F.E.I.D.L. is a garage-y post-punk band from Vienna. They play repetitive beats topped with fuzzy guitars. The bass and drums stomp out a catchy, yet mechanical locomotive chug. Based solely on their sound the vocals seem frank and earnest. I have no idea what they are saying so they could be really sarcastic and silly which would make me happy. Mixing all of that together F.E.I.D.L. gives off a detached type of cool noise that’s appealing to my ears.
RED GAZE is from Austria. They point out their lyrical abstractness in dialectic utopias, in political privacy and reference CRISIS and INSTITUTE. The rhythm section is charging ahead with the bass holding the whole thing down. These three songs make me think of DIÄT if they had played faster. RED GAZE live is high energy!
I love it when a band takes very particular references, makes them their own, takes their time to digest them, and vomits out something totally personal. A sound that takes you back to different places in the punk timeline, but makes them coexist in a permanent autonomous zone parceled out of our post-everything reality. Austrians RED GAZE are creating their own impregnable fortress in the very crowded field of modern post-punk, and on this 12″ they do it with songs so well-written that it feels like they were always there in the ether, waiting for some guys in tight pants and with gloomy looks to come along and take those ideas and make them their own. You can understand that they started from a more militantly dark post-punk style, to which they have managed to incorporate arrangements, and above all, an impetus and attitude more married to hardcore, but without becoming the typical aggro band on the block. Not at all—on the contrary, here the references take me to CONTROLLERS, METAL URBAIN, and in general, bands from the mythical Bloodstains compilations…I didn’t want to finish this review without mentioning that “Messy Bundle” is a timeless anthem and that you should leave everything you are doing to listen to it the way it should be listened to, loudly.
