I saw them this summer, when they opened for this historic Black Flag reunion and their hardcore sound hit me in the face like a brutal beast killing everything on its trail. But since that time, they have signed with Matador and are about to release a new album, ‘Zoo’, produced by John Goodmanson, who also worked with people like Sleater-Kinney or Blonde Redhead.
This first single ‘Hysteria’ has a monster sound, these drums are sure some angry warriors, but the song is more hard rock than hardcore punk, building a wild anticipation and exploding with furious vocals. Althoughit doesn’t remind me much of what they played when I saw them in July, this sound is an impetuous assault with some Midnight-Oil-semi-tribal chants at two third of the song that bring an unexpected appeal. I like it but doesn’t it sound a little like the 80s or 90s?
A handwritten note by frontman Ross Farrar was posted on Matador’s website, in which he explains his intentions for the album:
‘Most of the stuff has to do with people, how we treat eachother, and our ever increasing ability to hurt one another, as well as unconditionally love. It’s always amazed me, the contrast in which we make this work. While writing ‘Zoo’, I tried to write about humans from a more welcoming perspective in that I didn’t want to harp on the fact that we’re killing ourselves and each other all the time, or fall in the habit of writing things that seemed too pessimistic—something punk and hardcore bands have exhausted many times over. We all have a cluster of emotions in us that are always there, and articulating these many sides was my main dilemma. I think the music reflects that. There are songs on the record that sound fast, slow,eerie, abrupt, each one is different, but at the same time similar. I suppose this is our first fully comprehensible sounding record, in that each song binds to each other better than we’ve done in the past. The idea for ‘Zoo’ came to me while watching TV. I felt like I was in a zoo. I was paying to be a voyeur. I do this almost every day. I pay money to use the internet, to watch my favorite movie stars, to see my favorite bands, and sometimes to watch people do the most primal thing we do: have sex. We’ve come so far to entertain ourselves that sometimes I think we forget how close we are to the world, and how close we are to animals. It’s very strange to be a human being. ‘Zoo’ isn’t a concept record, or any attempt at changing people’s minds, or exalting the world’sproblems. It’s just a pursuit in trying to understand what it means to be a human living in a world that sometimes seems too full of everything, because it is. It’s full of us, all extremely complicated people, and we’re doing all we can to live in harmony, …’
It does not even stop there, it’s a long note, as he seems to formally introduce the band and the directions for this new album,… they actually are a mysterious kind, without even a proper Facebook page or a Twitter account. But with this new sound and an indie label, Pitchfork is going to be all overthem.
‘Hysteria’ is a fight song if there is one, and it is available for download right now, but a 7", with a cover of Californiapunks the Urinals' ‘I'm a Bug’ for B-side, will be available on February 7th,whereas the album will be released on March 6th.
http://soundcloud.com/terroreyesdottv/ceremony-hysteria