Osijek is a Croatian city with great history concerning underground bands with many excellent punk hardcore, noise and metal coming from there, for example let us just mention Debeli Precjednik, Gužva u 16-ercu, Why Stakla, COG, Grupa tvog života and more…
Today is a different story, some of the old underground fighters still make a good fight there and play in bands but the newer bands are not present there. SMRT RAZUMA(english The Death of Reason) is the new band comprised of old school dudes and this is their first demo. The record contains 4 songs of angry and rawer hardcore punk with many thrash influences. The music is fast and aggressive and the vocals are angry shouting. The lyrics of the songs are in Croatian language so if you don´t understand Croatian you won`t understand shit. But I can tell you that they are in the right place being politically engaged and covering themes from poverty, depression, sexism, nationalism and general greyness of the area where the guys come from. This is great and energetic stuff to take a break a bit from the melodic side of things. For me the best song on the record is “Nikad više sretna” having a wicked guitar line that I love.
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.
KRAYKULLA-WEBZINE 