Digging Graves – Timebomb
You want the world, and you want it now! But you’ll probably have to wait. How long? A revived Jim Morrison wouldn’t be able to answer that question for you, nor tell you how to hold on to the excitement of wanting to take over the planet and run it as you see fit.
But waiting around patiently, twiddling thumbs and staring at the clock on the wall is not something for which rock music is particularly famous. That’s the kind of behaviour suited for accountants and people who shout out weather reports in front of the camera.
Nah, the best rock music is the one that convinces you that something is about to go down any second. Are you ready for it? Well, you’d better be. The best rock songs don’t give you the time to prepare. They just shout, “Get right in!”
Motivated by the excitement of starting a new, good-sounding band and a real sense of immediacy Sweden’s Digging Graves get their punk-rock and their values just right for “Timebomb.” If the music is meant to synchronise with a sense of now-or-never, then it fulfils those promises. Digging Graves sound like people who will self-combust if they do not get what it is that they need this instant. Good! Rock has never been about waiting lazily around!
The Fragz – Peak Of Humanity
We all love to complain, but few of us are out there torching the electric vehicle dealerships of right-wing-loving billionaires. And, by the same token, most of us love to align ourselves with one cause or another. All of us make shiny posts. But few of us are willing to go and hand paint the damaged cars of the same billionaires whose marketing might have turned us, in the meantime, into slobbering fans.
And since just thinking about all of this is exhausting and bound to induce some kind of anxiety attack while seated next to people on the bus, we park those ideas. Our modern brains find new and creative ways to drown out the noise. We ask our friends not to mention politics, the state of the world, or comments on that documentary about Iraq that they just saw. What’s the point?
The point might just be that some of us still live in a place where you don’t get sent to freeze out in Siberia for telling the right joke about the wrong dictator. The Fragz are taking the modicum of their Scottish-delivered political freedom and testing how far it’ll go. “Peak of Humanity” is as much a song against modern tyrants as it is a song of despair. Crying out over finely tuned power chords and catchy melodies ain’t illegal yet! So, The Fragz will use it for as long as it’s still available.
