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Album of the week with The nerves: masters of nervousness

2022-10-07T13:32:57.592Z


With their blackest album to date, the indie rock band Dienerve pinches every societal sore spot – and counters the general threat of burnout with brutal guitar noise. And: hangover breakfast with Team Delphin.


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The nerves: Max Rieger, Kevin Kuhn, Julian Knoth (from left)

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check your head

Album of the week:

The nerves – »The nerves«

»Germany must be on fire, I want to see everything burn«.

No, that's not a line that would make it into the "Bild" newspaper or the index these days.

For that you have to parody the Oktoberfest like the Berlin band KIZ, and edit disgusting scenes from the Oktoberfest into a video, which was then immediately blocked by YouTube.

But that doesn't make this line from the Stuttgart and Berlin band Die Nerve any less disturbing.

Max Rieger sings them with a declaiming punk rock gesture in the second song of the album »Dienerve«.

It's called »I die every day in Germany« and, although the music is completely different, it is of course immediately reminiscent of the 40-year-old Slime anthem »Germany must die«, which once had to be examined by the Federal Constitutional Court for protection through artistic freedom.

Slime knew exactly where they stood.

And also Dienerve, whose second record "Fun" was once clairvoyantly described as "one of the most important and best German-language records of this decade", are politically left-leaning when in doubt.

But their sixth album is not a pamphlet, not a declaration of war, but a testament to ambivalence,

a quarrel with the zeitgeist that everyone can agree on, probably including those who chant their frustration with the Republic from the right during Monday walks.

Oh!

Effective punk rock in 2022 probably means playing with exactly this uneasiness, making the audience uneasy in their imagined comfort zone, asking them questions about their own secret radicalism or apathy, the inner sheepdog.

Nerves, as they show with this explosive album, are masters at making you nervous.

In their new songs, Rieger, bassist Julian Knoth and drummer Kevin Kuhn formulate a standstill that, like their music, can explode in all directions at any time.

Something is wrong in capitalism, in the media circus, in the world, but you can't grasp it in a state of general exhaustion: "I can feel it, the wrong time," sings Rieger.

"I'd rather have light than darkness / And I wonder how that's going to work."

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The nerves

The nerves

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In »Keine Move«, an epic, lashing anthem calling goth rock bands like The Cult out of the crypt, that glare in the floodlights of the present becomes even more urgent: »No answer, a thousand questions / I could go anywhere, but I can dont move".

Survive somehow, that's all that matters, »without any emotion«.

"And I somehow thought, in Europe you never die," says with cold irony in "Europe", written long before the war in the Ukraine, first very gently with an acoustic guitar, then kindled into a noise storm: a brutal lintel off the ivory tower of felt certainties.

Because »comfortably numb« is of course not a solution for this band either.

With a vehemence that was also rare on their earlier, rawer albums, they meet the burnout with brute force.

"Equal to the Earth" is a brutally exploding brawl punk thunderstorm that wants to sweep hardcore role models like Shellac on the wall.

"15 seconds" erects walls of sound against sensory overload: "Can't concentrate, our heads are exploding, it's too much," Rieger roars.

Braaam, braaam, braaam, braaam, the band thunders to the end of the song, then only heavy breathing.

There are also mannered pop moments on "Dienerve", which, however, repeatedly reflect the maddening dullness in the lyrics: "An influencer cries himself to sleep" is almost Blumfeld, with strings and sarcasm.

»One day« is pure, nostalgic The Cure Wave, but the optimism claimed in the text that something is appearing in a new light is tipped into dangerous ennui: »Am I just so irritated that everything that fascinates me eventually loses its appeal loses?”

However: "Death doesn't go well on Instagram," is how the band closes their blackest album to date.

The epic, surging power ballad »180 Grad«, a sinister James Bond song, then unmasks the whole martial-suicidal pose as great drama and pop theater by a band that has mastered all media provo tricks, and every societal sore point with relish press knows: "Come on, give me your hand, I'll show you new content that you've never seen like this," Rieger sings in the most beautiful psychopathic style of his solo project All this violence: "Everything in and around us is tense to the breaking point / Baby, put the car against the wall.« Germany this autumn: a bundle of nerves.

(9.2)

Listened briefly:

Team Delphin – »Red wine for breakfast«

If you wake up in the morning and feel like a kiwi, sweet and sour inside, bristly outside, then you can continue with the red wine for breakfast - even if you should actually be out of age.

The debut album by the duo Team Delphin, consisting of rapper Johannes Bogner (Strizi von Frittenbude) and producer Sebastian Birkl alias DOT, offers the funniest soundtrack for the general "Forrest Numb" feeling.

No matter how bad things are, "The main thing is that you're not Alexander Gauland or his swimming trunks," the two mark the political point of view in the first track.

The trap is reeling, the dub in “Kiwi” or “Apnoe” is psychedelic.

But the most beautiful, almost the anthem of autumn that stumbled over a piano loop, is »Simple Questions«.

These are also put straight into the text, for example: "Why do we go to work,

never get rich?”, “Why isn’t everyone the same no matter who you sleep with?” or “Why is it so easy to make a career as an anti-Semite?”.

And because dolphins are known to be very smart, the team also comes up with a compelling, adorably hungover response: "Yeah, it's just one / It's up to the others / It's up to you too / Because we suck / Humans are shit.” Then a Dujardin.

(7.8)

Perera Elsewhere – »Home«

Home is where it's tough, you have to brace yourself for any adversity.

In the second track of her album »Home«, the British all-round artist Sasha Perera, who lives in Berlin, pushes her listeners into a background noise that seems to click and rattle, as if you were being shaken up inside a pinball machine.

She had in mind a boxer who would focus mentally before stepping into the ring, Perera says of "Hold Tite," an anthem to keep his demons at bay.

"You cannot fuck with me" is the empowering refrain of the single.

Perera Elsewhere, who has just been awarded the VIA Critics' Prize as »Best Act« at the Reeperbahn Festival in Hamburg, once again shows on her second album, which shimmers between »Blade Runner« ambient and goth techno, solid beats and elastic electronic pop,

why she is the top secret agent of her genre: Her competence is clear, but her musical identity remains variable and mysterious: she easily entangles nostalgic Pink Floyd spirits in a hypermodern breakbeat fog ("Who I Am") or leaves it in the fascinating Final double »Der Wurm 1 & 2« give free rein to their experimental verve, with Moogs and trumpets.

»Tell me what you want, what you're looking for«, she demands, this time seductive soul muse, in »Delete«.

If you don't know that exactly, you can at least strengthen yourself in the rich sound bath of this music for self-discovery.

She easily entangles nostalgic Pink Floyd spirits in a hyper-modern breakbeat fog ("Who I Am") or lets her experimental verve run free in the fascinating final double "Der Wurm 1 & 2", with Moogs and trumpets.

»Tell me what you want, what you're looking for«, she demands, this time seductive soul muse, in »Delete«.

If you don't know that exactly, you can at least strengthen yourself in the rich sound bath of this music for self-discovery.

She easily entangles nostalgic Pink Floyd spirits in a hyper-modern breakbeat fog ("Who I Am") or lets her experimental verve run free in the fascinating final double "Der Wurm 1 & 2", with Moogs and trumpets.

»Tell me what you want, what you're looking for«, she demands, this time seductive soul muse, in »Delete«.

If you don't know that exactly, you can at least strengthen yourself in the rich sound bath of this music for self-discovery.

(8.2)

Sorry - »Anywhere But Here«

Sometimes you just want to beam yourself back from the complicated present to (superficially) simpler times. Depending on your personal inclination, that works well with a classic indie rock album whose roots of inspiration reach deep into the nineties.

You don't have to fall back on old, still active hands (Pixies, Suede, Eels, Mogwai etc.), but can give this band from the London Windmill Club environment, which was hyped two years ago, a hit with their unexpectedly successful second album give another chance.

Post-debut albums tend to get fuzzy at times because the artists have been touring extensively or had to process instant fame, sometimes excessively.

But, thanks to Corona, this rule is suspended at Sorry, led by singer Asha Lorenz,

songs like "Key To The City", "Willow" or "Baltimore" are all the more concentrated and hook-centric.

Lorenz's laconic lyrics don't necessarily spread a good mood either, some things also threaten to get lost too much in the all too small-scale post-rock Lego, but at the latest when shortly before the end "Screaming In The Rain" unapologetically cheesy pearls into the heart, the nostalgia trip is booked.

exceptionally.

(7.5)

Mother - "I could be you, but you never me"

We stay briefly in the sound of the nineties, although the Berlin band Mutter, active since 1989, could basically be what DieNERS (see above) were in the last decade - or Tocotronic and Blumfeld before that.

With excellent albums like »Text und Musik« or most recently »Der Traum vom Anderssein« there seemed to be a certain new determination, but the singer, songwriter and visual artist would probably threaten a beating for this sentence alone.

Müller loves refusal, and he is suspicious of everything that is pandering, defining or conscious of a mission.

So you had to be very lucky to even find out about the release of the 14th mother album as a critic.

The no less controversial author Tex Rubinowitz once wrote, not without admiration: »No new record from Mother is predictable.

Their impact is gradual, but their effect is direct.« Irritation is also an effect: the new songs seem to deal with contemporary identity-political discourses, but Müller and his band immerse the lyrics in a glistening sound haze of psychedelic fuzz, stoner and Post-rock fall until the words, often insidiously alienated by autotune, elude understanding.

One can only guess what Müller finds on his hike into the deep "Valley of the White Men".

At the same time, the perfidious noise naturally forces you to listen.

Alone the beyond-everyone anthem »You never me« is to be understood clearly and with a self-righteous style as a total demarcation, the fulfilled »dream of being different« in fact, it comes across as defiant.

"How does freedom feel?" is the name of the most amazing piece

a kind of disco twinkle number reminiscent of a big hit by Whirlpool Productions.

That's probably what freedom, artistic autonomy, feels like.

"How gladly would one say that this is no longer one of your business," whispers Müller.

With mother, even escapism feels like a straitjacket.

In case of doubt, another big, strenuous work.

A rating will be denied.

Source: spiegel

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