Rehash Aktion Reaktion! 12″
The Berlin-based Mangel label has cornered the market when it comes to the sort of tense, calculated throwback post-punk that’s been popping off in Germany and Belgium over the last several years, so they’re a logical landing place for the debut offering from Antwerp’s REHASH. Sternly shouted vocals are split more or less evenly between English and German, and the band’s rhythms are agitated but clockwork-precise, cut through with guitar that writhes and scratches like GANG OF FOUR stripped of their overt funk leanings. Plot a line from Pink Flag-era WIRE’s spartan, propulsive grooves to early ’80s Zickzack brutalism to the post-millennial downer punk of DIÄT to (very) recent Mangel-backed acts like LIIEK and PLEXI STAD, and you’ll land right at REHASH. The standout “Kunsthochschule” strikes with a serrated, EX-like urgency, and even though I don‘t understand a word of German, I’d like to believe that the intersecting vocals have a similarly pointed political bent—the title translates to “Art School,” and speaking as someone who works at one, there’s plenty to critique there. Some of the other four tracks could stand to have a little fat trimmed (see: the jarring tempo downshift in the middle of the four-minute-pushing “King of Weimar”), but when they’re lean, it’s mean.