Campingsex 1914! LP reissue

Reissue of the 1985 full-length from this German no wave crew—Thurston Moore is apparently a big fan, even claiming that SONIC YOUTH was inspired by CAMPINGSEX, but the admiration was almost certainly mutual; 1914! came out two years after Confusion is Sex (which might as well be the lost-in-translation origin of CAMPINGSEX’s bizarre band name), and it’s a similarly harrowing trip through a shaking hell. Industrial terror-clang rhythms nicked from EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN and filthy BIRTHDAY PARTY-descended bass grind beneath stern, ranting vocals that frequently lapse into distressed primal screams, channeling the bombed-out urban decay and no-future nihilism of Cold War-era Berlin into a series of eight howling, pitch-black post-punk dirges. But much like with mid-’80s SONIC YOUTH, there’s some gnarled moments of melody to be found lurking within CAMPINGSEX’s fucked-up feedback sprawls—the male/female trade-off backing shouts intersecting with Max Müller’s raw, unraveling vocals in “Schließ Die Tür,” or the almost sing-song break toward the end of “Liebe” where the guitar squall briefly drops out, or the Peter Hook-styled bass run that launches the droning bile-spew of “Guten Morgen.” Brutal and brutalist.

• Reviewer Erika Elizabeth
• Label Static Age
• Issue MRR #475 • December 2022