Tag: German bands

Review: Jealous – Lover / What’s Your Damage?

What’s bold? Releasing your debut as not just an EP, but as a double EP. Berlin’s Jealous did exactly that with their Lover / What’s Your Damage? release for Oliver Ackermann‘s Dedstrange label. It’s a wild mix of shoegaze, synthwave, post-punk, art rock, and other things you can’t quite define.

Uri Rennert‘s heartbeat drums on “K-Hole II,” the opening track of the Lover EP, set up a dark tone for the entire record. Paz Bonfil‘s guitar is perfectly suitable for a spaghetti western villain’s theme music. Adi Kum‘s vocals spin around you like playful ghosts. Her bass on “Blackeye” is thick enough that it might give you one. “Debbie Downer” has, as you can imagine, a dark vibe, and the fast and furious “Fast Cars” isn’t a cover of the Buzzcocks rocker, but rather a fierce rocker of their own with Bonfil’s guitar sounding like he’s strangling it at some points. It builds to a wild pace, with Rennert almost dismantling his kit as he plays.

Kum’s somewhat grumpy bass starts off “Gravity,” the first song on the What’s Your Damage? EP. It builds to a heavy-hitting, pulsing track that grabs your attention and doesn’t let go for about four minutes. “Cowboy ‘Kelly’ Katastroph” is a straight-up post-punk bliss, as is “Sharp Bones / Broken Claws” – with Bonfil’s guitar riffs as sharp as its title. “Slaughterhouse 3000” ups the fuzz a bit and the playfully bratty vocals even more. The EP ends with “Thunder,” which highlights the dual vocals from Bonfil and Kum.

It’s good stuff, and many thanks for Dedstrange for bringing it to us.

Keep your mind open.

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Plattenblau release first single, “Hollywood,” ahead of new album due this autumn.

“Hollywood” is the first single from Berlin art punks Plattenbau‘s upcoming album Shape / Shifting. Sounding like Joy Division on a dark VHS soundtrack, derailing into an explosive chorus soaked in overdrive, ‘Hollywood’“ is a song about greed and infatuation depicting man’s primal impulses to take, to extract, to possess – rather than to give and to share, but ultimately evinces the belief that this cycle can be broken.

Combining icy digital synthesizers and mechanical percussion with wiry, brutal post-punk and an explosive, fiery chorus hook, “Hollywood” is a corporate ghost story dancing on the grave of ideology with howling laughter and reckless abandon. The song artfully straddles the noise-pop boundary with layers of squelchy electronics, bouncing rhythms, and lyrics about the excess and brutality of our changing world. Yet it remains fun—a disco ball reflecting the burning light of post-capitalist Armageddon across your Wi-Fi network. 

“Welcome to the Plattenbau club, come in for some sweaty wall-banging group therapy under strobe lights. The video represents the safe space of the club, the concert – where we can all connect on an intuitive level, interact with mutual respect and transform our shadows in darkness, through movement, into light.”

Pre-order Shape / Shifting here: https://dedstrange.bandcamp.com/

Plattenbau formed in 2011 in the dark basement of the former Stasi HQ in East Berlin. Originally strictly a recording project, they jammed over slow grinding death rock for hours and listened back to the tapes into cold dark nights, talking alternate realities, corporate ghost stories, and the death of ideology.

In the years since they have joined the likes of Idles, Preoccupations, Flasher, The Garden, La Luz, and Naomi Punk on stage. Their first US tour in Spring 2016 included dates at Silent Barn (NY), Empty Bottle (Chi), and a run of shows at SXSW. They subsequently toured Europe extensively, and returned to the US for two tours in 2018.

Over the years, frontman Lewis Lloyd’s songs have evolved from wiry and jagged post-punk to taut, ironclad synth fortresses, mechanical and repetitive, brutal and hypnotic. Early themes of fleeting youth and wasted nights have given way to lyrics embodying the excesses and brutalities of our world. Yet somehow these songs remain fun, straddling the ever-fruitful territory between noise and pop.

“Hollywood” is the first single from Plattenbau’s sophomore album which will be released later this fall. More details to come soon. 

LISTEN TO “HOLLYWOOD” HERE.

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[Thanks to Steven at Dedstrange.]

Maggot Heart unleash “Mercy Machine” from upcoming sophomore album.

Berlin based hard rock band Maggot Heart shares the title track to their forthcoming sophomore album Mercy Machine today on all DSPs. Yesterday, the track premiered via Brooklyn Vegan HERE. Hear & share “Mercy Machine” via Bandcamp, Spotify and Apple Music. 

Linnéa Olsson‘s Maggot Heart is back with their sophomore album, which will be released on Linnéa’s brand new record label Rapid Eye Records. The Swedish guitarist and songwriter, based in Berlin since 2012, has made her band a much talked about force in the underground with their extensive touring (alongside Earthless and Voivod among others), cross-over hard rock sound, and punk ethos. 
The city as a throbbing organism is one of the fundamental themes of Maggot Heart, explored in several songs on City Girls (2017) and Dusk to Dusk (2018). On Mercy Machine (2020), the machinery of night runs on the steam of many bodies. Locked inside a prison of flesh the spirit will not soar, only in unity with the body can divine alchemy be achieved. Mercy Machine is a rock album about sex, death and the pursuit of freedom. 

This album was put together by Linnéa, long-time drumming partner Uno Bruniusson and bassist Olivia Airey (as well as on-and-off collaborator Gottfrid Åhman) at the end of 2019, and once again recorded in Stockholm, Sweden with award-winning producer Martin “Konie” Ehrencrona (Viagra Boys, In Solitude) in February 2020. It highlights Olsson’s catchy, but strangely jarring songwriting in ten cutting tracks, swerving back and forth on the rock genre-spectrum. These songs contain a highly entertaining blend of urgency, bleakness and undeniable attitude which may or may not appeal to fans of Voivod, The Stooges, and The Jesus Lizard. 
The incredible cover artwork is by Kristian Valbo, known to metal fans as the drummer for Obliteration.


Mercy Machine will be available on LP and download on July 10th, 2020 via Rapid Eye Records. Pre-orders are available HERE. 

On the Web: maggotheart.bandcamp.com / maggotheart.com /
rapideyerecords.com

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[Thanks to Dave at US / Them Group.]

Review: L’appel Du Vide – Demo 2020

I’ve mentioned this before, but one of my favorite things about writing this blog and being a part-time radio DJ is getting correspondence from bands I’ve never heard, especially ones from outside the U.S.

One such band is L’appel Du Vide (The Call of the Void) from Chemnitz, Germany. Their new EP, Demo 2020, is a solid post-punk guitar assault mixed with krautrock precision drumming. The band is also a supergroup of sorts, consisting of members of Black Lagoon, Die Tunnel, Mvrmansk, and Out on a Limb.

The four-song EP is good from start to finish. Opener “Falle” (“Cases”) is post-punk to the core with its jagged guitar lines, sharp drumming, and wicked bass. “Schweineherz” (“Pig heart”) takes on a distinctly gothic tone and is downright relentless as it comes at you non-stop for about two and a half minutes.

“Einer von hier” (“One from here”) has probably my favorite bass line on the EP. It’s like a freight train roaring alongside you. The guitars are like police sirens blasting by as you’re walking along a rainy German city street. The closer, “Verschlungen” (“Devoured”), growls along with more precision drumming, popping bass, and wall-shattering guitars that pound like engine pistons.

A full-length album from this quartet would be one of the loudest, heaviest records of the year if Demo 2020 is any indication. These four tracks pack more power than many LP’s in the same genre. I’m keen to hear more.

Keep your mind open.

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