Kriegshog- s/t LP (2010)
To some people, Kriegshog might represent “more awesome, insane Japanese noise-crust,” one among a series of bands like D-Clone, Death Dust Extractor, Hermit Prose, Total Noise Accord, Contrast Attitude, etc. This is not the case for me. With the exceptions of this band, and Framtid if they ever release more music, my interest in this music is dead. Just because I like Virgil, does not mean I have to like Lucan. My interest in Framtid and Disclose does not have to carry over to the detritus of cultural history that followed in their wake.
Many people will want to point out that Kriegshog are “crazy.” What they ARE, however, is “simple.” That does not mean that these are just any riffs thrown together, hoping that you won’t notice because it is over so fast—not at all. It means that they are really laid bare, to stand or fall based on their utter obviousness. It is a classic joke of punk music that if you distort everything and play fast enough, no one will notice how out of tune or out of time you are: Kriegshog don’t risk this. Their music is simple in the classic tradition of hardcore. If you’ve ever tried covering a Raw Power or Agnostic Front song, you’ll see what I mean.
The music, though, is not “minimalist” by any stretch; it is quite maximalist, in the Motorhead tradition. It is only that the sound is here comprised just as much by the style as is the case with, say, the Shitlickers. You just try sounding like the Shitlickers: it won’t take, because the thing with that band is entirely apart from just the striking *effect* they produce. Same with Kriegshog: a number of bands have been striving after the adjectives in play here, but that only leads to a kind of positivism. Again, not to overstate the greatness here, but it is the difference between what “Y2K Thrash” *was* and what it wanted to sound like. No one would ever confuse those later, retro bands with, say, Minor Threat or Impact or whatever, even though those bands were nothing but an amalgamation of these influences. Kriegshog don’t so much wear their influences on their sleeve as do, say, Framtid or Disclose (just to stay within this scene); but this means that comparisons are all the easier to make: one is not annoyingly confined to a PR-sheet written in advance by the band’s t-shirts on the album jacket.
The music, in case you’re wondering, is some combination of No Security, Framtid, and some palm-muted gallop (be it Metallica or Bastards).
[Recommended.]
