Aus Der Schöne Schein EP
A new three-song EP from these Berlin-based creatures of the night who have been keeping the shadow-dimmed flames of XMAL DEUTSCHLAND and MALARIA! burning into the third millennium—their stern, goth-adjacent post-punk has all of the coldness and severity of a concrete Eastern Bloc factory floor. Opener “Der Schöne Schein” plunges headlong into an abyss of tom-pounded drums, sinister bass rumble, and a tension only heightened by the sharp clips of air raid siren guitar that soon join in, before slipping into borderline funky death-disco choruses without ever breaking their stone-faced (and likely heavily black-eyelinered) facade. Likewise, the swirls of keys shrouding “Zugvögel” could have just as easily been pulled from a campy ’60s horror flick as early ’80s leather-and-lace deathrock, while its strict rhythms and austere German vocals are nothing but deadly serious, and “LSD” percolates along a pendulum-swinging cyclical bass line and an unwavering, bone-rattling beat for nearly three minutes before the vocals finally cut in like echoes in a claustrophobic crypt. Pitch-black perfection.