Just a short one today about this new band hailing from Helsinki,
Finland, and called Spicer, which released a pretty cool demo a
couple of months ago, in January.
I'm afraid I don't have much information to share about the band and its members, the three Finns were smart enough to stay away from the social media hype and fly under my, usually very efficient, radar. Everybody likes to brag online about the "genius" noise they make in their bedrooms you know (except these guys obviously).
So let's focus on the music rather than the gossips if you don't mind:
With a drum machine, a synth and tags like "dark" and "gloomy" all over their bandcamp page, nobody (and certainly not me) would have guessed at first glance that Spicer will have the distinct honour of being a guest on the amazing Rien à Faire page. No-bo-dy! But hey! I've heard that life is all about unexpected events and so here they are. Let me explain why.
Starting with the very-well-named Tense, the demo opens up with a heavy bass-line (and I'm a sucker for killer basslines you know, who isn't after all?) before letting the cold and mechanical drums hit you in the face with a very simple repetitive beat that "holds" some very deep and catchy vocals that sound like emerging from a dark and narrow Finnish tunnel. Yes there's a lot of reverb on those vocals, and that's cool! So yes let's just say I was immediately hooked! I didn't even mind the synth (which I usually hate), which manages to stay discreet enough not to pollute the straightforward atmosphere of the song (and I love "straightforward").
And that's exactly the winning formula the band keeps develops throughout the next four tracks, whether it's with a simple but heavy guitar riff on Inwards and Days Of Drifting, or with a fast "hardcore" beat on Not Yours To Keep (even if those weird synth sounds at the beginning worried me at first), these guys manage to do their thing while remaining "hardcore" in a way. And that's pretty cool!
Cold Machine concludes beautifully the whole thing with a perfect mix of all the tricks perfectly used on the previous tracks, it's catchy, it's straightforward and simple, the vocals get into your head... it's exactly what I wanted (it just lacks another killer bass line somewhere but eh! c'est la vie as they say in Paris).
So yes I really enjoyed this demo! I's love to draw super smart comparisons to some very obscure new-wave / EBM / synth punk bands but that's definitely not my area of expertise so I won't (well ok the only band I could think of was Special Interest because they fucking rule but that's very different!). Anyway, give this shit a listen and let's see if anything else comes from the north in the coming months... Fingers crossed!
N,J'Oi!
