samedi 21 mai 2022

Primer Regimen

 

You have to know that Primer Regimen is probably my favourite Colombian band, so you can imagine how excited I was when I heard that a new record was on the way. Excited but surprised... after Ultimo Testamento in 2018 I thought that the band had split up, I mean, after all, anyone with a near-zero knowledge of Spanish as myself would have deducted from the record title that the Bogota band was done with making the world pogo... Well it looks like we were all wrong...
 
But let's take a step back and talk a bit about what happened before their come-back...
Primer Regimen is from Bogota, Colombia, and features members of bands like Secta Suicida, Final, Tumbas and, most of all, Dead Hero. Indeed, if I'm not mistaken, Dead Hero is (or was?) actually Primer Regimen with another singer (Dino having chosen rather to sing in Final). But I'm not going to spend much time on Dead Hero here, let's say that I'm not a fan at all of the kind of oi! they're playing.
In 2017 Primer Regimen released a 7" (on Byllepest Distro and prior to that on Ruidos Subterraneo as a tape) called No Futuro / No Solución, a great mix of UK82 / early oi! and Colombian punk made to make your first grade teacher pogo until the end of times.
 
picture by Rob Coons
 
But the real deal came up one year later in 2018 with the famous Ultimo Testamento, that I mentioned before, once again released on Byllepest Distro from Norway (managed by Daniel from Negativ, Krigshoder and many other ripping hardcore punk bands).
No Futuro / No Solución was good but a bit classic I could say, Ultimo Testamento is still "classic" but is most of all absolutely fantastic... every song is a pure anthem of Spanish street punk, this is what pogo punk is and should be, non-stop tupa-tupa drum beat, lyrics I don't understand at all but wanna scream from the top of my lungs and the energy of a hot summer uprising... what else can you ask for?
So you understand that to me Primer Regimen had reached the very top of my personal punk Pantheon and would forever remain in my heart like THE legendary Colombian band which ripped the shit out the world of punk from start to finish...
Just like they did at their incredible live show at Manic Relapse Fest in 2018 in Oakland:
 
 
  But anyway if you don't know all that already you just lived for nothing until now... so let's jump to their new 7".
 
 

 So this new EP (released mid april 2022) named 1983 (but the cover also states No Futuro / No Solucion like on their first 7") benefits of a great artwork by Carlos Velasquez who, on top of playing in Uzi and Muro, has done great artworks for several Bogota bands (Secta, Uzi etc...). In the end when I write something about current Colombian punk bands I always come back at some point to the super-active punk "crew" from the Rat Trap in Bogota that I talked about a bit in my post about Unidad Ideologica.
 
 
Only available on their bandcamp page at the moment (12 usd for the EP digital version?! seriously guys?), the 7" should be released soon by Discos Enfermos from Barcelona that I've mentioned a few times on this page (it looks like Byllepest Distro's been inactive for a while now for some reasons).
 
To be honest these songs surprised me at first, it's not really what I was expecting, maybe I listened too much to Primer Regimen's first releases and I had in mind that it was going to be exactly the same. Well it's not. Don't get me wrong it's not totally different either, Lideres and Culpables (great drum intro by the way) for example are two very good tracks which would have perfectly fit in Ultimo Testamento without any doubt. But the innovation lies mainly in Hegemonia and Plegaria, two tunes that grow a dark and heavy atmosphere built around some kind of "tribal drum beats" that take us far from the usual hardcore patterns... yes since 2018 the Singapore hardcore punk scene has beautifully developed that "haunting and shamanic" hardcore style (Sial with their latest EP of course, featured in my Best of 2021 list, but Xyresic as well with their strong Spanish influences) and it didn't get unnoticed in Bogota, leading Primer Regimen to give birth in the end to an EP which is even better, and more interesting, than what a good, but classic, follow up to Ultimo Testamento would have been...
This is a very good and enjoyable EP... hopefully it will be followed by a European tour at some point! 
 
 
 
  N,J'Oi!
 
 
 
 
 
You can listen to Primer Regimen on Rien à Faire #34.
 
  
 
 
 

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