Oberst – Bad Run
Similar artists: Kvelertak, Mastodon, The Good The Bad and The Zugly, Honningbarna
Genre: Punk, Post-Hardcore
Never underestimate bands that are determined to sound lo-fi on purpose. They’re like the people who take cold showers even though the hot water runs just fine. They’re the people who still use a rotary phone because they want no part in what Samsung and Apple are doing. Yeah, they’re potential terrorists under certain circumstances.
You don’t mess with those people. And, fighting against limits they set for themselves, they more often than not contribute great things to the world. The Norwegian black metal bands took punk and death metal to its logical conclusion while mixing their albums with $10 gaming headphones. They sounded extreme, and it’s about time that the sound be used for something better than black metal.
Oberst come out of the prosperous nation of Norway and they’ve heard some of the rich Bergen kids playing their 90s black metal. Fortunately, they’ve taken only what was worth adding to their own brand of punk-inspired metal on the song “Bad Run.” They’ve ended up at a grimy, vibrant lo-fi rock sound, an anthem against boredom and rotten luck.
Conscious Pilot – Benidorm
Similar artists: Cheap Teeth, The B-52’s, Cate Le Bon, Pylon
Genre: Post-Punk, Indie Rock
If you’re a rock musician, you’re not supposed to regret things that you never got around to doing. You were probably just doing something a lot more interesting. Probably, you were fighting off attractive romantic interests while dangling from a ledge, drinking a bottle of Jack Daniels, while impeccably decked in a jaguar-print tuxedo. That kind of stuff.
Nah, rock musicians are supposed to be the people happy with how they lived their lives because they managed to save up on some good stories. If only they could recall them all. And, of course, when rock singers open their mouths, sounds befitting solely of residents of heaven or hell come out. That’s usually how it works, eh?
Not here. Not now. Conscious Pilot’s “Benidorm” is a drunken post-punk number filled with gallows humour. It’s all a terrible tragedy, including the vocal track, but the band themselves know that even that is for our entertainment. This is music about not trying harder and not properly estimating the distance to the bottom. It’s always lower than you think, say Conscious Pilot, and we tend to believe ‘em.
