Serving up some tight and tense cold Oi! from the Spanish city of Bilbao, BLESSURE channels old school street punk with an anarcho vibe on these four florid tracks. Painting their driving backbeats with a post-punky feel, the band’s guitars take on an ethereal quality that works particularly well with the soft and direct tone of the vocals. Even though it’s dressed up in modern fashion, you don’t need to understand Spanish to recognize this as classic punk protest music.
Here’s another one to add to the growing number of emerging Oi! bands: BLESSURE from the Basque Country. BLESSURE is refreshingly female-fronted, and plays a post-punk brand of Oi! with wiry guitars, rumbling fuzzed-out bass, and leftist lyrical content (at least that’s what you’d gather from the “A-C-A-B!” chanting chorus on opener “Ils Sont Partout”). BLESSURE keeps it sparse and simple, even cold at times and bordering on deathrock; check the icy synth on “Ça Suffit.” Overall a solid effort, although I can’t help but feel like if they leaned into the deathrock/goth sensibilities more, they could stand out a bit more from the crowd. That said, I’ll be looking forward to hearing what BLESSURE puts out next.
More Basque Country brilliance on BLESSURE’s debut release here, with the Bilbao quartet channelling a classic French Oi! sound on this bilingual 7”. There’s touches of CAMERA SILENS and R.A.S. and even more contemporary skinhead chanteurs like RIXE, too. A real good time.
