Riteoff is a band from England that I must admit I have never heard of prior to this record, so I listened and reviewed it for this webzine. Read on!
The record contains five songs that are sailing more in the grungy and noise waters than pure punkrock. That means grungy vocal melodies, noisy parts in the songs, rolling drums and bass and a lot of greasy riffs. Don´t let the cover fool you, this is not some angry political hardcore punk shouting about smash the state and similar, this is emotional heartfelt music done from the heart. I am not a fan of such music, so I am not able to judge whether it is good or bad actually, but I can say that this is high quality song making done from the fans and for the fans! My personal favorite on this record is “Inflicted”.
Besides having great melodic punk bands that somehow became trademark for that Croatian city, Osijek was also having a strong noise scene in the 90-ies with bands like Why Stakla and Cog coming to mind. The last ten years it kinda watered down and there are rare, if any new bands coming from that city which is kinda sad.
But, there is not all lost for their scene, at least there is one new(er) band and this is their new record. HARVO JAY released their debut album, after one ep and one live ep and there are 9 songs of as they say meth rock with a lot of noise influences. This music is usually not my cup of tea, and as a kid lets say 15-20 years ago, I would only laugh with contempt at such bands but nowadays I listened to this album and it is okay to hear. There are couple of songs that were not so good because they all sounded kinda mellow and boring but the majority of the songs have enough noise energy to keep them good and interesting to listen to. I love that the lyrics are all in Croatian language, not many bands does that nowadays. This is definitely not music for listening on everyday basis, but it is alright if I spin this record from time to time. The album is free to download and support the guys and hear the record, drop them also some nice words and dime.
Missiles of October come from Brussels, Belgium and are playing dirty version of punk mixed with noise rock and stoner influences. They were formed in 2012.and until now made quite a name for themselves playing a lot of gigs and sharing the stages with a number of well known acts. This album contains 10 song of relentless, angry punk played with conviction. With titles like “No Brain, No Headache” you get your daily dose of greasy and angry almost Black Flag-ish punk ending in sludgy swampy guitar parts and thunderous drums. This record should be played very loud! I always loved European sludge bands because they sound different somehow than their American counterparts. On this record there are many song structures with noise parts like in “Satisfaction in Nothing” which is the perfect blend of noise and punkish dirty riffs. As I understand the lyrics are pretty gloomy and hopeless but with also with certain amount of irony and humour. My personal favourite of this record is “Better Days”, an uptempo song which I played a couple of times in a row. This is a fine record and there is a cassete, vinyl, cd and digital version so grab your copy and support the guys by showing some internet love for their page, maybe book them a gig or two or something.
KRAYKULLA-WEBZINE 