Immediately, the first notes of Die Verlierer, the German quintuplet’s, album transport us to their native Europe, somewhere in the early ’80s. Although I’ve personally never been there, and I was born about a decade later in the other side of the Atlantic, I hear Coitus Int., I hear Fehlfarben. Ebba Grön, maybe?
A production that is often cold and imbued with exaggerated reverberation gives way to virulent and insidious melodies for which there is no antibiotic. Guitars on the verge of being out of tune intertwine above frantic and solid rhythms. I can only imagine the smell of cold sweat and an ocean of black denim in a dark Berlin squat.
I close my eyes and I can almost see them, fallen altar boys, yelling arm in arm the refrains of their songs in the middle of the street at the exit of a discotheque at night. The titles are linked and unleashed one after the other, short, incisive, and leaving me more on my hunger than an amphetamine tablet.
Die Verlierer is a post-punk band, acute emphasis on the word PUNK. If you also like this word, I strongly advise you to treat yourself and go listen to this record from one end to the other to be able to give it, once again, a new meaning.
