Labels: self released
Review by: Ciaran Power
This represents the first four sonic offerings of Australian screamo band A German Spectacle. I find that the packaging here is better than your average demo CD-R. You can see the front cover, with what I’m guessing is the band’s name written out in sign language, which I found pretty interesting. The disc itself is emblazoned with the outline of a child’s body and is inside a folded paper cover, with all the art and the details on. It also comes with a photocopied handwritten lyrics sheet, all inside a CD slipcase.
It opens with Penfield, a song notably reminiscent of Saetia, to the point that it started out life named The Saetia Song, though they do add their own flavour to it. It has a pretty melancholy intro which then descends into something straight up visceral. Following this is Ought Reasonably to Have Known, which just doesn’t let up. In this one, they leave more of their own mark on the sound with some techy guitar and a smidgen of good, old-fashioned raging hardcore blended in. Self Anxiety Attack as Self-Affirmation Ritual offers more of the same, while the closer, We Heard the Tree Fall, offers welcome variety by playing around with tempo and dynamics more.
In regards to the Aussie thing: I checked, and the lyrics don’t say ‘sheila’, ‘tinny’ or ‘struth’ once but what they do say is some very fancy words. These compose utterances on emotions with maybe a little philosophy thrown in, but they’re pretty cryptic regardless.
All in all, a pretty solid debut, but while I definitely do like this CD – and I’ll be looking forward to their next release once they sort themselves out a drummer – I couldn’t really recommend it if you don’t dig the screamo.