Reviews

Les Choeurs De l'Ennui

Alarm / Barren? / Douche Froide / Litovsk split 12″

Super gritty four-banger split from some newish, downbeat French punks. ALARM has dueling guitars and a great drum and bass bridge; BARREN? sings a bleak poem entitled “Illusion” (“You can wave goodbye to your hopes and dreams”); DOUCHE FROIDE is bass-forward with angelic vocals; LITOVSK is big, glassy guitar riffs and a jangling bass. I like that all of these songs are in the four-to-five minute range, as it gives you more to chew over. Though not all on these labels, each band’s got a previous record or two worth checking out.

Turquoise Sang, Larmes & Râles LP

Brain-burning, face-melting raw punk madness. From start to finish, TURQUOISE doesn’t let up even for a moment. The semi-clean guitar attack makes the bass and drums feel more pummeling, not unlike Canadian D-beaters BOOTLICKER. The vocals are deep and burly, never relenting or modulating, so they hit like a bomb blast. Following an equally killer debut, Sang, Larmes & Râles is unbridled käng perfection. There is even a hint of motörpunk on some of the tracks, which coupled with the rock’n’roll guitar licks calls to mind another Canadian band, INEPSY. But don’t let all this talk of Canucks confuse you, TURQUOISE are Scandi-core through and through—inspiration from HERÄTYS, INFERNÖH, and TOTALITÄR couldn’t be more clear. In fact, rumor has it that TURQUOISE had originally intended to sing in Swedish, but no one in the band knew the language well enough so they stuck with French, their mother tongue. In any case, this LP is absolutely savage. A+++.