Impotentie: Demonstratieve Opnamens 7″

Description

Punk like beer, coffee and films about people in space fucking each other up with laser swords is an uncomplicated thing. So why do so many people get it wrong? We get it, you have frills you wanna throw in, but throw in one too many and youve got a holy mess on your hands or a record that no one gives a toss about.

Luckily, no one told Montreals Impotentie, whose punk racket is gloriously straight-ahead, beautifully ugly and a gritty pleasure to spend time with. Ok, its not without the aforementioned frills (more specifically, they sing in Flemish because why not, eh?) but its charms are rooted in the fuck-you-up brutality of hardcore, the fuzzed-out vim of your garage rock faves and a direct simplicity that sounds like the gloopy chaos that comes out when you throw your turntable into a cement mixer. You know, just to see how the records sound inside churning liquid concrete.

With members of Thee Nodes and Omegas on board, you know what youre getting yourself into here. You can taste the bitterness of service station coffee, smell the beer-soaked floors of crappy dive bars and feel the blown-out bass of rotting PAs its the product of lifers who love the road and it hits home hard. Even if Demostratieve Opnamens (demonstrative recordings) turns out to be the only document this band ever produce, its a bundle of energy youll wanna drape all over yourself time and again.
Will Fitzpatrick.

Spoiler – Zang
De Paljas – Gitaar/Basgitaar/Trommel

Opgenomen in een slaapkamer
Montreal 2017

“It’s the sound of a greyly lit kitchen in some nothing town with pitched roofs and gables, the smell of stale cigars and vinegar and the taste of meat in a tube on moist bread with watery coffee”
-Jonah Falco

Our take: Its not often that I listen to a new band and think what the hell IS this?, and far less often when said puzzling band is identifiably punk. Montreals Impotentie is, indeed, identifiably punk, but its punk like nothing Ive ever really heard before. There are elements of things I know: the claustrophobic, straight-into-the-board guitar sound recalls obscure KBD and euro-punk (particularly when the lead overdubs come in super loud), the singer is somewhere between a hardcore barker and the intimidating shouts of Metal Urbain or the Screamers, and some parts sound like a band playing extremely loose and slightly out of tune Warsaw covers. However, it all adds up to something that is utterly singular. Maybe this is what early Zounds would have sounded like if they did acid all of the time? Really, I think Jonah Falcos description says it all: It’s the sound of a greyly lit kitchen in some nothing town with pitched roofs and gables, the smell of stale cigars and vinegar and the taste of meat in a tube on moist bread with watery coffee. More than recalling any particular era of punk, Impotentie capture a real vibe here, and its bleak and dour, but with moments that are distinctly beautiful. A very special record that I recommend highly to anyone who values originality in their punk.