Late Show are hailing from Seattle and this is their new EP containing four songs. The music of Late Show can be described as a kind of mixture between noisy and raw garage punk rock with more melodic punk. ‘Cold Beer, White Pills’ is your typical raw garage punk song with some grungy influences in couple of song parts, especially in guitar riffing. ‘Pizza, Beaches & Weed’ is what I said above, keeping raw garage punk touch but also having more melodic vocal lines and sing along chorus so stupid that you catch yourself singing along to it. ‘Watchin’ You’ has more dirty rock ‘n roll overtones and I would love so much if that guitar was a bit more distorted and having more explosive and buzzing sound than that. This record earns more to seventies punk rock than more contemporary punk that is being played. ‘College Education’ is the weirdest song on the record and at times reminded me of Fugazi and similar bands, but maybe it is only me. This EP was somehow not my cup of tea, so to say, with me being fan of more melodic and faster stuff.
Time for a band from our own scene to grace the pages of this webzine, namely ŠIZA from Koprivnica, Croatia. I recently witnessed show of this band at 3FF festival in our hometown and it blew me away as one of the absolute highlights of this festival. This band are only two guys, Bruno and Marko. Bruno plays bass and sings, Marko is drummer. Music when played live sounds so powerful like there is whole five members band on stage. These guys played and still play in many bands and projects of our scene, but let us concentrate on this one. Music of Šiza is a mixture of energetic punk, garage punk, noise and post punk and although this sounds a bit pretentious, it is not, believe me. There are uptempo straight forward punk songs, and more slower rolling apocalyptic songs, but songwriting is complex and beautiful with atmosphere being very dark for me as a listener, angry too. Lyrics are in Croatian and I am very happy about that, since most bands in our country nowadays use only English. Lyrics are smart, one of the best I have read in a while, personal but also thematically lead to some of the burning problems, like survival, violence, mental health, egoism and more. This band is what our scene needed and this is for sure one of the best releases this year to come out of Croatian underground.
“Get Away” is the first taste of Freedumb’s upcoming album “Social Hangover”, which is being completed these days. Freedumb picks up the musical thread from the 2019 album “Post-Modern Dark Age”. In this round, the production team has been strengthened with Bjarte Lund Rolland (Kvelertak) who has worked with the arrangements and the selection process of the songs for the album.
Freedumb is based in Østfold, Norway and started in the winter of 2003 in Moss by Torstein Magnus Eriksen (Norsk Råkk, Friksjon), Ole Vanem (Knuste Ruter) and Thomas Walland Hansen (The Supervisors). In 2010, “The Freedumb Curse” came out on Tonehjulet Kräftpest, and Freedumb was selected for PYRO on NRK’s rating “Top 10 most promising bands in 2010”. The following year, guitarist Thomas Walland Hansen quits and Kim Trøbråten (Fork) joins. In 2016, the follow-up album “Feeding The Tapeworm” was released on Tonehjulet Kräftpest and Freedumb released their most comprehensive Norwegian tour. At the end of the tour, Ole Vanem throws in the drumsticks and in the winter of 2017, Petter Cindahl (Bits Between / Your Epitaph) became the new drummer in Freedumb. The band will start recording a new album in the summer of 2017 with producer Hans Tømmerholen (Bits Between). In August 2017, Big Day Records will release the single “Let it slide” which will receive rave reviews and sneak onto several official Spotify playlists. In October 2017, the shocking news came that Cindahl had passed away and the band was put on hold. In the spring of 2018, Arne-Magnus Fjelle (Blodstrupmoen) will be announced as the new drummer. The band starts fresh with brand new material that lays the foundation for the upcoming album “Social Hangover” (2022). During the winter of 2019, work will be completed on the recordings from 2017 and the album “Post-Modern Dark Age” will be released in September 2019 on Big Day Records. Freedumb promotes the album with concerts in Norway and Denmark in the autumn of 2019 and the band plays at Trondheim Calling 2020 in February before Covid19 darkens all concert stages in March 2020. In the spring and summer of 2021, Freedumb releases remastered recordings of “2 wrongs make 1 right”, a 7 “split release with Göttemia from 2008 and The Freedumb Curse – Reversed which is the first draft of the debut album which was planned for release in the autumn of 2008.
KRAYKULLA-WEBZINE 