Tag: Gang of Four

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Comprised of Jonathan Phillips, Dylan Palmer, Terry Kane and Reid Cummings, the Nashville, TN-based quartet Faux Ferocious can trace their origins to when they all met while attending the University of Tennessee. And since the formation of the band, they’ve released music through Burger Records, Infinity Cat Records and Striped Light Records that’s been described as brain-liquefying fare and strange, hypnotic rock and like John Lee Hooker‘s Endless Boogie while on speed. Interestingly, the band’s soon-to-be released EP, 12″ will be released next week through Drop Medium Records, and as you’ll hear on “Solvency,” the second single off the soon-to-be released EP, the Nashville-based quartet will further cement their reputation for being uncompromisingly weird, as the new single seems to draw from thrash metal, stoner rock and Krautrock as they pair layers of buzzing guitar chords with a chugging, motorik-groove and spoken word-delivered lyrics describing how difficult it is to stay financially solvent, which gives an incredibly trippy song a bitterly ironic bite reminiscent of Gang of Four.

 

 

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Symbolic (and Messy) Visuals for INVSN’s “This Constant War”

Earlier this year, I wrote about the Umea, Sweden-based post-punk quintet INVSN, an act comprised of some of Sweden’s most accomplished musicians — including Dennis Lyxzen (vocals), a founding member and frontman of Refused, and a former member of The (International) Noise Conspiracy, The Lost Patrol Band, AC4, and who has collaborated with The Bloody Beetroots and others; Sara Almgrem (bass, vocals), a member of The Doughnuts, The (International) Noise Conspiracy, The Vicious and Masshysteri; Andres Sternberg (guitar, keyboards), a member of Deportees, The Lost Patrol Band and a member of Lykke Li’s backing band; Andre Sandström (drums, percussion), a member of Ds-13, The Vicious, The Lost Patrol Band, Ux Vileheads and others; and Christina Karlsson (keyboards, vocals), a member of Tiger Forest Cat, Honungsvägen and Frida Serlander‘s backing band. And interestingly enough, the members of the band are five, long-term friends, with Lyxzen in particular being known for a lengthy career incorporating sociopolitical themes into his work; in fact, as Lyxzen has publicly explained, “Music always meant more to me then just entertainment. It has had a profound impact on everything that I am as a person and I see music as art and art as life. We live in a world devoid of meaning where we serve the lowest common denominator at all times. Where politics as an idea has failed us and where art is being reduced to consumerism and clickbait.”

The band’s initial recordings were written and recorded with lyrics in their native Swedish under the name Invasionen, but when the members of the band decided that it was time to take the project and their work internationally, they felt that writing and singing lyrics in English, along with a new name would be necessary — and they settled on INVSN.   Regardless of the name or the language, the post-punk band has always had a political message — and during this particular moment, when humanistic, Enlightenment values and thinking are being challenged by extreme right wing and extreme religious movements across the world, the members of INVSN strongly believe that their music, and the work of other like-minded musicians are part of a necessary and urgent outcry from a counterculture that has yet to give up. And while being righteously angry, their overall approach is rooted in the belief that change is gonna come — and it’s going to come real soon. 

The Swedish band’s latest effort The Beautiful Stories is slated for release on Friday, and the album was recorded and produced by by Adam “Atom” Greenspan, best known for his work with Nick Cave and The Veils at Svenska Grammofonstudion in Gothenburg, Sweden.  Reportedly, the album finds the band experimenting and expanding their aesthetic and songwriting approach with material that possesses elements of post-punk, industrial electronica, indie rock and indie pop, which gives their sociopolitical concerns an accessible, almost radio-friendly vibe. 

Now, as you may recall “I Dreamt Music” was a decidedly post-punk leaning song, sounding as though it drew influence from Joy Division and Gang of Four, thanks to the song’s decided politically charged tone. And as Lyxzen explained in press notes,  “I wanted to write about the longing for resistance to the cultural/political/musical landscape that holds us imprisoned. I wanted to write about the naive, romantic and pretentious notion that music and art should be about ideas that can change and transform and maybe even be the beacon of hope in these dismal times.” And as a result, the song manages to possesses a sense of cynicism and distrust and an equal bit of outrage.”

Interestingly enough, Beautiful Stories’ latest single “This Constant War” finds the band pairing jangling, Country-leaning guitar chords, layers of buzzing electronics and a propulsive rhythm section with boy/girl harmonies and a soaring, swooning hook in a song that sounds a bit like Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby-era U2 but filtered through Primal Scream, New Order and Ministry, while nodding at The Lonely Wild, as the material possesses a cinematic yet yearning quality at its core. 

The recently released video for “This Constant War” features the members of the band passionately singing the song or broodingly staring off into space as the hands of an unseen person smears colored paint onto the faces and bodies of the bandmembers. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Double Dare-Inspired Visuals for Girls in Synthesis’ “Disappear”

Girls in Synthesis is a rather mysterious London, UK-based punk rock trio, who formed last year with a specific intent and purpose — to aurally represent the noise and violence of the modern world. And […]

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

If you had been frequenting this site last month, you may have come across a post on the Brooklyn-based post-punk duo NØMADS. Comprised of Nathan Lithow (vocals, bass), who has been a touring and recording bassist for My Brightest Diamond, Inlets, and Gabriel and the Hounds; and Garth Macaleavey (drums), a former Inlets touring percussionist and head sound engineer at National Sawdust, the duo have quickly received attention for a sound that draws from Nirvana, Fugazi and Girls Against Boys while also nodding at Zack de la Rocha’s post-Rage Against the Machine project, One Day As A Lion , as well as Japandroids.

Now, as you may recall that the duo received some attention with the release of their 2014 full-length debut, Free My Animal, an effort that reportedly drew from Death From Above 1979 and Queens of the Stone Age. And after a year hiatus from touring and recording, the Brooklyn-based post-punk duo spent the better part of last year, writing and recording the material that would comprise their their newest, conceptual album PHØBIAC, an album in which each song focuses on a different phobia — approached in an abstract, almost clinical fashion, capturing the innermost thoughts and anxieties of someone in the grips of their own fears, while possessing a cautionary message: that whenever we succumb to our irrational fears, chaos and self-destruction will be the end result. And with our current (and continuing) sociopolitical climate, the Brooklyn-based duo’s newest material is desperately fitting and necessary, especially in light of the fact that an enormous swath of the American population have let their fear and hatred of “the other” to the point of endangering everyone within their path.

Adding to the conceptual nature of the album, each song off the album will be released every month over the course of 2017 with the full album being slated for a 2018 release.  And as you may remember, the album’s previous single “Achluphobia” focuses on a fear of darkness, and throughout you can feel the narrator’s palpable and overwhelmingly primal dread and fear as darkness begins to envelope everything around him  — and it’s further emphasized by angular and forceful bass chords, thundering and propulsive drumming and Lithgow’s growled vocals; but just under the surface of the song is a bigger message that fear can easily turn something that’s natural and normal into something fearful, horrible and dangerous.

“Acrophobia,” PHØBIAC‘s latest single is based around the fear of heights and it’s a forceful and explosive, instrumental composition that features Los Angeles, CA-based producer and multi-instrumentalist Max Braverman on drums. Featuring a frequently shifting meter paired with a propulsive bass line, the song intends to to evoke the vertiginous sensation of peering over a ledge with the recognition that solid ground and ghastly, mortal peril is just below you, all while sonically nodding at Entertainment and Solid Gold-era Gang of Four — in particular “Not Great Men,” “He’d Send in the Army;” but with an tense, anxious dread at its core.

 

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Girls in Synthesis is a rather mysterious London, UK-based punk rock trio, who formed last year with a specific intent and purpose — to aurally represent the noise and violence of the modern world. And within a relatively short period of time, the trio developed a reputation for playing riotous live sets with Cherry Glazerr and Fat White Family side project, Revenue, that include lengthy and intense periods of noise and feedback, band members jumping off the stage and into the audience, garbled Dictaphone-era audio featuring dialogue from the British government’s Protect and Survive nuclear war video, Orson Welles’ speech from The Trial and audio from the Heaven’s Gate’s suicide video.

Building upon their growing profile across London, the British trio released their debut double A side single “The Mound”/”Disappear” today — and from their latest single, “Disappears,” the band captures the frenetic energy of their live sets while pairing almost metronomic-like drumming with sizzling and slashing guitar chords and a propulsive and forceful bass line with punchy, shouted lyrics. Sonically speaking, the song sounds as though it draws from Entertainment and Solid Gold-era Gang of Four and Elastica‘s self- titled debut album, complete with prerequisite cynical sneering and a primal fury.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Comprised of Sally Spitz (vocals), Ali Day (guitar, bass), Max Albeck (drums), and Daniel Trautfield (bass, sax), the Los Angeles, CA-based feminist art-punk quartet French Vanilla can trace the band’s origins to the members being partially driven by a desire to forcefully challenge Southern California’s established music scene, dominated by a few influential, male tastemakers and to do cool shit while hanging with friends, the band played their first shows within their hometown’s queer punk underground. Interestingly, the quartet quickly developed a local and regional reputation for socially conscious lyrics paired with a post-punk and No Wave-leaning sound — and as a result, the band has opened for the likes of Girlpool, Screaming Females, Tacocat, Genesis P-Orridge and Cherry Glazerr and others.

Adding to the growing buzz surrounding the Los Angeles-based band, their self-titled full-length effort is slated for a March 24, 2017 release through Danger Collective Records — and as you’ll hear on the album’s latest single “Anti-Aging Global Warming,” the quartet pairs the propulsive and angular bass lines and slashing guitar lines with incredibly neurotic lyrics that express the narrator’s anxious and neurotic worries about the impending end of the world as we know it, and how easy things can suddenly turn to shit before you know it; but sonically speaking the song strikes me as being reminiscent of Talking Heads: 77 and Fear of Music-era Talking Heads, Entertainment and Solid Gold-era Gang of Four and A-Frames.

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Comprised of Travis Coster (vocals, guitar), Neil Gregerson (guitar), and Nic Luempert (drums), the Olympia, WA-based punk rock/grunge rock trio Naomi Pink, whose sound clearly draws quite a bit from the region’s grunge rock past — i.e. Wipers, Dead Moon and Nirvana — while channeling energy from a number of the region’s contemporary acts including Milk Music, Broken Water, Vexx and Gag. “Television Man,” the album title track off their 2015 release Television Man manages to sound as though it draws a bit from grunge rock, thanks to ragged and blistering guitar work but it also sounds as though it could have easily drawn from the likes of Pink Flag-era Wire, Entertainment-era Gang of Four as the song possesses a tense, angular feel.

And although they’re currently working on Television Man’s follow up, the Pacific Northwest-based band announced a busy February tour with PC Worship that starts off at Portland, OR‘s The Liquor Store and ends at The Park Church Co-op in Brooklyn. Check out tour dates below.

Tour Dates
02/03 – Portland, OR  – The Liquor Store
02/09 – Washington, D.C. – Comet Ping Pong
02/10 – Norfolk, VA – Charlie’s American Cafe
02/11 – Raleigh, NC – Pinhook
02/12 – Secret Georgia
02/13 – Gainesville, FL – The Atlantic
02/14 – Atlanta, GA – The Earl
02/15 – Nashville, TN – The Cobra
02/16 – Chicago, IL – The Empty Bottle
02/17 – Detroit, MI – UFO Factory
02/18 – Columbus, OH – Ace of Cups
02/19 – Harrisonburg, VA – Golden Pony
02/20 – Philadephia, PA – Baird Mansion Atrium
02/21 – Brooklyn, NY – The Park Church Co-Op

 

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Comprised of Knol Tate (vocals, guitar), known as a member of Askeleton and Killsadie; Travis Collins (bass, vocals), known as a member of Spirit of 76 and We Are The Willows; Josh McKay (drum, percussion), known as a member of Farewell Continental, Small Towns Burn A Little Slower; and Jordan Morantez (guitar), known as a member of Blue Green and The King and The Thief, the Minneapolis, MN-based punk rock/post-punk quartet Deleter initially formed in 2012 as a side project for all of its members to deal with pent up musical and personal frustrations in which they would create not by over-thinking or over-producing their material and focusing on the immediacy of their first thoughts, as well as concerning themselves with playing by their instincts. After a series of self-released singles, which further developed their sound and approach throughout 2013 and the subsequent release of several EPs, the Minneapolis-based post-punk quartet released their full-length debut Oblique Seasons late in 2015.

The band’s soon to be released effort Meaningless Chants is slated for a January 21 release by Land Ski Records and the soon-to-be-released effort reportedly will be a gentle refinement of their sound — while retaining the thoughtfulness and conciseness of their previous releases, Meaningless Chants’ material may arguably be some of their manic, most outright political effort they’ve released to date. And considering the very urgency of the political moment, it seems fitting that artists are beginning to comment on our new absurd normal. Interestingly, the tense and anxious single “Start to Watch” sounds as though it owes a debt to both R.E.M., Gang of Four and Mission of Burma; but with a paranoid sense of something being terribly and irrevocably wrong, and an infectiously anthemic hook.

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Comprised of Mino Peric, Tierney Miekus, Siahn Davis and Murray Coggan, the Melbourne, Australia-based no-wave/post-punk quartet No Sister have started to receive a bit of international attention for a tense, abrasive and frenetic sound as you’ll hear on “Overpass,” a single consisting of angular, clashing and jangling layers of guitars, an undulating and forceful bass line, stuttering four-on-the-floor-like drumming, shouted, non-sequitur-based lyrics that capture the frantic, disconnected and vacillating thoughts of the anxiously neurotic. Sonically, the Australian quartet aim to put the listener on edge, to evoke a growing and enveloping sense of dread and uncertainty of our current age — all while nodding at the righteous fury of early Gang of Four.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Surreal Animated and Hyper Aggressive Visuals for Cowtown’s “Tweak”

Clocking in at 92 seconds, Paranormal Romance’s second and latest single “Tweak” sounds as though it were indebted to the Ramones and 90s alt rock, as the the trio pairs propulsive and thundering drumming with blistering power chords and an anthemic and infectious “oh oh oh” at the hook that you can imagine a crowded and sweaty bunch of kids yelling lustily while moshing — and with a youthful abandon.

The recently released animated video by Molly Kaplan pokes fun at cartoons, the relentless barrage of commercials we’re inundated with on a regular basis — but with neon bright colors and a surreal sense of humor.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

At the end of last month, I wrote about the Leeds, UK-based indie rock/post-punk trio Cowtown. Comprised of David Michale Shields (drums), Hilary Knott (bass, keys and vocals) and Johnathan Nash (guitar,vocals), the British trio have over the course of three full-length albums have developed a reputation for  angular, super caffeinated post-punk that draws from Gang of Four, DEVO, Talking Heads, much like “Motivational Speaker,” the first single off the band’s forthcoming album Paranormal Romance slated for an August 19, 2016 release through Athens, GA-based HHBTM Records in the US and Sheffield, UK-based label Audacious Art Experiment.

Clocking in at 92 seconds, Paranormal Romance‘s second and latest single “Tweak” sounds as though it were indebted to the Ramones and 90s alt rock, as the the trio pairs propulsive and thundering drumming with blistering power chords and an anthemic and infectious “oh oh oh” at the hook that you can imagine a crowded and sweaty bunch of kids yelling lustily while moshing — and with a youthful abandon.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

With the release of “To Be Young” and “Radio Silence,” which received extensive radio airplay on BBC Radio X, Spanish radio station Radio 3 and Stateside on KCRW and KEXP, the Portsmouth, UK-based quintet Kassassin Street — comprised of Rowan Bastable (guitar, vocals), Tom Wells (bass, vocals), Andy Hurst (keys, samples), Ryan Hill (guitar, vocals) and Nathan Hill (drums) — quickly exploded onto the international scene last year. And as a result, the Portsmouth-based quintet had a busy summer playing the UK major festival circuit with appearances at Secret Garden Party, Bestival, Blissfields, Y Not, Great Escape, Beat-Herder and Isle of Wight, as well as a hometown slot at Victorious Festival — and they continued on that success with a successful UK tour, which included several sold out shows.

Building on a rather successful 2016, the members of Kassassin Street recently released their latest single “Hand In My Pocket,” a post-punk track which pairs an anthemic hook with a sinuous bass line, shimmering  and cascading synths, angular guitar chords and an uncanny sense of harmony in a shimmying, dance floor ready track that sounds indebted to Entertainment! and Solid Gold-era Gang of Four (in particular, I think of “Not Great Men” “He’d Send In The Army” and “Why Theory“), Kasabian‘s self-titled effort, Evil Heat-era Primal Scream (in particular “Detroit” and “Autobahn 66“) and New Order — but much like Gang of Four, the song possesses an underlying scathing sociopolitical message as the song focuses on social injustice and inequality in fiscal austerity-era UK.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

With the release of “Apertures” through 1-2-3-4 Go! Records, a self-titled EP through Cut The Cord That . . . Records and the “Escapement” 7 inch, along with what’s been described as a “head-turning” live show, San Francisco, CA-based post-punk quartet Synthetic ID — comprised of Nic Lang, Jake Dudley, and siblings Will and Paul Lucich — have developed a rapidly growing local and national profile, which caught the attention of Jim Dwyer, frontman of Thee Oh Sees and label head of Castle Face Records, who invited the band to play at Castle Face Records’ SF Holiday benefit show a few years ago. And as the story goes, the members of the band managed to keep in touch with Dwyer after his relocation to Los Angeles.

The San Francisco, CA post-punk quartet’s full-length debut Impulses  is slated for an April 22 release through Castle Face. Produced by Phil Manley, best known for his work with Trans Am and Life Coach, the album was recorded during one day at EL Studio and as you’ll hear from the album’s first single “Ciphers,” the material possesses the tense, urgency of the desperate and obsessively neurotic. Sonically, the band pairs slashing and angular guitar chords, propulsive four-on-the-floor-like drumming and a and throbbing bass line with the song’s minimalist shouted lyrics. In some way, sonically speaking the song sounds as though it draws from The Stooges, Gang of Four, Wire and  A Frames and others — in particular, I think of Gang of Four’s “Not Great Men,” and “At Home He’s A Tourist,” Wire’s “Three Girl Rhumba” and “Dot Dash,” The Stooges’ “1969” and “I Wanna Be Your Dog”  A Frames “nobot” and others. And much like those songs sonically and lyrically speaking, “Ciphers”captures and evokes a deeply post-modern sensation — that feeling that you’re somehow absolutely incapable of changing a ridiculous and dangerous repetitive cycle of emotions, thoughts and actions that you can only dimly comprehend; worse yet that you inexplicably feel drawn to compulsive thinking and actions and repetitive thoughts — to the point of obsession. It gives the song an unbridled, unresolved and desperate frustration that’s palpable and lingering.

 

 

 

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Neon Bright and Surreal Visuals for Deep Sea Diver’s “See These Eyes”

Perhaps best known as an accomplished side person, who has spent several years as a touring member of The Shins, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Spoon and Beck‘s backing band, the Seattle, WA-based multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Jessica […]

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Tense and Ominous Sounds and Visuals of Witching Waves’ “The Threat”

If you had been frequenting JOVM over the past month or so you may recall that I wrote about  London-based indie rock trio Witching Waves. Comprised of Emma Wigwam, Mark Jasper and Ed Shellard, the trio emerged from […]