UK82 and Colombian hardcore punk which could probably fit into the Spanish street-punk category I suppose (in comparison with what I call "raw" American street-punk bands like Holehog, Monster Squad etc...). So yes we got what we expect but there is something quite different though, and it mostly comes from the way it sounds more than from the way it's played. Indeed Desesperación had upfront buzz-saw sounding guitars and raw vocals which gave a very in-your-face vibe to the whole thing (like you could actually shower with the vocalist's spittles), Corrupción sounds "milder", the guitars are quite "discreet" and the vocals are somewhere with all the rest, and it gives a less "powerful" and aggressive result. But don't get me wrong Lumpen still sounds mean as fuck, but a bit less than before.
Corrupción's tracks also tend to be a bit more "linear" in their structures, it's less "blasting", and it gives a more resigned feeling, a "sad vibe" (relatively speaking) to the album which is accentuated by the reverb on the "less hoarse" vocals. So in the end I feel much less "attacked" by what I listen to than before (and a big part of the success of this kind of music is the feeling of aggressiveness it's able to express).
So yes I like this album, Lumpen still writes and plays good punk songs but I can't help but feel slightly unsatisfied, I was expecting something more aggressive and I feel like I was moved from the front row in the pogo pit to the back of the room if you see what I mean (I don't pogo any more anyway).
Great Ultra Violent cover though!
N,J'Oi!
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| picture by Christina Carlsen |
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