Now, those regular readers of this irregular feature may recall that the LAST EDITION of PULSE was all for mania and mayhem on a May bank holiday weekend in celebration of impending summer. Hit you with all sorts, so we did; punk, rock, indie, garage, metal and mathcore – emphasis on the mayhem here more than the summer.
So, now that we’re striding into June wearing shorts and shirts more than has been allowed so far, what better way to keep those sunshine vibes going than with a new edition of PULSE in which I serve you up a smorgasbord of bands ready to strip those summer sensations and good vibrations away from you. You. Are. Welcome.
Algiers
Algiers have quite literally just burst their way into my life, and praise be to the universe for it. Hell, maybe I need to give some sort of deity or the devil their due for these three, because they bring a whole host of fire and brimstone with them. These are the end days my friend. The end days.
Hailing from Atlanta, Georgia, which the trio were quick to escape from as soon as able, the spirit of Algiers is indebted to the south, but not just in the overtones of blues and gospel that bleed into their songs – most prominently in Franklin James Fisher’s vocals – but the fire in their guts, set ablaze by the conservatism that surrounded them there.
The music marries blues drenched work songs and soulful gospel to dystopian post-punk and drone based industrial experimentalism, while the lyrics preach against societal injustice and the ills of consumerism, rallying the congregation into a furore. These are the end days my friend. The end days. But, fuck, don’t it sound good?
ho99o9
How are you enjoying the apocalypse? What apocalypse? Oh, you beautiful, stupid angel you, you don’t even know. You don’t even know. Anyhow, when you get up to speed and find yourself needing some tunes to soundtrack your anarchy and ultra-violence heavy death parties, you could do a lot worse than ho99o9.
If you like your hip-hop to sound more like the aftermath of the eventual artificial intelligence takeover and the machine wars. If you like your punk to sound more like the aftermath of the eventual artificial intelligence takeover and the machine wars. You will enjoy the bombastic crossover of rap and hardcore punk that ho99o9 thrash and roll out.
Drawing comparisons equally to Clipping. and Death Grips as they do Bad Brains and Black Flag.
Dolores Haze
Taking their name from everyone’s favourite nymphet, especially Humbert Humbert, might be quite telling of sex during the apocalypse (yes, I’m going to maintain this apocalypse thread for as long as I don’t get bored of it – I might even get carried away with it), but perhaps no more so than the statement of ‘I don’t need love, I’ve got my gun’ over the broken down electronics of ‘I Got My Gun’.
This all female four piece come care of Stockholm and make no bones about making bare bones noise rock littered with hints of an eccentric dance punk undertone, like nu-rave that couldn’t afford the equipment. However, it’s predominantly in the petulant pit of post-punk that Dolores Haze lie, thrashing themselves and their instruments about in equal measure making goth-sex-sounds in the haze. The haze is forever.
Raketkanon
With the fall of civilisation will likely come the fall of civilisation – there’s no being civil post-apocalypse – and with it a return to tribalism, and further still the breakdown of language as each tribe further separates themselves for survival, becoming more and more insular in the process. I mention this because not only do Raketkanon play the music of armageddon, but they speak the language of it.
You see, the Belgian four piece do not accompany their sludgy blend of pscyhedelia, noise rock, and nuclear waste with any of Belgium’s three main spoken languages (so, no, Dutch, French, and German are not the languages of armageddon), or any recognisable language at all in fact. The band have devised a language all of its own for their music, one based on primal, visceral instinct. After the apocalypse, it’s survival of the freakiest.
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