Desperat - Demokrati Eller Diktatur? - 7

Labels: Beach Impediment
Review by: Alex Deller

To be fair, instead of writing a review I could just cut and paste the tags Desperat use on their bandcamp page:



punk d-beat hardcore mangel attack Sweden



While it’d certainly be apt, it would also (a) be incredibly fucking lazy and (b) not quite get across the level of sheer white hot rage contained in these six short songs. That rage is the key, because while the world and his wife thinks they can knock out ropey Discharge facsimiles and splodge a bombed-out village on the cover, so few of them ultimately deliver. Despite sticking to a formula that’s more than 30 years old, the mix of shitkicking aggression and smart, sharp songwriting raise Desperat well above the pack: the guitar tone is a trebly squall that saws into the bridge of your nose and the vocals are hollered out in Swedish, everything dripping with phlegm and wrapped in a carefully-concealed tunefulness that’s borderline anthemic despite its rough and ready nature. Fan-fucking-tastic, and since this is a reissue of their first EP there’s plenty more of it out there to track down…