Record of the Week: ABERGAZ Minimalizam Megalomanije

Published October 24, 2012 By Matt Badenhop
Categories Reviews

Our Record of the Week this time is actually a tape/download available from the band’s website at abergaz.bandcamp.com.

Man, this tape is a huge breath of fresh air, after reviewing so many predictable, stock, privileged bands — many of which are good, but simply lack the honesty, wit, intelligence, and passion that ABERGAZ demonstrates with this tape. On a first blind listen, the music is slickly recorded melodic hardcore punk with dramatically howled vocals and some weird parts. The closest comparison I can make would be Slovakian hardcore punk veterans DAVOVA PSYCHOZA — but I think many people looking for something familiar would struggle relating to this. (Am I being unfair to and judgmental about you, punks?) Anyways, ABERGAZ is from Zagreb, Croatia, and they are very expressive about what it means to be different (i.e., a punk) in a part of the world that has been divided into different countries by war, causing folks to be born with hostile mentalities toward neighboring regions. The four-panel fold-out tape insert translates and explains in English the meanings of all 17 of their songs. I keep trying to choose some of the great topics they sing about to give you an idea, but it’s so hard to pick just a few, and I just can’t type ’em all here, so I really urge you to track this down and fucking get into it and connect with it. Don’t just download it, fucking write them and connect with them and get the whole package the way it was meant to be, and interact with it. Support genuine punks who put three years of effort and all of their energy and money into releasing this. This is the kind of shit that gets me pumped about reviewing new, unknown punk music. Or hell, just pumped to engage in an international punk network where we can share our stories and ideas, support, relate to, and learn from each other. Okay, I think I’ve made myself clear here — put away your INFERNÖH or HOAX record for a minute and spend a little time on ABERGAZ.