Agnosis – Yakshas
Listen, rock n’ roll has never been a world populated by great intellectuals. There have been exceptions. You Lou Reeds, Lennons, and Bowies did your best work while utilising the 3-4 guitar chords that you knew. But, they were only doing rock because they couldn’t afford tuition to one of the really good schools and because they liked the funny-looking clothing.
Most of the intellectuals were people like Frank Zappa, smart, cynical and unable to play rock n’ roll, no matter how many notes they added to it. And, out of all of their crimes, an American prog-rock project/musician, Agnosis, might agree, was their educated pessimism. Does the world have any need for more of that? And, who’s going to play all of the bitter songs about failure once the world finally goes up in smoke?
Yeah, sure,“Yakshas” by Agnosis is a sophisticated piece of proggy, aggressive alternative-rock. It sounds like the local robbed the Water Buffalo Lodge, forming a rock band based on ancient teachings. But, fortunately, this all, at the same time, translates into punchy, slick rock n’ roll, and includes some hope for the future and an invitation to seek resilience rather than doubt. Turns out that there’s a place in rock n’ roll ever for people who’ve bothered learning more than three chords.
Savonarola – Crows
Meet the “Masters of Horror,” people who earned a good living scaring audiences through movies, books, or by being in a rock band made up of masked villains, and you’ll get a bit of a Mad Wizard vibe about them.
Of course, that’s what they’d like you to believe. And, besides, you can’t blame someone whose spent their adult life playing the part of zombies, voodoo priests, and various harbingers of doom, for thinking they’ve really invented something.
However, it’s all been done. Sung curses are part of the folklore of any piece of dirt across this great, big world. And, the people who heard them used to tremble and say their prayers just as audiences do now. In that respect, Savonarola fits in with the general tradition.
In fact, the first time that I heard “Crows,” I thought, “That’s some guts going for a Romanian folk song about a jilted lover cursing someone’s demise.”
And, while that’s probably just my own dark fantasy, what sets Savonarola apart is the work ethic. “Vengeance as Purpose,” both the song and, especially, the music video, reveal an extraordinary work ethic and some marvellously twisted imagination. Besides, the world’s been ending for a few centuries now, and we could deal with some fresh scares.
