So their debut album was recently released on tape by
Mangel Records
(a vinyl version would be nice though) and, despite its duration (way over
30 minutes which is really long to me), I've found myself coming back to
it several times, struggling to build a proper opinion but nevertheless
finding a certain kind of enjoyment in the very German sound of the young
Berliners... So it's well worth a short write-up, right?!
Because for a guy like me Die Verlierer got something slightly elusive, something which doesn't fit well in any of small and well-defined genre boxes of loud guitar music. Their music sounds a bit low-fi, a bit like a long-forgotten tape from an obscure 80s Berlin band, their music sounds punk sometimes, because of the "relative rawness" and the energy not because of a fixation on sounding like this or that band, but their music also got something deeply sad and disillusioned, something very German, very Berlin I would even say.
So yes to be honest I don't really where I am with this tape, probably somewhere between the early 80s from the SO36 and DieNeue Deustche Welle, the new Hipster Berlin and a more accessible kind of German rock...
Between great bass lines (Die Zeit, Mann in Mond), a real kind of punk energy (Nichts Funktionniert, Dead Girl), unbearable repetitive choruses (Plastic Life would probably have a good chance to supplant Slayer as an official torture anthem in the CIA secret jails), a great sense of simple but effective and catchy melodies, straight forward sing-along choruses tailor-made to lead the crowd in a joyful alcoholic bellowing (X-Ray Vision) and endless psychedelic outros (Into A), Die Verlierer deliver a dense and diverse album that doesn't ring like an "all killer no filler" type of record to me but is more a "grower", a cool anomaly I like to come back to from time to time (on Sundays especially) when I feel like relaxing without a raging D-beat band tearing my eardrums.
But most of all Die Verlierer sound like nostalgia, nostalgia for the crazy Berlin from the 80s and early 90s, leader of the European art scene and all kind of deviant innovative kind of expressions, a Berlin that appears more and more faraway based on what I hear...... Well I haven't been there for very long to be honest and I'm sure it's still cool to hang out there, but it's not the same.
Let's see if Die Verlierer and others manage to avoid falling into the "hype trap" and become the "leaders" of a new momentum of the Berlin alternative scene.
Here we go for the 33rd edition of the infamous RAF compilation featuring a quite balanced mix of hardcore punk, noise punk, anarcho-punk and even some post-punk here and there (yeah the options in terms of adjectives you can put in front of the word "punk" are literally limitless!).
The 17 bands of today are from the US, Australia, Austria, Malaysia, Germany and Romania, mainly from the US to be honest, I try to keep on covering bands from all over the world but the American scene is so vivid and full of great bands it's just impossible to ignore them.
N,J'Oi!
01 - Crisis Man - No Standing Ovation 02 - Split System - Climbing 03 - Pitva - Kapr 04 - Church Clothes - Relative Power 05 - D.Sablu - Bomber Stomp 06 - ConSec - You're Not Going Anywhere 07 - Crime of Passing - Tender Fixation 08 - Deluded - Wash The Scum 09 - Straw Man Army - Faces In The Dark 10 - Mercenary - No Uniform 11 - Xero - Scheme 12 - No Future - Pig Fiend 13 - The Hard-Crop's - The Band 14 - Cold Brats - Living Room La Vida Loca 15 - Science Man - The Want 16 - Maske - Eiszeit 17 - White Suns - Night Pours In
The most observant of my readers will notice in RAF#32 cover "artwork" a subtle reference to tragic events currently taking place in the eastern part of Europe. It's not much, but it's a way to show a little support for Ukraine and its people. I care (and I hope you do too) about what's happening there right now.
FUCK PUTIN!
This being said let's get back to loud and music.
A bit more tracks than usual this month with seventeen songs from bands from the US, the UK, Brazil, Sweden, Finland, Greece, Spain and Germany, who play fast and angry punk and hardcore music of course but also post punk, garage punk and noise-rock.
A lot of diverse stuff, I hope you'll like it!
N,J'Oi!
01 - Hogar - Humillado 02 - Rifle - Feet First 03 - Lasso - Nêmesis 04 - Blue Venus - Am I Punk Yet- 05 - ΜΠΡΙΤΖΟΛΙΤΣΕΣ - Βzin 06 - Thank - Punching Bag 07 - Ugly World Amusement Park - Gut Oil 08 - Dead Stare - Distorted Truth 09 - Spicer - Tense 10 - Kätyrlauma - 1827 11 - Soft Torture - Medusa 12 - Exil - Overdose 13 - Prayer Group - Continuity 14 - Chinese Junk - X-Ray Eyes 15 - Running - WUYFOWTIA 16 - NightFreak - Surprise! 17 - Die Verlierer - Mann im Mond
Glaas is an international band from Berlin, Germany, featuring five
ladies and gentlemen who all together have a rather very long curriculum
vitae... There is Seth (American, guitar) who has played in numerous
bands from numerous genres including
Clock Of Time,
Couteau Latex,
Useless Eaters,
Idiota Civilizzato,
Life Trap
(I love Life Trap!) and many more (these days he is involved in an
electronic hip hop project called
Blaq Hammer
and in a no-wave/post-punk act calledÖPNV)... there is Raquel (Spanish, bass) who has played in
Tortura,
Owner,
Retrofuture, her own solo project called
Lacquer
and plenty of other bands... there is Alexis (german?, vocals) from
the furious
Cage Kicker, there is Cosey (german, synth) from
DAS DAS
who also released a solo tape last year called
Interior Escapes
and there is Jan the drummer who was also behind the drums in
Idiota Civilizzato
and
Life Fucker.
Yes on paper Glaas does look like a "super group" or an
"all-star punk band" and we know that the result, although almost
always making labels extremely happy, can very quickly turn into a
pompous show-off where everyone tries to justify their "reputation" by
overdoing it (I have in mind the example of a 7", recently released on
the same label as the group which interests us today, yuck) but let's
not give in to the ease of prejudice, let's open our minds and ears and listen carefully to these
first three tracks, a little appetizer before the release of a LP in a
few months.
Easy Living was probably the obvious song to choose for a
promo tape, it's not "surprising" in the sense that you know you've heard that kind of stuff before but you also remember enjoying it a lot. It's a very good catchy
bass-driven song mixing modern post-punk influences (Sarcasm, Clock Of Time and even
Negative Space
at times) with old classics like Crisis and
Uk Decay (the "punk period"). Lead by Alexis' vocals,
which remain quite "punk" (if that means anything), the mix lets the
upfront guitar build the melody whereas the synth stays in the
background... and that works really well! That's exactly the kind of
"post-punk" I like to listen to!
All this remains rather similar on I'm The Problem and
Concrete Coffin (even if Alexis' vocals get even more
aggressive, which is not to my displeasure) with the exception of the
synth which gets more in the way of the guitar, building melodies of
its own, a very fashionable symptom nowadays which can really quickly
lead to some synth-punk bullshit if you're not cautious (I hate
synth-punk)... and Concrete Coffin for example is clearly
approaching my tolerance limit in terms of synth melodies...
So you got the idea, Glaas proved being able to make a great
songs of "predictable" post-punk and may give birth to one of the best
European album of the genre in 2022 (and I'm sure the hype around it
is going to be absolutely massive anyway) but it will find grace in my
eyes only if the whole holds the road in a certain diversity (that
should be fine in view of these three tracks) but especially if the
majority of the songs are not built around upfront synth melodies...
but that's probably just me and my old allergy to "new wave".
Anyway the best way to have a good preview of what's will be in the
LP is to watch this livestream concert with Pigeon (Pigeon rules!) recorded at
SO36 last August (and it's true that it's rather promising):
If you've been around this page before you should know that Liiek
is a regular here and needs no introduction. However, and if for some
unforgivable reason you still ignore who Liiek are, you can
discreetly catch up, and avoid carrying the heavy burden of a shame that
will stain your descendants for centuries to come, by reading my
enthusiastic posts about
their first LP
and
their follow-up 7", two absolutely essential modern post-punk records.
Yes I really love Liiek and you can guess how excited I was when I
heard that a new LP should be out before Christmas. I immediately
pre-ordered the vinyl on the
Adagio830
page, made sure to keep a "slot" in my year's end top (the one you can
check out
here), certain to be absolutely delighted by the Berlin trio's new release.
Unfortunately, and as I'm sure you're already aware, the vinyl production
industry has been under pressure for months due to a global lack of raw
material, delays in the material shipping process and a very high demand
(everybody wants to have their shitty band's songs on wax these days, you
and me included), which has had the sad consequence of postponing many
vinyl releases dates, Liiek's LP included. Deep Pore digital
version was made available on time though, but the vinyl version won't
ship before mid January (depending on the pressing plant and god's will),
which is a a bit frustrating but not the end of the world either, right ?
(ask those who ordered the
Dischord 7" boxset
how they feel about the delays and you might get a less relaxed
answer).
All this to say that, in the end, I decided to not include
Deep Pore in my 2021 Best Records list and to take my time to write
a proper review (the one you're reading now) of the full LP even if I
still have the vinyl spinning on my turntable yet.
Indeed I feel that Deep Pore deserves to be listened to several
times before any diligent individual is able to give a valid opinion about
its eleven tracks... not that the record is utterly dense, weird or hard
to get into but I wanted to feel like I had gone deep enough into
Liiek's world to be able to bring back something real enough to be
put into words that would not sound as hollow as all the trite clichés
dispatched in a few tweets by the critics of a consumer pop culture (yes I
can be quite haughty and arrogant sometimes too).
Lieek's previous records expressed some kind of youthful
enthusiasm in their bass-driven songs fuelled by
jerky guitar jabs, and that enthusiasm is undoubtedly still here but feels more mannered,
more controlled, slightly colder and more disillusioned also. Don't get me
wrong, the Berlin band is still full of an energy which takes more on the
"most punk" side of the British post-punk "wave" than on the "airy" bands
of the Factory. Skilfully mixing the early days of
Gang Of Four, the martial side of Warsaw and the harshness
of Crisis, Liiek delivers a mature kind of post-punk that
may not immediately appeal to the 20 year old punk on amphetamine looking
for thrills but deserves to be known and therefore explored and
tamed.
As often, everything starts with the drums... always steady, they build
two kinds of atmospheres inextricably linked to the very close
relationship with the bass. In the first one the drummer hammers out a
steady, sharp beat that the bass can build upon to create a bewitching,
but never overwhelming, melody, the 4-string sound never drooling in the
very low frequencies or embracing any kind of dirty effects. In the second
type of atmosphere Liiek prove that they understood how bands like
Gang Of Four or A Certain Ratio introduced funk bass lines
in English post-punk, not that the Berlin band pushes the idea that far
but rather keeps it closer to upbeat rhythms reminiscent of early
Wire.
Once the foundations are built, the guitar can come and chop up a heady
rhythm or paint a pleasant, but never joyful, melody depending on the
atmosphere, the whole thing being to remain always jerky, always halting,
the energy coming from the inextricable rhythmic association of these
three instruments with very distinct frequencies, each one clearly
occupying its own space, the guitar and the bass taking turns to give the
essential amount of melody to the whole...
But let's not forget the central role played by the vocals which
surprisingly manage to be always powerful, almost "chanted", while always
keeping a certain coldness, a certain "blasé detachment" which corresponds
so well to the kind of powerful but refined post-punk that
Liiek masters perfectly.
But let's shorten the musical analysis a little bit, you should have got
it by now, Liiek delivers a great album made of songs whose
diversity (there is even a discreet reference to
Jello Biafra reference in the vocals of
Take On A Dramatic Scale) doesn't take anything away from an
general atmosphere that I would describe as "driving", I would even say
catchy at times, but never dancing or "joyful", served by the sound mastery of what could be called "almost
groovy" post-punk. Once again recorded and mixed by T-Rex who, with this
album, continues to consolidate himself as a pillar of the sound of
the Berlin ADK scene.
It's your lucky day mate! I've selected all you need to calm that nasty jackhammer that's drilling between your ears, yeah that's a bad bad hangover you're starting the new year with and fifteen tracks of nasty hardcore punk, post-punk and other sorts of blissful melodies are gonna take care of it in no time!
This one collects songs from December releases and a couple of late comers I discovered only recently (shame on me).
Happy new year anyway!
N,J'Oi!
01 - Sect Mark - Denied Self 02 - Faze - Tu N'existerais Pu 03 - Ztuped - i don't wanna see 04 - Shock Tactics - Fall Of Rome 05 - Asesinato - Manufactured Crisis 06 - Butchers Dog - Scandal Monger 07 - Glaas - Easy Living 08 - La Milagrosa - Pánico 09 - Gel - Mental Static 10 - Eterno Ritorno - Sola 11 - Mano Fico - Inferno Night 12 - Wipes - Dumpster 13 - Xyresic - Nuevo Orden Mundial 14 - Ultras - Deniability 15 - Börn - Norn
Skeleton Glove started as a studio side project involving mainly
Assaf (originally from Israel but lives in Berlin if I'm not
mistaken) who is behind the Berlin-based labels
Order 05 Records
and
Twintoe Records
(he also plays in
Egonx
and played in the
Tanning Bats
and other projects in Israel like the
Uzbeks). There's been probably other people from the Berlin punk scene
involved since the beginning but it looks like they wanna keep it a bit
secret (what we do is secret!) even if there are clues that
Dong Xuan Production was involved and that
Skeleton Glove turned into a "real" band with the latest
12"...
Anyway the main idea is to make some kind of super dark, super angry,
low-fi hardcore punk in the vein of
Gimmick,
Gag
or
Glue
(to stay in the G section only).
So let's see!
I don't know if the word Demo freak does make any sense but if
it did it would apply perfectly to Skeleton Glove. In two years
(from early 2018 to late 2019) they released not less than four demos
(well three actually but you'll see)!
I understand that, as a "bedroom black metal" project (or at least as
an over-the-top parody of it), the quality of the recordings did not
reach the point of a proper release but I nevertheless salute the
literal creativity in terms of titles.
This 2018 demo is only two tracks and looks like it may have been a
"solo" project only.
On the contrary to what the aesthetic makes us expect it does not sound
so distorted actually, but almost garagish thanks to the clean
guitar parts and the weird little outer-space noises. It's not so fast
either, it's totally mid-tempo.
Ok they obviously overplay the "dark" or "black metal" aspect with
creepy "horror" lyrics (like a satirical version of a lame
Misfits song, and there's plenty of choice) and a totally, and
probably literally, "threw-up" vocals style (ahah I can imagine the
recording session).
It does work quite well actually as a fun little bedroom project.
More than a year and a half has passed since the first demo
and Skeleton Glove is back with four new tracks and another demo
called Demo, probably to announce the resumption of activities on
new bases (which will be confirmed by the "intense" activity of the
following months).
But to be honest, I'm quite disappointed by this release: ok the creepy
"horror" atmosphere and the "threw up" vocals are still giving the same
"color" to the Berlin "bedroom" hardcore punk but the recording quality
is very very low-fi and turns the whole thing into a big smelly soup
it's really hard to enjoy.
Too bad.
Unfortunately I am obliged to make the same observation with the
two following demos (Demo 2 and Demo 3): it sounds like shit guys!
Ok maybe there are a couple of tracks on Demo 3 which are barely edible
(The Brain Is The Glove Of The Thoughts,
These Shoes are Gloves to My Feet) but that's all (ok the track
titles are funny also).
So let's not waste any more time and let's go to the real purpose of
this review:
Skeleton Glove's first LP!
Well well well... I've been waiting for that one for quite some time,
first announced last December with only two streamable tracks on their
bandcamp page and then for the end of March, here it is finally (6
months later!!!)... so was it worth the wait you're gonna ask ?
Fuck yeah it was!
Credited at first as the result of a one day recording session
(at Dong Xuan Production)
by the original duo (Assaf and Jake?), it looks like the
project turned into a proper "live band". I know for sure that there is
now Marian from
Imposition Man
and
Constant Cold War
who also played in
Catholic Guilt,
Gesture
and
Cult Values
(great bands), Jake, a
multi-disciplinary artist
who plays in
Stinkholeand Stéphanie whose background is unknown to me.
Well in the end all this time was not wasted as, finally, the result
does sound good!
As you'd expect, the band delivers high quality mind sick trash/punk
hardcore, it's fast, it's direct, it's mean as fuck, it's a real blast!
You can hear screaming, barking, yelling, vomiting in all directions while
the drums hammer relentlessly on a crushing rhythm and the guitar, with
its rather and quite surprisingly not-so-distorted sound, keeps everything
within the limits of an appreciable straight forward melodic
construction. With nine out of ten tracks under one minute thirty these guys don't
waste any time, but don't get me wrong, it doesn't mean that all the songs
are geared towards fast hardcore, for example there are the awesome, but
super nasty, I'm Moving In and Spooky Tower whose mid-tempo
construction has a lot to do with their dirty moods... Yes mean, nasty and
spooky are probably the key words here, I would say that
Skeleton Glove is doing to hardcore punk what
Maladia
and
Slimy Member
did to Anarcho-punk in a way, to turn it into something dark but
more in the spirit of a genre film that manages the excess for the sake of
entertainment than a real depressing and haunting approach like in black
metal or that kind of thing (even if the four Berliners would probably say
that making a parody of Black metallish bands was part of the
original idea). I mean when you got songs called Gimme Chocolate,
Booze Ghoul and Trillion of Dead Cops from a band called
Skeleton Glove
you can't deny a very appreciable sense of humour...
The comparison with the "G bands" mentioned in the intro are more
relevant than ever and I can probably also add
Candy Apple
whose some tracks of their latest LP fall into the same kind of atmosphere
and also the dark side of
Nasti
and many more more or less affiliated with what I call the
freak punk
scene.
To make a long story short, this album is a success, of course the tracks
are very anchored in a
very powerful and straight forward
genre with a strong identity but with a final result which is nevertheless
quite diverse and well made and is not without a very appreciable sense of
humour and taste for parody. As in many places where the punk and
affiliated scene revolves around a fairly small group of endlessly
motivated individuals, these same individuals like to develop various
highly musically connoted projects in order to indulge their overflowing
love for the various chapels of punk rock, and Skeleton Glove is a
good example of a successful "genre band".
Pigeon is a trio hailing from Berlin which started around 2013 as
an "indie" band before before moving in other directions much closer to my interests.
Pigeon is a fairly central band in the current Berlin scene in the
sense that it brings together deeply involved individuals, in terms of
other bands of course (I have already mentioned a few on this page) but
also labels and collectives (Billo Tonträger,
Adagio830,
Flennen,
Mangel Records
etc...) that have produced some of the most interesting current German bands in my opinion. Of course, we're never far from the ADK scene revolving around
dieAllee Der Kosmonauten
(an area in Berlin with an interesting "social history") and the producer / sound engineer
T-Rex who I also mentioned in my post about
Benzin.
Ok I think it's safe to say that Pigeon is kind of centred around
the duo Denes / Oskar who both play in the amazing
Liiek
but also in
Go Lamborghini Go
(which released an enjoyable tape a few months ago).
Denes plays/played in
Benzin
and
Deltoids
(two fantastic bands in my opinion) as well as in
Molde,
Dee Bee Rich
(solo project?) and probably a lot of other side projects (yes it really
looks like Denes is that kind of local super-active guy). It's interesting
to note that he provides lead vocals from behind his drums,
something which has always seemed to me extremely difficult to do and is
not very usual. Oskar is involved in
Mangel Records
which released a few records you should definitely check out.
Anyway these
two guys started the band with Martin on bass and the help of
Roman on guitar for some recordings (according to Discogs)
before Martin's "recent" departure and the arrival of
Phuong, an old friend of the family who also played in
Benzin,
Gilb,
Deltoids
and
Go Lamborghini Go.
I will start the reviews with Pigeon's first LP and will skip
their two previous releases, the
Crooked Teeth
"demo" and
the split with Girlie
12" which did not convince me at all (too mellow in an indie kinda
way, not my cup of lager).
Well, let's start with a confession, this album is really one of
the few that made the biggest impression on me in the last few years, I
had already included a Pigeon track in
my very first compilation, at the very beginning of this blog, and I was waiting for the
opportunity of a new release to finally give free rein to my opinion on
this record.
Emerging from a well of voices trapped in a ghostly radio broadcast,
jumping from an intro evoking the unintelligible call for help of a
drifting crew in the endless night of space, Pigeon immediately
imposes an atmosphere both heavy and noisy but also subtle and melodic.
The guitar strings have this almost industrial metallic snap that evokes
noise-rock and coldness above a heavy bass rhythmic that a more or less
distant vocal subtly dresses.
All it takes is a short interlude entitled Step, which confirms
the aircraft metaphor, for Pigeon to veer right into the galaxy of
slightly sad post-hardcore (Nizza), which of course immediately
brings Fugazi to mind. You know the kind of song I'm talking about,
the one which has such a subtle way to develop so many layers of emotions
that your minds feels like paragliding away from reality for several
minutes before coming back to "life" with a spit out loud
"Holy shit!".
And Tiny confirms the band mastery for developing
bewitching tracks that magically seduce without having to impose any
catchy chorus or striking moment... and it's exactly what the best
post-hardcore bands made me used to, the ability to produce mind-blowing
albums that are technical, subtle and powerful without ever being over the
top or trying to write a "hit" track.
But it's not lunch time yet, we continue the lonely galactic journey in
the confines of the known universe with the second interlude
Rail before moving on to the last part of the album, the two tracks
Lower and Kinn which, while remaining in a similar lexical
field to the aforementioned tracks, possess a certain deep and icy sadness
expressed in various ways which closes this fantastic album beautifully. Seriously how to not be moved by the bass-line and sad but resigned
vocals of Kinn ?
But where are my manners? I was forgetting to add that this album was
released in May 2018 by a bunch of labels I had never heard of (Dunkelziffer Records,
Antena Krzyky
and
Black Verb Records) and that you have to own this piece of wax (I do)!
Pigeon's first full length is one of the most important
post-hardcore album of the past years, it manages to build a
totally coherent whole that unfolds in my ears in one go, without
pauses or annoying parts, distorting time in a bubble where sound
and space are not those to which the usual rhythm of the
ineluctable ageing of our cells has accustomed us, creating one of
those indescribable and precious moments that one has the
impression of having gained on life, not lost...
A bit later on the same year (October 2018), Pigeon comes
back with a 12" EP (also available as a tape) called
Bug
and released on
Tortellini Records
and
This Charming Man Records. 2018 was probably their most productive year and the three Berliners
decided to release everything they recorded during these two recording
sessions on the aforementioned self-titled full length and this EP.
Well even if I'm always a bit disappointed by a 12" with 6 tracks only, I
won't say no to Pigeon so why not!
No intro or interludes here, the band takes us straight to the deepest
part of their musical repertoire.
Concern opens the album with a rather cold mid-tempo track with
distant and melancholic vocals and a general atmosphere that slowly starts
to drift from post-hardcore to post-punk. Indeed Pigeon sounds more
metallic and "industrial" as ever and I can definitely picture the band
playing at ease in an abandoned steel factory which would naturally become
part of the performance.
And it's not the instrumental Bug which will take us back to a
brighter side of town. Its dark and obsessive rhythms even recalls the
"darkest hours" of the Factory! It's hard to explain but the
Pigeon of Bug is still the Pigeon of the LP but it's
also a different one... there are only a few months apart from the two
releases and yet it looks like Bug was designed to look good along
the other Berlin post-punk releases (and the cover artwork got the same
kind of graphic chart that many Mangel / Flennen records)
while the self-titled LP was more built as a "post-hardcore concept
album".
Well ok there is Hoisin, the last track, whose faster tempo erases
a bit the dark side of the other tracks, but overall we're still quite far
from the noise-rock / post-hardcore atmosphere of the first album (the way
the bass sounds a lot less "heavy" got a lot to do with that I would say).
Far maybe but not totally unrelated either, as the sound and the mix keep both
records in a certain common mood that can be matched with different
genres.
Bug is a record which explores another side of the band
that the LP had not addressed. I can clearly hear that these guys start thinking
about post-punk and that the birth of Liiek is not far now (in any
case the "conception phase" had already begun).
Even if it sounds quite different I would make a comparison with
Girls In Synthesis
and
Lower
that have both also developed, in their own ways, some kind of
successful mix between modern post-punk, noisy industrial atmosphere
and post-hardcore, even if the result is far from being similar to
what Pigeon delivers.
Almost three years after Bug, Pigeon is back with their
second LP (recorded and mixed by T-Rex), titledDeny All Knowledge Of Complicity
and released on
Adagio830
(a Berlin based label which also released Liiek's LP and has a lot of cool records in its catalogue).
Three years is a long time when you're busy with numerous other musical projects
and it's hard to keep a band identity when you're also writing songs for
other bands cruising in other genres. And this time Pigeon has left
the post-hardcore shores without a look back, flying (that's what pigeons
do after all) straight to the post-punk continent above an ocean of modern
melancholic punk... and don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining! ok I was
a bit surprised at first and it took me some times to adapt but in the
end...
But let's take a step back first if you don't mind:
A well rounded bass with melodic and bewitching lines, some sharp
(but not too sharp) guitar riffs and some slightly cavernous,
melancholic and melodic vocals... all this with a killer production
and an impressive musical construction, Pigeon has wonderfully
adopted the winning formula of post-punk with punk accents that a few bands have brilliantly mastered these last years.
I can't refrain a few holy names to pop in my mind...
Public Eye
of course but also
Stuck
and
Marbled Eye's first EP... those bands that have totally digested the discographys of
Wire,Gang of Four and of all the best UK post-punk
bands but grew up during the heyday of the 2000s
melocholic Portland scene I've mentioned on this page more
than once...
I've had this album on repeat for a few days now and I'm amazed to
discover each time a new facet of a track, a new and great bass line or another sad and breathtaking chorus. The best records are like the best
whiskeys, it takes some time, some focus and maybe a bit of experience
to really appreciate the various levels of "taste" your ears can
perceive...
Because yes, Deny All Knowledge Of Complicity is a full course
menu... it's salty, sweet and tasty in so many ways (and I won't dwell too
long on the culinary metaphor out of respect for you dear
readers)...
There is so much to say about this record... it starts with a bang with
Bad Visions whose killer bass-lines and vocals mixing the best of
70s punk and modern post-punk will immediately hook you up, it goes on
with Mute, which kindly reminds everyone that two thirds of the
band also play in Liiek (and that no one minds at all in fact), and
no time for a tea break as the obsessive rhythms of
Can't Cope With It break in your brains, as
Simple, Involved, Failed takes from the dark side and recalls some
Frustration
or
Crisis
tracks for one of the best song of the LP, as the "industrial" atmosphere
of the "metallic" Relentless locks you in a cellar that is far too small for the number of guys in black, dripping with sweat and with dilated pupils, waving like silly puppets all around your drunk self... and I
could go on and on through the ten tracks of the record but that would be
extremely tedious and boring (and I hate reviews with endless lists of songs you
haven't heard yet)...
Anyway you got the idea: it's literally an all killers no fillers
record!
Ok I 'll just stop here and let you take your time to enjoy this
beauty...
