Tag: The Gluts

New Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Gluts Return with Bruising “Fight”

Milan-based punks The Gluts will be releasing their highly-anticipated fifth album Bang! through Fuzz Club on May 31, 2024. The album reportedly sees the band balancing between punchy, breakneck punk and noisy experimentalism while accurately capturing a distilled sense of the fierce energy and power of their notoriously wild live shows, which they’ve taken internationally across the global festival circuit through stops at The New Colossus Festival, The Great Escape, Eurosonic and others, and through shows across the European Union, South Africa and the States.

Last month, I wrote about Bang!‘s first single “Cade Giù.” Clocking in at a little over two minutes, “Cade Giù” is a searing and punchy blast of psych punk power chord-fueled feedback, thunderous drumming and howled vocals — in Italian. While sonically channeling JOVM mainstays A Place to Bury Strangers, as well as Dion Lunadon, My Bloody Valentine and others, “Cade Giù” is the first song that the band has ever written, sung and recorded in their native Italian. The song, as the band explains speaks about the blurry reminiscences of a typical after-show party while on tour, and focuses on a particularly wild night with their friend and booking agent. You can picture the friends heading from bar to bar to bar, the copious beers, shots, gin and tonics, acting like drunken louts through town — and the vertigo-like disorientation of being fucked up out of your mind. But goddamn it, you’re having the time of your life!

Bang!‘s second and latest single “Fight” is a bruising ripper with elements of psych rock, stoner rock, punk and post-punk anchored around fuzzy and distorted power chords, wailing feedback, a propulsive rhythm section and howled vocals. While continuing the overall aesthetic pulse of its immediate predecessor, “Fight” is arguably among their most sociopolitically charged tracks of their growing catalog.

The accompanying video borrows liberally from late 80s and 90s fighting video games, including Mortal Kombat and others, interspersed with fuzzy psychedelic colored negatives of the band playing a rousing live set.

“’Fight’ is the second single from our new album Bang! and blends the main genres that we take inspiration from, spanning from post-punk and noise to neo-psych and stoner. The song tries to convey all those feelings of daily life struggle. Sometimes we wish it was all like a videogame – especially the 80s and 90s ones that are used in the video – but it is the harsh truth.”

Music Festivals by William Ruben Helms

Co-founded by three New York music industry vets and longtime friends, Lorimer Beacon‘s founder and head Mike Bell, Kanine Records‘ founder and label head Lio Kanine and Kepler Events‘ and Dedstrange Records co-founder Steven Matrick, The New Colossus Festival over the course of the past couple of years have featured a few hundred handpicked, emerging indie bands and artists from across Canada, the UK, the European Union, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong and the States.

By design the festival normally takes place about a week or so before SXSW; the festival’s co-founders have long viewed New Colossus as a pre-SXSW stopover that will give its lineups an opportunity to organically gain exposure, while filling a critical void in the city’s festival circuit.

Obviously, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, New Colossus wasn’t able to happen as scheduled but last year, New Colossus and 18th Ward Brewing hosted a live, outdoor concert series featuring local and regional acts at the brewery’s Bushwick location.

Thankfully, COVID and its known variants have been on the wane for a while now, and we can have the live music experience fairly safely. So, New Colossus is back y’all! Over 100 bands playing in six venues across the Lower East Side — Piano’s, Mercury Lounge, Berlin Under A East Berlin, Arlene’s Grocery and The Bowery Electric — over the course of four, breakneck days this week.

I’m looking forward to an insane four days of live music from a handful of JOVM mainstays and for some new discoveries. You can check out the lengthy New Colossus Spotify playlist, which features curated tracks by the artists performing this year. But personally, I’m looking forward to the following acts:

Badges are still available. And it’s truly a real bang for your buck. More information can be found here: https://www.newcolossusfestival.com

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Milan-based punk rock outfit The Gluts — Claudia Cesana (bass/vocals), Bruno Bassi (drums) and Nicolò Campana (vocals, synths) and Marco Campana (guitar) — derive their name from an age-old term often used to denote unsold, surplus goods. For the Milanese quartet, they’ve taken it to symbolically express a surplus of energy, much like the energy that has long driven their own work.

Interestingly, since the band’s formation, the Milanese punks have established and honed an explosive and psychedelic-leaning take on noise and thrash punk with the release of their first three albums, 2014’s Warsaw, 2017’s Estasi and 2019’s Dengue Fever Hypnotic Trip.

The band’s Bob de Wit-produced fourth album Ungrateful Heart is slated for an October 8, 2021 release through Fuzz Club. Reportedly, the album sees the Italian quartet making a decided sonic departure from their previously released work. Ungrateful Heart‘s material is deeply indebted to 70s punk, 80s hardcore and post punk — in particular, Fugazi, Gang of Four, Sex Pistols, Public Image, Ltd. and the Campana brothers’ obsession with Italian and American hardcore punk.  

Recorded over a tireless week in which the band and their producer essentially lived and worked side-by-side in the studio around the clock, the Ungrateful Heart sessions were fueled by a forceful intensity and uncompromising fierceness. “Bob’s contribution to this album was essential. He pushed us beyond our limits. It was difficult, we can’t hide it, but it really was worth it,” the members of The Gluts say in press notes. 

In the lead up to the album’s release, I’ve managed to write about two album singles:

  • “Love Me Do Again,” a slick and uncanny synthesis of Never Mind the Bollocks-era Sex Pistols and Mission of Burma rooted in unadulterated hedonism. Written by the band’s Bruno Bassi while in pandemic-related lockdown, the song was “inspired by the different versions of the myth of Dionysus (the Greek god of wine, pleasure, madness and frenzied ecstasy) and an unexpected excitement caused by imagining how great it would be to be all together again,” the band explains. 
  • “Mashilla” is a furious and muscular aural assault featuring scorching and angular riffage, thunderous drumming and vocal cord ripping howling. And while indebted to 70s punk and 80s hardcore, the song is centered around an alternating grunge rock-like song structure featuring hypnotic verses and ferocious mosh-pit starting choruses. 

Ungrateful Heart’s third and latest single  “FYBBD” is a furious, old school hardcore punk ripper reminiscent of Dead Kennedy‘s “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” centered around enormous power chords, and an urgently snarled mosh pit friendly mantra. Play loud, jump into a mosh pit and tell some fascists to fuck off. The song features a guest spot from Radio Days’ guitarist Dario Persi.

The Milanese punks describe the song as “a burst of anger towards any form of alt-right thought and praxis, featuring a concealed quote to a very famous Italian Antifa hip hop song.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Milan’s The Gluts Return with a Furious, New Ripper

Milan-based punk rock outfit The Gluts — Claudia Cesana (bass/vocals), Bruno Bassi (drums) and Nicolò Campana (vocals, synths) and Marco Campana (guitar) — derive their name from an age-old term often used to denote unsold, surplus goods. For the Milanese quartert, they’ve taken it to symbolically express a surplus of energy, much like the energy that has long driven their own work. Interestingly, since the band’s formation, the Milanese punks have established and honed an explosive and psychedelic-leaning take on noise and thrash punk with the release of their first three albums, 2014’s Warsaw, 2017’s Estasi and 2019’s Dengue Fever Hypnotic Trip. 

de Wit-produced fourth album Ungrateful Heart is slated for an October 8, 2021 release through Fuzz Club. Reportedly, the album sees the Italian quartet making a decided sonic departure from their previously released work. Ungrateful Heart’s material is deeply indebted to 70s punk, 80s hardcore and post punk — in particular, Fugazi, Gang of Four, Sex Pistols, Public Image, Ltd. and the Campana brothers’ obsession with Italian and American hardcore punk.

Recorded over a tireless week in which the band and their producer essentially lived and worked side-by-side in the studio around the clock, the Ungrateful Heart sessions were fueled by a forceful intensity and uncompromising fierceness. “Bob’s contribution to this album was essential. He pushed us beyond our limits. It was difficult, we can’t hide it, but it really was worth it,” the members of The Gluts say in press notes. 

Earlier this year, I wrote about album track “Love Me Do Again,” a slick and uncanny synthesis of Never Mind the Bollocks-era Sex Pistols and Mission of Burma rooted in unadulterated hedonism. Written by the band’s Bruno Bassi while in pandemic-related lockdown, the song was “inspired by the different versions of the myth of Dionysus (the Greek god of wine, pleasure, madness and frenzied ecstasy) and an unexpected excitement caused by imagining how great it would be to be all together again,” the band explains.

Heart’s latest single, “Mashilla” is a furious and muscular aural assault featuring scorching and angular riffage, thunderous drumming and vocal cord ripping howling. And while indebted to 70s punk and 80s hardcore, the song is centered around an alternating grunge rock-like song structure featuring hypnotic verses and ferocious mosh-pit starting choruses.

Continuing their ongoing collaboration with Brace Beltempo, the recently released video is a stylish and frenetically shot visual featuring the members of the band performing the song in an abandoned office space, along with some hallucinogenic sequences during the song’s hypnotic passages.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Gluts Take Us on a Hedonistic Glimpse of Ancient Rome

Rising Milan-based act The Gluts — Claudia Cesana (bass/vocals), Bruno Bassi (drums) and Nicolò Campana (vocals, synths) and Marco Campana (guitar) — derive their name from a term used to denote unsold goods and symbolically expresses a surplus of energy like the one that drives their work. Since their formation, the rising Italian quartet have established and honed an explosive psychedelic-take on noise through the release of their first three albums, 2014’s Warsaw, 2017’s Estasi and 2019’s Dengue Fever Hypnotic Trip.

The Gluts’ Bob de Wit-produced fourth album Ungrateful Heart is slated for an October 8, 2021 released through Fuzz Club and the album reportedly finds the Italian psych rockers making a decided sonic departure from with the material being rooted in a sound indebted to 70s punk, 80s hardcore and post punk — in particular, Fugazi, Gang of Four, Sex Pistols, Public Image, Ltd. and the Campana brothers’ obsessive with Italian and American hardcore punk. Recorded over a tireless week in which the band and their producer essentially lived and worked side-by-side in the studio around the clock, the Ungrateful Heart sessions were fueled by a forceful intensity and uncompromising fierceness. “Bob’s contribution to this album was essential. He pushed us beyond our limits. It was difficult, we can’t hide it, but it really was worth it,” the members of The Gluts say in press notes.

Ungrateful Heart’s latest single “Love Me Do Again” offers listeners a real taste of what to expect from the album: slashing and angular attack paired with scorching feedback, atmospheric synths, four-on-the-floor that builds up to a frenzied intensity paired with a snarled, old school punk rock vocal delivery and an enormous hook. The new single is a slick and uncanny mesh of Never Mind the Bollocks-era Sex Pistols and Mission of Burma — rooted in unadulterated hedonism. Written by the band’s Bruno Bassi while in lockdown, “Love Me Do Again” was “inspired by the different versions of the myth of Dionysus (the Greek god of wine, pleasure, madness and frenzied ecstasy) and an unexpected excitement caused by imagining how great it would be to be all together again. At the end of the song our fascination for The Sex Pistols can be felt, since Nico screams like Johnny Rotten.”

Directed by Brace Beltempo, the recently released and gorgeously cinematic visual for “Love Me Do Again” is set in ancient Roman times — but while nodding at Caligula and the anachronistic-style of Sofia Coppola, with characters wearing roller skates. Bassi explains ” “In the video Nico plays the role of Dionysus and Claudia a maenad. Dionysus is the God associated with irrationality and the excess(es) of life and that’s what is behind our own name . . . ”

The Milan-based act will be touring to support the new album with stops across mainland Europe throughout October.