Cover for "First Two Seven Inches" by Minor Threat
I love record stores.
There’s something unparalleled about walking into a brick-and-mortar shop and seeing rows upon rows of crates and shelves, the walls papered with posters and zine covers and collages. It’s the best kind of liminal space.
The EP was a primary contributor to the soundtrack of my late teens. At the time, I lived in a beach town still recovering from the previous year’s hurricane.
A primier vacation spot for many middle-class families, the town fell to ruin in the off season. Homelessness, drug addiction and violent crime underscored the area’s stark wealth disparity.
The “clean” coastline was peppered with million-dollar beach homes and luxury condos. Ten miles inland, average citizens struggled to make ends meet amid a stifling job market.
Many turned to drugs and alcohol as a means of making life bearable. Among these individuals were friends, coworkers and bosses.
It was during this time that I became first acquainted with Minor Threat. The band’s jilting, ragged strains mirrored my own consternation with the building chaos in my inner circle.
Theatre’s Kiss, a self-described “depressive post-punk” artist who I discovered entirely by accident, has fundamentally changed my life with their newest album.
“Leidensmelodien“, released Dec. 30, 2022, was the best belated Christmas gift a goth could ask for. This transcendental musical experience is like walking through an arctic, sobering dream.
Theatre’s Kiss
I discovered Theatre’s Kiss in the fall of 2022 while attempting to compose a setlist for my then-radio show, “The Superego” (currently on summer hiatus).
At the time, the extent of the artist’s discography was a single album — Self Titled — and six short tracks.
Those half-dozen songs fully ensnared me.
I was one of about sixty-eight monthly listeners on Spotify. And like those like-minded peers, I absolutely adored the tracks “Vulnerable” and “König.”
There was something about the style of the songs that really got to me.
As a (guilty) fan of the The Smiths for their heart-twinging melancholia, the plaintive voice of the (unnamed) vocalist struck a similar chord.
And with the gothic undertow of spectral synths and a depressive guitar added to the mix, I had found my new favorite band.
Album cover for Leidensmelodien by Theatre’s Kiss
“Leidensmelodien”
As the creator of Theatre’s Kiss explains in a vague tagline at the end of their Spotify profile:
“It’s all about the atmosphere, nothing else matters.”
And “Leidensmelodien” is purely atmospheric.
The album’s opening track, “Downfall,” is entirely instrumental.
A sullen guitar-synth combo engages in a morose conversation, the spaces between sounds growing smaller and smaller as the song progresses and the two “voices” seem to overlap.
By the end, we’re left with a single sensation before the instruments fade out and a distinctly medieval arrangement ushers us into the next track, “Schizo.”
This five-minute song is insanely complex.
The vocals are brooding and occasionally layered to create a hazy, ominous effect.
Throughout the song, a crisp scream reminiscent of Doom Metal echoes the words of the vocalist — an elusive individual known only as “Fassse Lua” — much like screeching wind.
The contrast between these two voices, one pleasantly soft and the other jagged and rough, creates a vivid and uncanny harmony.
Though it stands as the second track of the album, “Schizo” certainly sets the tone for the rest of the piece as existing somewhere between nightmares and dreams.
The experimental combination of different ghostly and foreboding sounds means that every track on this album is a new and unique experience.
It’s almost operatic.
Album cover for Self Titled by Theatre’s Kiss
The Bigger Picture
“Leidensmelodien” is an album about grief.
Or rather, “melodies of suffering.”
And as the mind behind Theatre’s Kiss teases, this album (as well as Self Titled) is but a single chapter in a larger project.
Harsh Symmetry’s discography draws from the classic sounds of 80s post-punk and new wave with the influences of contemporary gothic genres like darkwave and minimal wave.
The resulting sounds are both nostalgic and ethereal.
Photo by Matheus Ferrero on Unsplash, used under the Unsplash License.
Douglas Für, based out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, presents one of the most compellingly raw and unhinged folk-punk sounds in the genre.
A former member of anarchist folk punk band Ramshackle Glory, Für is no stranger to neurotic rhythms and irreverent lyrics. With a solo career spanning between July of 2015 and August of 2016, Für plumbs the depths of his psyche to produce a curio collection of sounds across three solo albums.
The jagged, lilting melodies of his first album carry into the energy of his second, where the only marked difference in sound is the album’s elevated production quality.
However, where the dried up rivers will be the mass graves of tomorrow functions well as a standalone project, Für’s last two albums are directly connected.
Both share the songs “Curses” and “Sugar on Your Teeth,” though with distinctly different sounds. Curses and Spells of Protection presents a slower, almost sluggish narrative.
In “Curses,” Für’s rust-tinged vocals seem to snag upon the edges of the accompaniment, an assortment of string instruments whose melodies seem to churn as the song progresses.
Conversely, “Sugar on Your Teeth” is frantic, maddened and markedly discordant.
While the lyrics to “Curses” and “Sugar on Your Teeth” are the same in Death Has 1000 Ears, the delivery is completely different.
With a cleaner, clearer production quality, the album lacks the rugged edge of its predecessors. The tone is strongly jovial throughout with tinges of theatricism, a strong incovation of classic barroom ballads.
“Curses” is virtually unrecognizable between the two albums, with Death Has 1000 Ears presenting the song with a faster tempo and more lyrical delivery.
The same can be said of “Sugar on Your Teeth,” which presents a far tamer iteration of its original source material.
Cover for the album the dried up rivers will be the mass graves of tomorrow
Bad on Purpose
All the same, the entirety of Für’s work embodies a uniquely savage sound.
And by all technicalities, the music is bad. The vocals are coarse, the instruments often sharp or wailing. With the exception of Death Has 1000 Ears, the production quality is starkly lo-fi.
But therein lies what makes Für’s music so compelling. The self-made feel of Für’s work perfectly captures the core of the folk punk movement. His experimentation with the energy of classic folk sounds and the roughness of punk gives way to a strange, beautiful offspring.
His chaotic, discordant sounds express the basest of human sensations: rage, grief, passion and despair. He captures ultimate catharsis in what can only be accurately labeled as purposeful cacophony.
Douglas Für’s music is but a means of expression channeled through folk punk, a movement solidified in unyielding self-expression and imbued with a long history of tumult and resilience.
For fans of AJJ, or those who simply enjoy “bad” music, I cannot recommend Douglas Für enough.
Recommended Songs:
“Dead Twin,” “Sugar on Your Teeth” and “Shallow Cut” from Death Has 1000 Ears
“the phantom wants to know” and “the phantom speaks” from Curses and Spells of Protection (ultimate favorites)
“cold steel” and “o’ nothing” from the dried up rivers will be the mass graves of tomorrow
While Bad Brains’s debut studio album, aptly titled “Bad Brains,” is indisputably iconic, “I Against I” possesses a special kind of charm.
Bad Brains, considered among hardcore punk’s original pioneers, released “I Against I” in November of 1986.
Despite the band’s original background in jazz fusion, the albumpresents a riveting blend of various musical elements including funk, alternative metal, rock and hardcore punk.
Consisting of ten songs, “I Against I” traverses a broad scope of musical sensations.
Unlike “Bad Brains”or the band’s demo album “Black Dots“, each song in “I Against I” has a unique feel, making for a truly dynamic listening experience.
Cover of Bad Brains’s third album, I Against I
“Sacred Love,” the album’s eighth song, is particularly special. Unlike the album’s other tracks, “Sacred Love” has strikingly lo-fi vocals. The song sounds like a fuzzy, crackly voicemail, the lyrics barely comprehensible.
Upon first hearing “Sacred Love,” I assumed the audio effects were a stylistic choice. However, further research revealed the truth.
The Recording of “Sacred Love”
According to testimonies from the album’s producer, Ron St. Germain and Anthony Countey, the band’s long-time manager, “Sacred Love” was performed from a D.C. correctional facility.
An excerpt of an interview from Howie Abrams and James Lathos’s novel, “Finding Joseph I: An Oral History of H.R. From Bad Brains” details the circumstances which led to the song’s unorthodox recording:
Shortly before Bad Brains was set to record I Against I, D.C. law enforcement arrested lead singer H.R. (short for Human Rights) for marijuana distribution.
According to St. Germain, the band successfully recorded nearly all of the songs in I Against I’s discography before H.R. was due to enter jail.
All songs, that is, but “Sacred Love.”
With an unfinished album and an incarcerated vocalist, Germain and Countey had to improvise.
In what St. Germain referred to as a “communal effort,” the band organized for H.R. to perform “Sacred Love” through a collect call at the jailhouse.
The setup for the recording was makeshift at best. When the initial plan to facilitate a direct patch from the phone to the recorder failed, St. Germain undertook a more DIY-style approach.
According to St. Germain, he ended up taping an Auratone monitor to an analog telephone and swaddling both in a sound blanket.
In the studio, a second phone connected H.R. directly to the rest of the band. On that phone, St. Germain taped a microphone over the receiver.
The whole process took less than two hours. The result?
