Schiach is a quite mysterious German band claiming to be from Schkeuditz and which has been around since 2017 or something.
When I discovered the band in 2018 my mind immediately associated it with
a label,
Phantom Records, and with another very German band,
Pisse.
Indeed both bands got a very German touch, the main thing being the
German language of course and the second thing being a strong sense of
offbeat humour...
And that's where the "mystery" comes into play.
All the songs from
the 2018 LP
are written and sung in what looks like Bavarian dialect or Bairisch (it's important
to know that the south of Germany, Bavaria in particular, is famous for
what other Germans consider as a very weird accent and is then source of
countless jokes; we all have in our countries places where people speak
"funny" right?) and from what I have read here and there it's not clear if this record is some Bavarian irony and/or German humour (?).
Claiming to be from a small town close to Leipzig (super far from Munich) it
could actually be both.
As my German is definitely not good enough to understand the whole joke I
will let the German speakers distinguish what is humour and what is not
and let them decide if it's funny or not.
This being said let's go back to the music!
Schiach is playing a great mix of upbeat post-punk and minimalist
punk rock.
A super sharp guitar sound, nice round bass lines in the background, slamming drums, barking vocals with nevertheless a clear and clicking
sound... the lot is delivering super tensed but super catchy songs.
The true (or fake?) Bavarians also know how to take a classy break with
tracks like Gammler which catchy bass melody will make your head shake and your bum
twist.
This album got an 80s vibe all right... in the way the vocals sound
? in the way the whole thing sounds ? do we care ? No because this record
will not bore you for a second from the start to finish. Expressing
various feelings, from suppressed anger to sadness (Olle Gleich Schiach) through all the in-between mix (Leit, Ja Mei),
your brain will not be stuck on one note and is it not what we are all
looking for in a LP in the end? A variety of mixed feelings to slightly
disturb our brain chemical balance ?
In 10 tracks the band wrote one of my favourite record of 2018 and at the
time I included it in my
Best of 2018
playlist.
So you can imagine of excited I was when I heard that a new album was on the way two years later. Released once again on Phantom Records, 2 (great title) comes to the world only as a tape for now.
Well this not at all what I was expecting.
Since the first note of
Des G'Schiagta Recht it's clear
that the atmosphere has changed... a lot more melancholic, a lot more
electronic as well. The band (which seems to be a duo scattered between
Leipzig and Vienna after all) has chosen to keep the shout vocals but to
change almost everything else: "Tchüss!" super guitar riffs, "herzlich willkommen"
weird 80s drum machines, synths and dodgy late night clubs
atmosphere!
Well if you've read a few of my reviews you may have noticed that my
tastes in terms of new wave / Cold wave / EBM and all lame 80s goth /
industrial music are very clear... NO WAY!... for most of it at least.
So yes it's not surprising that I am not seduced at all by this new
album except for
Feiawea
and Disziplin which got a bit of the first LP clicking energy.
These 9 new songs will probably please a lot of people but not me unfortunately. I will never criticize a band for evolving, I really believe that change should not be avoided but embraced on the contrary, but sometimes it just does not do it for me at all (ok a loooot of people love Blitz's Second Empire Justice for example, I don't).
Too bad. There is still the first LP anyway!
