It’s hard to really revolutionize the genre of “post-punk.” You either go for the gritty version of minor-keyed, weird cascading guitar riffs, or the more synth punk route filled with 808 drum fills– or a mixture of both. Still, whether they intended to or not, marcel–a noisy and artsy post-punk group from Belgium–has come close to redefining what we think of when we hear “post-punk” with this new album, ô fornaiz. And it’s most definitely because of these strange, almost random instances of vocal chants that sound dark and Gregorian, after the spoken word singing and screaming from the lead singer, Amaury Louis.
We get these lyrical tirades about a darkened existence, clouded by dismay and solitude (in an almost Dead Kennedys Jello Biafra delivery), with the artsy punk guitar-driven rock n roll and then, marcel throws in these evil chants that are sometimes comical or terrifying (“entartete pop”), sometimes only for a moment before some haunted mansion organ line. I feel like I’m watching a fucked up Gasper Noé film during the track “task force diane,” and the album continues to get weirder.
We get some strange off-kilter auto-tune (which I normally despise) during “the diggger,” but it really adds to this warmed, fever-dream world marcel is going for. It does kind of lose me during “st. glin glin,” though, but I absolutely adore the motorik, almost Caribbean drums during this track. The discordant opening to “basho basho basho” sounds like utter hell before kicking off into a bendy, chaotic guitar vortex. It’s never happy music, but it’s tough to convince anyone otherwise with everything going the way it is. “manu militari,” gives me vibes of The Clash during their Sandinista! era, which was a nice surprise. Though, marcel can never quite sit still with a vibe and opts to make the next song a completely different spice in the soup.
If you’re looking for something different than cookie-cutter post-punk, marcel is happy to deliver with the experimental ô fornaiz, —and then some.
