Affichage des articles dont le libellé est death rock. Afficher tous les articles
Affichage des articles dont le libellé est death rock. Afficher tous les articles

lundi 13 septembre 2021

Children With Dog Feet

 

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If you've read a few of my past reviews/posts/whatever you may have noticed that Goth/Death Rock/Cold Wave and all these kinds of "dark" musics are not my cup of tea at all. I don't know much about these genres to be honest as I was never interested in listening to bands affiliated to them (which does make sense I guess). 
But let's focus on death rock for a minute, I love death-rock-infused anarcho punk bands like Rudimentary Peni or Slimy Member so a friend advised to give a try to Christian Death's early materials and I did, and no, definitely no, not my kind of brew.
But I'm still interested in death-rock infused punk, and that's why Children With Dog Feet comes now into play here. 
 

 Let's start with the end for a change, I discovered Children With Dog Feet (CWDF) with this track recently released on their bandcamp and titled Killed By Goth. As far as I know the Killed By Death compilations (which have turned into Killed By Whatever-you-want) never reached Goth territories but did nevertheless venture into Death Rock, why not after all.



Killed By Goth immediately hooked me up, it's straight forward, full of low-fi punk energy and the way the vocals sound give a great death rock vibe. And yes the reference to the "KBD genre" makes total sense as this track got some of the characteristics of the early punk tunes you could find in the first compilations (and the "intro" is an obvious reference to that of course). 

But let's rewind a little bit.
CWDF is a new band from New York City featuring four punk veterans who've played in numerous underground bands for the past decade or so. The vocalist Chi, in particular, used to sing in the death rock influenced Anasazi and performs also now in another new act, called Blu Anxxiety, that you should check out if you're into dark "avant-garde" stuff.
Whereas I'm pretty sure Blu Anxxiety is not for me I'm trying to get into Anasazi's discography and there are some songs I like but I'm still not sure what I think about the whole thing though.


But let's come back to CWDF: their first record, the Curb Your Anarchy tape, was released on Toxic State Records (great NYC label which produced
a few bands you should know about) in march of this year and was an immediate success.



As I explained above I discovered the band with the very punk and straight forward Killed By Goth which could only satisfy my old hardcore punk fan's ears but the this tape's four tracks are a bit different: the tempo fluctuates between a kind of dark mid-tempo and a fastest, more punk, one and the overall atmosphere is quite gloomy. But unlike a certain clean-sounding fringe of the black-eyed scenes, CWDF sounds always messy, angry, mean and chaotic... a bit like if the noisiest scandinavian punk bands were copulating throbbingly in the basement of a London goth party if you know what I mean. 
Of course there is the slower Leatherface which develops a very gothic atmosphere before exploding without restraint in a delightful chaos but even these parts, that I might not have appreciated in other circumstances, fit very well in the whole.

In the end Children With Dog Feet delivers a very interesting mix of things I'm not used to and it works surprisingly really well for me. I've already listened to their tracks numerous times and did not grow bored of it.
I'm very curious to see what comes next!



N,J'Oi!



  You can listen to Children With Dog Feet on RAF#25
 
 
 

lundi 11 mai 2020

Donors

picture by Maddy

Donors is a female-fronted band from Nashville, Tennessee, which features members of Shell of A Shell and Thirdface and has probably been around since 2017.
With mainly mid-tempo songs, the band is clearly on the post-punk side... but not only!



 Summer 2018: Donors release a 7-track demo cassette on Glad Fact Records.
And what is really interesting here is that Donors doesn't dive head first in the post-punk clichés, but instead finds a personal mix between a mid-tempo kind of punk and some faster parts. The Move is a good example of the alternation of these two ideas:


 Of course you got some more classic early post-punk songs like the very good Making Time or What Luck, but also the 70s rock vibe of the vocals on Good Eye (with a great background guitar à la Shopping) or the fast and proper 80s punk of Unseen...
In the end Donors is delivering a very high quality tape for a demo, with a lot of diversity and a great sense of the melody.


After a little change of line-up (I think), Donors is back in 2020 with another cassette (Self-Titled 7-track tape) and the atmosphere has changed a bit...
the lot is just colder, darker and maybe a bit less punk than the demo, but it doesn't mean it's not enjoyable...



And Donors manages to keep the diversity of the first tape: definitly punk on tracks like Top or Help Yourself, between cold rock and post-punk on Always Sometimes Never, the band even goes to the whole-band-sings side (a bit like the death punk rock of Murderer) on Coins Collect and Breakfast Anytime (which got a real Indus vibe too)...
It's just darker overall and Fine Print, the final song of the tape, is only confirming it!

So Donors manages to deliver a great diversity of songs, jumping from post-punk to death rock via more classic punk schemes... and not so many bands can do it so well! Good job!


You can listen to Donors on Rien à Faire #10.

N,J'Oi!