Labels: Opiate
Review by: Alex Deller
Jeezum crow, it sure has taken me long enough to get a hold of this thing. When did it come out? Sometime about a hundred years ago when anyone within a stone’s throw of London and possessing half a brain cell was watching these chaps play down in Hackney. Hell, that seems like a lifetime ago already, and it shows what suckers you all are for leaving one for a slacker like me to be able to pick up this far along down the line…
Enough talk! What you really need to know is that Kriegstanz are fucking great, playing fearsome d-beat hardcore that will knock your brains out through a fist-sized hole in the back of your head. Throaty bellows and hoarse, ragged screams battle each other atop riffs crashing down like breezeblocks lobbed from a railway bridge, providing the perfect setting for lyrics linking the terrors of our not-so-distant past with the equally horrifying terrors of our present. The end result is somewhere between Plot Sickens-era His Hero Is Gone and the surly, gut-level immediacy of Wolfbrigade, a deafening wall of d-beat that makes for yet another great hardcore record to burst from Holland’s vibrant punk scene.