Budapesti noise punkers BEROSSZULÁS create the swirling basement hardcore that I am such a sucker for. With all six tracks coming in under eight minutes, Az Ölésröl was definitely recorded in one long take, with what could also be instruments plugged straight into the board. It’s all brutal and slightly unleashed into the void of experimental—echoes of an Eastern European take on MUTATED VOID, perhaps.
If you sometimes feel that the post-punk realm is overcrowded with bands that leave you totally indifferent, don’t miss this amazing 7″ inch from this female Czech trio from Prague. Five songs of playful, intimate and furious post-punk, seven if you get the download. The band can make poppy and dynamic short blasts of surfy fun, like “Tell Me What I Think,” that make you think of BRATMOBILE, and they can get harsh and noisy like in “Gloves” and “Call Me.” “Summer Hit” may be the, erm, hit of the record, with some beautiful guitar riffs, like a riot grrrl ELECTRELANE. “Pleasures” sounds like PYLON fighting KLEENEX/LILIPUT. Sorry if I’ve been name dropping too many bands, BIBIONE has a sound of their own, I just don’t wanna sell them short. This is a record that deserves to be played repeatedly. The two bonus tracks are damn good: “Colours” just kicks you in the face.
A decent if not slightly patchy collection of songs from Czech quartet HEVER. On their Bandcamp, they cite ’80s NYHC and bands like CRO-MAGS and DINOSAUR JR. as influences, which all checks out; the riffs are big and the vocals are near-spoken-word most of the time. HEVER definitely has some chops—they play at breakneck speed, and on songs like “Succubus/Incubus” and the title track “Láska, Peniaze, Strach” (“Love, Money, Fear”), they’re at their thrash-y best. Elsewhere they lose me, like the corny backing vocals on “Popol” or the completely out-of-left-field final track “Do Čina,” an out-of-place post-punk deathrock cover that feels like an odd way to end the album. Honestly, if they trimmed this down by a few songs and stuck the landing, I’d be far more generous. Not a bad record, but not something I’ll be revisiting.
Prague noise rockers with prog (at its punkiest) tendencies and lyrics in Czech. Even allowing for Google Translate not (yet) having the ability to point out all the wordplay, idioms, metaphors, etc., these cats are clearly singing about some pretty unconventional nonsense. The singer has a snarky, dramatic tone that I associate foremost with Jello, and the music feels a bit like something he might have released on Alternative Tentacles in the early ’90s. Get moderately more up to date by throwing some WRANGLER BRUTES and XBXRX in the pot too, and wonder aloud if the sleeve art, disagreeable as it is, could have been the product of someone who, having seen the first MARS VOLTA album cover on its release, tried to recreate it from a fragment of memory twenty years later.
PACINO has real energy under their sometimes understated delivery. The bass and drums propel the songs, though you might miss them at first—behind the riffs, they’re defining and pushing the music forward. The guitars mostly play around the bass, providing complementary notes instead of a louder, more distorted mimic. The rough vocals have a wonderful harmony at their core. The band’s genre feels familiar, but I’m struggling to identify it—’90s alt rock? Lo-fi indie? If you’re interested in the answer, please give it a listen.
Split LP from two Central European bands hailing from Budapest and Vienna. BEROSSZULÁS (“toxic deterioration”) plays rolling pogo-beat punk that always reminded me of KURO mixed with a lot of hooks that are rather familiar from early hardcore nervous-teenager breakdowns—their songs are both buzzing and stomping. They are not falling apart anywhere at all; rather, they create and maintain a great tension that is varied with witty stretched-out solos, screaming string bends, and well-placed changes which result in a playful bounce. It’s music to shake your fist and lose your mind. Sonically, everything is identifiable—the base of the music might be reminiscent of basement raw black metal elements but it is not a cacophonic sonic warfare, you can hear the bass drawing its own territory with unusual ideas, and the few-note guitar riffs are neither drowning in overdrive, although they do not spare distortion. The whole record has a great momentum, it’s pushed all the way through by the anger of the band. BEROSSZULÁS passes through different styles and tastefully collects from each what they like to hear the most, yet it does not turn them into a showcase of unmatching gimmicks. What are they, then? A great hardcore band. On the other hand, PARASITE DREAMS from Vienna are closer to the already mentioned raw black metal that is basically a punk sort of aesthetic. In their songs, the “sounds coming from next door” effect (which blocks the in-your-face power of the tracks) and the noticeably different recording quality compared to the other side of the record both break the cohesion of the split. They put more effort into creating an atmosphere, building it with intros, outros, and extended tracks where the guitar keeps playing while the drums rest. Mostly mid-tempo, sometimes even slower, each song is built from a catchy primitive riff and very minimalist drums. The vocals change between distant screams and monotone speak-singing. It’s interesting when they turn to a rather atmospheric sound that does not recall tree-hugging metal but vicious post-punk. The big dilemma here is how much a different mixing would butcher their core idea. On the other hand, they are determined to have everything as they imagined and that should be respected. In this current age, attention is at stake, so listening to PARASITE DREAMS could be a good challenge to train your focus, because when attention is paid they are pretty entertaining, but they also easily slip into being background noise. Without the usual dilemma of splits, this is a great record—if you like ugly, nasty hardcore, then check it out.
This album is a strange beast. It’s loud, unstoppable and integrates savage moments from out-for-blood, no-mercy hardcore à la the Youth Attack roster; evil noise rock without the high-brow irony; blast-beat chaos from those hand-drawn, creature-covered basement tape death metal bands; feverish psychedelia; and mixes all together as it becomes this weird pulp what’s only purpose is to fuck you up, while it avoids being an embarrassing mess where you only hear the influences and not the unique vision of a band. Dej Bůh Pěstí is self-confident terror that reveals the ugliness of human minds. It’s great with how much ease the band drops their different ideas throughout the songs, whether it be tempo changes, spoken word-ish ramblings, squeezing all life out from the guitars. Crawl out from your pathetic comfort zone and check out VOLE from Prague!
