Absolut Country of Sweden

Imagine my surprise when I learned the de facto Swedish national anthem, " Du Gamla, Du Fria," does not actually feature d-beats (though I'm sure as we speak Tomas Lindberg is pulling together a roster of Swedish punk greats to rectify that oversight).
Because in my mind, even beyond the greatness of Scandi-grind, Sweden first and foremost has always stood out to me as a joyous celebration of Discharge's swinging punk legacy just with way more umlauts. It's a story that begins with seminal punk bands like Anti Cimex and continues through .... a whole lot of other bands that also contain ex-members of Anti Cimex and whatever band Tompa hustled into a studio during his free weekend.
Where Discharge were pissed and spitting, the Swedes (while still dealing a decent amount of aggression) also seemed to have realized that a hopping d-beat can actually be fun. They're screaming, sure, but you can just feel the corners of their mouths quirking, fighting to hide back an idiot grin.
Or maybe that's because Swedish punk bands, like a lot of their Scandinavian kin, tend to stick to their native language, so I have no clue what they're saying. As Totalitar said in the liner notes to Ni Mast Bort!, "... I would feel rather stupid if I wrote about these subjects using someone else's language. This has nothing to do with nationalism, to me it's just a simple fact that I react, think and have much more complex knowledge of the language I grew up with." But language has never been a barrier with Swedish punk, the intent comes through in the musical chops and the vocal passion just fine without resorting to Babel Fish.
Since I've been binging on Swedish punk lately, I thought I'd share a few of my favorites. I'm by no means an expert here and compiling this list made me realize my collection is short a few goodies (Krigshot! Svart Sno!), but I haven't made you guys a mixtape in a while and felt the need to share.

Swedish Punk [Mediafire]

Disfear - "Powerload"
Skitsystem - "Det Sociala Arvet"
Avskum - "Masskonsumtions Helvetet"
Victims - "This is the End"
Wolfpack (aka Wolfbrigade) - "Power and Greed"
The Great Deceiver - "Strychnine"
Anti Cimex - "Victims of a Bombraid"
End of All - "Fostrad"
Acursed - "Tunneln I Ljusets Slut Track 13 [Untitled]"
Totalitar - "Mediet Som Vapen"

A D-Beat Dilemma

Dun dat.
Dun dun dat.
Dun dat.
Dun dun dat.

Punk and metal types have been meditating over that percussive koan for the better part of three decades now without exhausting the zen depths of the deceptively simple drum pattern.
I doubt Discharge could have ever foreseen the staying power of their signature sound 30 years ago when they were banging out crusty punk classics in a squalid London squat. Born of a punk frustration with rampant unemployment with no prospect of a better future under the velvet frocked grip of England’s Iron Lady (the Sex Pistols were not exaggerating when they wailed they had “no future”), Discharge, unlike many of their predecessors and contemporaries, distilled that hard scrabble frustration into 90 second screeds driven by one of the most infectious and propulsive punk beats ever devised.

Discharge – “It’s No TV Sketch”

But here comes my dilemma: for all of Discharge’s range and staying power over the past decades, they were not a band that I ever heard mentioned when I ran with bored, disaffected American suburban punks. In fact, it wasn’t until I got heavily into grindcore that the British progenitors ever got name-checked with any kind of regularity or reverence. For a band that’s been so influential – they spawned their own devoted, vibrant and ongoing cult of soundalikes, ferfuckssake – it’s a troubling lacuna in traditional punk circles.

Anti Cimex – “Victims of a Bombraid”

Perhaps that was just a function of the particular punk circles in which I traveled. (Keeping in mind, of course, we're dealing with a sampling size of n=1.) While we never embarrassed ourselves like some of our forerunners by busting out the Union Jack as a fashion statement, we were heavily into British punk: Sex Pistols, the Clash, Rudimentary Peni, Subhumans, Exploited. But no Discharge.

Doom – “Nazi Die”

I have a deep, deep love for the Dead Kennedys, the first punk band to really capture my imagination and address my desire to engage real-world problems in a direct way rather than the generic sloganeering that characterized so much of punk and thrash at the time. Rivaled only by Rudimentary Peni, Jello and crew are probably still my favorite punk band. Generic claims to “stop war” and “fuck the system” just don’t have the same bite as calling out the perpetrators by name. But for all their influence, you don’t see DK's idiosyncrasies endlessly aped the way you do with Discharge.

Warcry – “White Flag”

I don’t know what it is about Discharge that has so captured our collective imaginations. There’s just something compelling about their simplicity and singlemindedness and it becomes blindingly obvious why they have such a hold over grindcore and the other punky, speed-obsessed fringes of the metal world. But those traits should translate to traditional punks as well.

Venomous Concept – “A Case of the Mondays”

Is my experience an isolated event, a strange confluence of influences and circumstances? Are there punk circles where Discharge are regularly given their due (outside of Scandinavia?)? My experience has been metalheads tend to be more open-minded about punk than the other way around, a strange inversion of where things generally stood during the crossover heyday of the late 1980s. Why does Discharge seem to have greater prominence among the metallic hordes than the punk throngs? Anybody got an answer?

Resistant Culture – “Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing”

How Swede it is (The Punk Years): Anti Cimex Part 3

Anti Cimex
Scandinavian Jawbreaker
Regain
Anti Cimex would like to remind you the recent rash of hardcore bands getting sleazy with a little Motorhead is no new phenomenon. Like late ’80s TSOL, these Swede punks were surreptitiously sliding some cock in with their rock on 1993 album Scandinavian Jawbreaker when the rest of us were girding up with flannel for half a decade of mopery.

“Braincell Battle” or “Only in Dreams” could easily be reckoned as Anti Cimex’s “Ace of Spades” as the band drifted even further from their humble d-beat roots to a verdant pasture of grime and debauchery.
No matter how debauched, though, Anti Cimex never wander too far from their punk roots. So classic Discharge is augmented with nihilistic ZZ Top boogie on “New Blood,” “Nailbiter’s” toasted gruyere horror film keyboards, or even by the surprising delicacy of “Pain (U Bring Me)’s” interlaced acoustic and electric guitars. Central to the album and its bipolar moods is the two part title track. “Scandinavian Jawbreaker Part 1” is a soccer hooligan of a punk tune that’s all pounding drums and scathing guitars while its sleazier twin, “Scandinavian Jawbreaker Part 2” is a biker bro hymn with a catchy “No chicks/Big dicks” refrain.
Anti Cimex’s DNA lurks in the genetic code of just about every punk band to call Sweden home and former band members can be found anchoring current stalwarts like Driller Killer and Wolfbrigade but the band’s influence can be felt even wider (as At the Gates' Alf Svensson, who contributed both album art and riffs to the punktastic “…Of Ice” can attest). Though I don’t think Scandinavian Jawbreaker is as strong or as thoroughly realized as predecessor Absolut Country of Sweden, it’s a vital transition for the worldwide punk scene, paving a greasy biker sound that is only currently being emulated by hardcore kids across the globe.

How Swede it is (The Punk Years): Anti Cimex Part 2

Anti Cimex
Absolut Country of Sweden
Regain
Discharge may have declared they were “Born to Die in the Gutter,” but that was less a cri de coeur than yet another set piece to indict a British society still hung up on Victorian notions of class and propriety. After a short hiatus, 1990 saw Anti Cimex step back into the limelight and out from under Discharge’s lengthy shadow on comeback album Absolut Country of Sweden, less a political manifesto than a realization that the apocalypse will come at an individual scale. Absolut Country of Sweden found Anti Cimex abandoning even-then stale diatribes against the faceless state in favor of something far more honest and personal.
It’s hard not to be struck by Freke’s wailing that “I won’t sleep alone tonight” on “1990,” which comes lead weighted with a decade’s despair, isolation and desperation. While punk’s inherent fuck you attitude has made it an ideal vehicle for antisocial angst for three decades now, it far too often fails to connect on such an honest emotional level.
That emotional honesty would never have been so effective had Anti Cimex also not broadened their songwriting. The spiraling urgency of “Wheel of Life” is majestic and the intricate intro to “Under the Sun” is remarkably delicate when offset by the overall hardcore brutality. “Rose” reaches deep into punk’s roots to exhume fro-ed out MC5 psychedelia.
Absolut Country of Sweden is an absolut masterpiece from the forefathers of Swedish punk, the emotional and songwriting peak of a career that is directly responsible for an entire country’s ongoing love affair with up tempo hardcore.

How Swede it is (The Punk Years): Anti Cimex Part 1

First up, you have no idea how excited this makes me. Regain Records, a label I tend to associate more with Euro death and old In Flames records than gutter punk glory, has snapped up three out of print Swedish crust classics by founding punks Anti Cimex and put them back in circulation. I have been peeing my pants with excitement about this since February when everything was originally slated to hit stores only to watch with dismay as the release dates got shoved further back and two previous orders were cancelled. Even when the release date in June came and went a couple of these albums were still trapped in back order limbo (the Wolfpack reissues that I wanted to include with this have been shoved back into August and I’m not holding my breath Regain will meet that date either). But oh, were the Anti Cimex albums ever worth every minute of kid-before-Christmas anxiety.
Swedish punk begins here.

Anti Cimex
Anti Cimex
Regain
This is ground zero for all of Swedish hardcore.
Anti Cimex, named for a pest control company, is the kind of band for which terms like crucial were coined. Short of the Ramones, Black Sabbath and Napalm Death, I’m at a loss to think of a band that has had a more profound impact on a musical scene. For those of us who can’t claim to own an original copy of the seminal Raped Ass EP (my excuse is I was four and living in the frozen hellscape of North Dakota at the time, which may explain my Swedish fetish, come to think of it), Regain has smartly reissued this collection of early works by the masters, the Rosetta stone of Scandi-crust.
This eponymous collection is Anti Cimex at the peak of their Discharge influence, Ds get beaten and the guitars can barely be contained by the cheap studio job. The early songs are a sonic safari of stampeding wildebeest drums being harried by the kind of rabid wasp guitars Unseen Terror would perfect. And all of that is just a pedestal to display Tomas “Freke” Jonsson’s vodka scarred crocodilian roar.
The songs all touch on the inspirational Brits’ wellworn themes on “Cries of Pain,” “Warmachine” and “Victims of a Bombraid” (or as Freke’s accent puts it, “weektims of a bombraid”). But even when Anti Cimex were beholden to Discharge (and to a lesser extent Amebix’s biker bar ambience), songs like “Smell of Silence,” with its Wayne Kramer freakout guitars, presaged the band’s incredible growth. The guitar trills and cymbal runs of the slow motion collapse of “Painkiller” already showed the kind of songwriting chops the band sprout later.
At time furious, hilarious and unexpectedly deft musically, Anti Cimex and contemporaries like Totalitar built on Discharge’s foundation, assembling the pieces that would become the Swedish punk of Disfear, Acursed, Avskum and a host of others.

G&P review: Victims (How Swede it is Again, Part 7)

Victims
Killer
Deathwish
The slavering V8 wolf’s head on the cover pretty much tells you everything you need to know about Victims’ latest slab of crusty as fuck d-beat punk.
Though it’s been available on wax for about a year, American hardcore staple Deathwish dragged Killer into the digital era. And seriously, what the fuck took so long? Seriously.
Guitarist Jon Lindqvist (who works days in Sayyadina) performs battlefield surgery on his guitar, and bassist Johan Erksson’s bestial roar has never, EVER sounded so pissed. Built on Andy Henriksson’s (also of Sayyadina) steamhammer drum assault, Victims scorch 16 tracks of elite Scand-beat crust that traffics in exceptional songwriting.
The aptly named Killer hits with the subtlety of a rush hour semi pileup. “We’re Fucked” (take away message, the world sucks and we’re fucked) is about as nuanced as you’re gonna get from Lindqvist et al. (In case that innuendo slipped past you unnoticed, follow up “Destroy and Rebuild’s” gang chant chorus “The world is fucked up” may hammer that point home.)
The transition from the gang chorused goodness of “Try?” to the spiked belt melodies and Discharge worship of “Killing” is a natural wonder that should be preserved in amber and unearthed for study and made the subject of dissertations by a more enlightened era that doesn’t equate buying a Green Day shirt from your mall’s Hot Topic with the true essence of punk.

G&P review: Wolfbrigade (How Swede it is Again, Part 6)

Wolfbrigade
Comalive
Deranged
I’m not fickle, but every so often even I get burned out on Swedish punk. But right at the nadir of my doldrums invariably I latch on to an album that reignites my love of crusty d-beat punk played with Scandinavian purpose and passion and it’s like losing my punk cherry all over again. Last year it was Disfear’s Live the Storm I contemplated permanently gluing into my CD player. I may have to sand off the Krazy glue because it looks like 2009 will belong to Wolfbrigade’s Comalive.
Wolfbrigade (ne Wolfpack) turn in an album that’s like snorting a line of adrenaline and fucking a naked electric socket. That’s not to say there’s thing one new about Comalive. From the clichéd air raid siren opening to the bass throbbing crust, everything about the album is comfortably familiar like that worn in pair of combat boots. Scandi-punk’s own inertia is overcome by the band’s collective force of will and they harness a lifetime of hardcore ethics and energy (seriously, some of these guys have roots in the legendary Anti Cimex) to pull their musical Lazarus routine.
“High Tech Degradation” ticks off a familiar litany of how humanity is destroying itself. Musically, “Barren Dreams” churns with stuttered thrash picking and “In Adrenaline” rips through a dervish solo scratched over an insistent punk drive.
Disfear ruled my punk listening in 2009 and unless American hardcore steps up in a major way in the next 8 months, it looks like that title will remain with the Swedes.

G&P review: Aaritila

Aaritila
…Ennen Huomista, Tana Tuomiopaivana
Feral Ward
Pity the poor Finnish site moderator. Anglophones moderate obnoxious commenters through the art of disemvowelling, but that’s quite a task when your native tongue is largely consonant free.
The genius of disemvowelling is it allows a troll’s thoughts to still be parsed, albeit with effort. But say I were to disemvowel the title of Aaritila’s latest Finn-core assault, all you’d be left with is Nnn Hmst Tn Tmpvn by Rtl. Not really much to go by there.
Not that I’d want to disemvowel a d-beat outing this enjoyable. Featuring members of Totalitar and Riistetyt and with nary a band photo where somebody isn’t sporting a Discharge tee, that probably tells you all you need to know about Aaritila.
But in between all the d-beating off, Aaritila channel a swinging core of Stooges style rock and roll.
“Totalitaarinen Valvonta” may be an anthem to an uprising of the proletariat, but its solo could have been lifted from a dance friendly early Social Distortion LP while “Kuolleen Kukanmaa’s” low end will shake the foundations of oppressive capitalist oligarchies and and booties.
Aaritla no double hold sincere beliefs about the role of power structures in every day life, but clearly that doesn’t mean the music has to be dour. Not only will the revolution be televised, but it will have a beat and you’ll be able to dance to it. I give it an 85.

G&P review: End of All (How Swede It Is Part 6)

End of All
The Art of Decadence
Crimes Against Humanity
What better way to cap the end of all this sverige goodness the past two weeks than with End of All.
In a flash of (probably) unintended genius, End of All brilliantly summarized this whole Swedish d-beat shtick with the title of previous album Same Shit But Different.
Now, I loves me some Swedish punk as much as the next guy, but if you randomly grabbed a disc from my Scandinavian shelf of CDs and forced me to name the band at gunpoint, there’s about a 50/50 chance I’d end up with my gray matter decorating the wall. Not to be pejorative, but at its base, every band is just serving up the same shit but different and End of All, who turn out another enjoyable but workmanlike half hour of dun datting are no exception.
Astute heraldry geeks will likely guess these Swedish d-beaters’ lineage once they realize the griffons rampant gracing The Art of Decadence’s cover are the inverse of the wolves rampant Wolfpack employed for Allday Hell.
Featuring former members of the Wolfpack/Wolfbrigade collective, End of All play the same style but just lack that special something that help set them apart. The songs are solidly written and well played, the production is passable (though a tad flatter than Same Shit), which make End of All an enjoyable listen but nothing that deviates from the (wolf)pack of clamoring d-beat hordes.
The Art of Decadence lacks the oomph and searing, vaguely Gothenberg-ish guitar leads (think Live the Storm) that helped propel Same Shit and on the whole sounds more muted and uniform in both production and composition, making it an album that fades from memory moments after it ends. I’m hoping this is just a temporary setback for a band that has easily held its own against scene leaders like Skitsystem and Disfear in the past.

G&P review: Avskum (How Swede It Is Part 5)

Avskum
Uppror Underifran
Prank
Given the state of my retirement account these days, I think Swedish punkers Avskum just may be on to something about the evils of that kapitalismens and masskonsumtions stuff. (Yes, I know I just used that 401(k) joke already, so fucking sue me.
In the halcyon days of the Obama era (i.e. before he actually assumes real power and is forced to compromise and make the tough choices that will inevitably abrade some of his sheen), I find it highly doubtful an army of disaffected punks will rise up in revolution and fight it out in the streets a la the Battle in Seattle. In fact, in the age of flash mobs, hactivism, Republicans suddently seeing the light of socialism and the world’s recent, universal hope-gasm, the very idea seems sort of anachronistic and downright quaint. Not that I’m blaming Avskum. The d-beat wielding Swedes plopped this Molotov cocktail of a disc in our laps a couple months before America woke up from its eight year hangover and suddenly remembered all those values we're supposed to embody. Uppror Underifran is high quality d-beat from a collection of veterans sharing a single focus and playing with a comfortable groove.
“Kapitalismens Yttersta” starts throwing bottles and sticks and riot cops right out of the gate, setting a pounding tempo that the rest of the album follows like a sled as songs are shouted out during a street by street running battle with the law. All of the usual suspects take a few well deserved truncheon swings to the noggin: patriarchy, bankers, political weasels and nationalist blowhards. Nothing you haven’t heard already.
The fact that its so backwards looking, rather than being a defect, is actually a mark in Uppror Underifran’s favor. This is the comfort food of d-beat, something that brings joy because of its unabashed simplicity. Avskum tidily package the nostalgia of different age when the battle lines were clearly drawn and everyone could strap on a black bandana and chant slogans outside of a G-7 conference with the belief that the world's evil could be slain called to the carpet if the mass of humanity would simply rise up, conveniently forgetting simple majorities in this country, at least, had voted for Reagan, Nixon and Dubya with a smile on their face. But that's a problem for another day. For now just enjoy your recurring fantasies of toppling the capitalist power structure.

G&P review: Warcry

Warcry
Not So Distant Future
Feral Ward
I’m gonna say something heretical here just so you know where I’m coming from. Tragedy’s last album, Nerve Damage, kinda disappointed me. Don’t get me wrong, the song writing was as stellar as d-beat gets and the musicianship was top tier, but it was the flat production that killed that album for me. Vengeance had that awesome, raw sound that gave the songs that needed oomph, that sense of urgency that lets punk continue to thrive despite generally not advancing the songwriting craft an iota since “Blitzkrieg Bop.”
Seems like Todd Burdette (Tragedy/ex-His Hero is Gone) may have had the same quibble because side project Warcry’s latest makes none of the same mistakes while pretty much treading the same punky waters that birthed his previous bands.
With His Hero Is Gone’s moody melodicism and Tragedy’s propulsion, eight song mini-album Not So Distant Future doesn’t stray far from the d-beat reservation but manages to add a soupcon of rock swing and swagger to the sound just to shake up the mix. “White Flag” even trots out a hair-whipping deedly-dee solo just to shake up the dun dun datting. Follow up “The New Age” puts on a punk rock clinic for rhythm sections, led by the synched galloping bass and drum battery that slingshots the song forward.
While self-described “anarchic noise destruction corps” Warcry don’t bring much new to the turntable (black and white art: check; apocalyptic ramblings about the world going to hell in a Hot Topic bag: you betcha), Burdette et al play and howl with enough conviction and intensity that it gives Not So Distant Future a palpable sheen of integrity and sincerity.
Minor critiques of Nerve Damage aside, Burdette has never put his name to anything less than near-perfection no matter what monicker he gives his crusty, d-beat ramblings and Warcry adds another wonderfully dingy patch to his jacket.

G&P review: Doom (Crust Punk Reissue Week Part 2)

Doom
Rush Hour of the Gods
Violent Change
Five cult fanatics released lethal sarin gas on the legendarily overcrowded Tokyo subway system at the height of rush hour on March 20, 1995, killing five and injuring fifty on the whim of a self-proclaimed prophet who sought to either hasten the apocalypse or overthrow the Japanese government.
Self-described “Sacred Emperor of Japan” Shoko Asahara’s brutal terror attack was part of Japan’s “rush hour of the gods,” a cultural malaise that birthed a host of competing religious cults, some benign quests for enlightenment and others truly malevolent.
A year after the attacks, British crust punkers Doom, back with yet another of their famed lineup overhauls, turned their own jaundiced eye on religions with their own Rush Hour of the Gods.
Expanding on Total Doom’s Discharge worship, Rush Hour of the Gods features longer songs, a second guitar and generally more polished production.
Rush Hour’s trebly guitar tones slices like a rusty hacksaw through the album’s 11 tracks before giving way to the better produced songs from the split with Cress. The simple, repetitive, sing-along chorus of “Death Trap” is an especially fine example of later Doom’s ability to pen a catchy tune.
Doom’s one attempt to break up the dun dun datting, though, was a bit of a misstep. The sampled voices and bleeping, blorping music of the title track, however, serves as a reminder 12 years later that plopping a bleeping, blorping song in the middle of a scathing punk assault is still usually a really, really bad idea.
Despite that faux pas, Violent Change did the crusties a favor by putting Rush Hour of the Gods back in circulation. But while there’s no denying Doom’s place in the crust punk pantheon, some PR flacky (wait, wait, a PR flacky for crust?!?!?!!? Wtf???) got a little over-excited while penning this hilariously hyperbolic ad copy spotted at Interpunk:
“Doom single-handedly created the Crust Punk genre that is currently enjoying a huge resurgence and their influence on the current scene is comparable to Slayer’s influence on the current thrash metal revival.”
Maybe if you ignore Amebix, Crass, Flux of Pink Indians, Disrupt and a host of others. Doom’s ripping assault already assures their place in punk Valhalla, so there’s no need for ridiculous exaggeration.

G&P review: Venomous Concept

Venomous Concept
Poisoned Apple
Century Media
According to Poisoned Apple’s seventh track, principle songwriter Shane Embury has “A Case of the Mondays.” Other than affirming his love for the collected works of Mike Judge, the Poison Idea inflected tune (Venomous Concept --> Poison Idea – Get it?) gets to the poisoned apple at the center of the band’s second long player, which never manages to move beyond workaday grumbling into out and out rage.
Embury has rotated to guitar while Danny Lilker has slotted into the bass position after Melvins mastermind Buzz Osbourne bid adieu (and wouldn’t ya know it, after Osbourne buzzed off, the band unleash their most Melvinsy cover art: an Apocalypse Now horroscape of aspoloded, bleeding bunnies that will have your kids checking their Easter baskets for IEDs). Danny Herrera (who unleashes some of his better blasts in recent memory) and Kevin Sharp round out the all star ensemble.
The membership musical chairs has meant a slight change in songwriting. Poisoned Apple sounds like post-Earache Napalm Death (especially the Century albums) gone hardcore. Sharp’s roar is as rasping and forceful as ever, boding well for the rumors Brutal Truth may return to the studio (with Lethargy/Kalibas/Sulaco’s Erik Burke standing in for the MIA Brent “Gurn” McCarty). Sharp and Embury give all the usual suspects a thorough lyrical beatdown: war sucks, conformity blows, jobs – who wants those? Yada Yada Yada. But VC are not meant to be boundary pushers but rather a loving tribute to the crusty hardcore that went before. So keeping in mind these trailblazers' best Lewis-and-Clarking years are behind them, there’s actually an enjoyable if derivative half an hour music to be had here.

G&P review: Acursed

Acursed
Tunneln I Ljusets Slut
Prank
For a while I was worried Thomas Lindberg would have to singlehandedly do all the heavy lifting in the Swedish hardcore scene. Not that I doubt Tompa’s ability following a solid new outing with The Great Deceiver and an absolutely rampaging new Disfear disc, but it’s good to see the man get some help. Even that guy’s gotta take a break some time.
So enter the spelling challenged Swedish enclave Acursed and their most recent offering for Prank, Tunneln I Ljusets Slut, a tasty slab of pink in the center d-beat from the land where Discharge still reign as gods nearly 30 years after they dun datted the first dun dun dat.
According to Inter Tran, the title is actually The Light at the End of the Tunnel and, sadly, has nothing to do with sluts. We were hoping maybe some of these oh so serious punk types had finally lightened up a little a decided to maybe crack a smile every so often. But that’s the only cue you’re going to get on this album’s content because this beautifully designed monochromatic digipack fails to include lyrics or even song titles.
You may notice the album’s design bears a striking resemblance to the most recent offspring of statewide d-beat collective, Tragedy, and that bad is a perfect reference point for the moody melodies that waft like smoke rings around this half an hour of crusty metal. Before you cry rip off, this is actually the stateside reissue of this band’s 2004 album.
Acursed break up their d-beat rampage with frequent spoken word pieces. But without a close friend fluent in Swedish to translate, the monologues begin to sound didactic despite the lilting Scandinavian accent.
You can just bet these guys are laying a serious bummer on you about war, death, misery and the way corporations and government conspire to strip you of your liberties while you consume yourself into oblivion. Skip the campus rabble rousing and enjoy the 20 or so minutes of hardcore heaven that light up the end of this dark d-beat tunnel. And hopefully Prank, which also brought Totalitar, Avskum and Svart Sno across the pond, won’t make us wait another four years for a follow up.