Labels: Fysisk Format
Review by: Kjetil Holstad
Dark Times has been around for a couple of years and has, together with the rest of the black hole crew (Okkultokrati, Haust and a few others) generated a lot of fuzz and buzz in the Oslo/Norwegian scene with their rather negative approach to music and life in general. Where the other bands in the crew tend to lean towards the more bleak, dark and heavy music, Dark Times embraces the early 80s punk rock; similar to bands like Scream, Void and Black Flag and cross it with noisy grunge.
Where the demo tape had a more lo-fi / k records feel to it, the 7″ from last year and the Girl Hate 7″ have a more focused sound mostly due to the improvement in the recordings themselves, but it also seems that the song writing is done with a whole lot more confidence than before. In a similar manner their live shows only seems to get better and better. The end result this time are four short simplistic punk rock songs delivered with passion and edge that appears to be based around a lot of negative themes (review was based on advanced download and not the physical copy, no lyrics available) with song titles like ‘Girl Hate’, ‘Kiss My Fist’, ‘Waste’ and ‘Worst Things’. To me however, Dark Times evokes only positive feelings and memories about youthism, activism, diy and everything good about the local scene!
Previous releases contained at least one stand-out song that really kicks things up a notch. The demo tape had ‘Talk Too Much’, the self titled 7″ ‘Shallow Breather’ and this time it is ‘Waste’ that sticks out. I’m really curious to hear and see where Dark Times takes their music next and if they manage to pull out an LP worth of material. If they do I hope it has more than one belter and that they bring back some of the indie/lo-fi elements the demo had which I think suited the band very well.