The Warriors released their new full length record with Pure Noise Records and I listened to review it for this zine. What we get on this record are twelve songs of dirty sounding, gritty hardcore with lots of slower, chugging parts, atmospheric, almost apocalyptic sounding. I love the clever use of electronics in The Painful Truth making it sound gloomy and brutal at the same time. The riffs are highly metalized but there are some punkier old school faster parts for example in one of my favorites Iron Mind. The lyrics are deep, almost poetic, but personal, like dealing with your inner self, aggressive and almost wicked, but spiritual at the same time. There are couple of atmospheric sampled instrumentals that serve as an interlude in the whole story, like Death Dancer. The song for which a video was made Death Ritual is also one of my favorites on this record, having great melody underneath the brutality. In all, this is great sounding atmospheric hardcore record.
Fat Chester are coming from Austria, they play punkrock and this is their brand new record. The record contains 11 songs of melodic punkrock and the music of this band is not the fast machine gun skatepunk, but rather thoughtful midtempo punk with lots of heart, interesting strong structures and above all beautiful melodies. The lyrics are in English and they are dealing with personal themes and humor and fun. Yes, you read it fun. There is a song called Punk Bride which caused some uproar in the internet and social network circles proclaiming the band to be sexist and similar shit, which is not correct. Since when did punk become so safe, so sensitive, so caring about other people having fun, making jokes, just look at Fat Mike and all that Vegas shit, like he said something that was not funny, It was. But punk lost its touch from rebellion, uproar, mayhem and became a safe place for too sensitive internet warriors. But, I am digressing, this record is for me a mixture of Menzingers, Nothington and Off With Their Heads. When I was younger I really hated such punkrock being too slow and cheesy, now it suits me fine. For me the highlights of this album are definitely Salvation, Slave and Skate and Punk. Good one.
Hungarian cinema is maybe small compared to some other countries, but they make great movies. 1945(2017.) is one of them. WWII has ended in Europe and Soviets have taken over Hungary making it communist marionette state like all others behind the iron curtain. Our movie is set into picturesque little village, on the outside, everything is fine and the village mayor, also store owner prepares to marry his son to a girl. But, all that is spoiled when two Jews arrive by train with some wooden cases and doubts, guilt and evil come to the surface. This movie is shot in black and white technique which adds to the somehow bleak atmosphere of Hungarian vast flat country and fields with excellent photography. The story evolves around guilt, consciousness, betrayal of best friends, antisemitism which is on the rise in nowadays Hungary which becomes more and more a one man dictatorship under Orban. This is not a political movie, but has some connotations which can we as viewers relate to nowadays current state of politics. The music is fantastic, all that dark ambient droning mixed with traditional Hungarian instruments and the story is well written, ending is poetic and cool, also the cast is great, the actors are really chosen wisely. I recommend this one to all of you who watch something other than current blockbusters.