Slan

Reviews

Slan Ägd LP

Sweden, the country where playing ANTI-CIMEX lulls children to sleep. There is certainly no shortage of hardcore bands up there, and here comes a new contender in the notorious and much contested “fast and furious käng” category. SLAN is from Gothenburg and includes members of the rather good STRUL (in a SKITKIDS way), among other bands that I am not going to pretend I actually know. Their first EP Skiter I Allt released last year was a definite scorcher if you like your Scandicore on the mangel side of things (by which I mean more on the faster, MOB 47 side) if you want to be anal about it, and the boys are back in business with a full-length entitled Ägd. The recipe hasn’t changed much, but the production is a tad rawer and the vocals more upfront. While the EP had a definite ’80s Stockholm feel to my impeccable ears, the LP makes me think of a dirtier version of KRIGSHOT as well because SLAN manages to play that fast, and of Uppsala bands like CUMBRAGE or even of early VICTIMS in the singing style. It is a seriously raging, direct high-energy effort with some class riffing, but I can’t help but find the LP a little long for this style of punk with a playtime of almost twenty-four minutes (and everyone knows we have a twenty-minute attention span these days, if that). At the end of the day, yet another hard-hitting win from Sweden.

Slan Skiter i Allt EP

How nasty of SLAN from Gothenburg to title this ghastly five-song käng  assault Skitr I Allt (“Shit in Everything.”) With a cover that’s painted in the color of stains, depicting some stinking dirtbag in his rotten little apartment, this diabolic EP is filled wall-to-wall with caustic hits, including the charming title track, “Svälj Skiten” (“Swallow the Shit”), and more. This is a ripping, raw, and rabid D-beating that occasionally drops into some head-bobbing punk rocking, and it kills. As it turns out, they were spot on with the name, as this is absolutely the shit.