NIKAD

same

12”, Fire walk with me

In Austria we used to look down at all the bands and music (or any other thing) that came from Eastern Europe or the Balkan, as if we were the better, richer part of the family and those people down there just couldn’t do it any better. And that was the nicer way to look at things. Other times we would have just ignored or avoided bands and records from “down there”, because we just knew, it would be bad and not up to our standards. These were the times, when some wouldn’t even take records by Eastern European bands for free, especially if they sang in their mother tongue. This went so far, that not only communist countries got involved, but all of Europe was never as interesting as the latest hype from the USofA.

Times have changed and they can do it just the same, maybe even better than us. All these prejudices are finally completely to be trashed and dumped (they were never worth anything in the first place.) Now another question is raised by the same old dickheads: what is the worth of these bands, if they ain’t different than anything else coming from the USofA? Why don’t they try to find their very own identity? Why do they have to sing in English? I think this is just a strategy to keep up old prejudices (but what did you expect?). First, in hardcore-music everybody is listening and copying styles from the USofA. Plus, who are you to accuse someone else of being US-minded. Or maybe not, because, second, hardcore is an international language, understood by many as what it really is: a youthculture attractive to a lot of youngsters around the world. And as far as the singing-language is concerned: who really gives a fuck? Who listens to the words on the record? You read ‘em on the lyric-sheet and English is understood by most. I wonder how hard it is for the label to market the band? I guess, it is easier to sell a “young, raging hardcore-band from Dumbfuck, Florida” than to sell a “young, raging hardcore-band from Zagreb, Croatia”. This is a point for you all to think about.

But listen to this record while you do it. The sheer energy and compact sounds of these blasting songs will teach you a lesson or two. Nikad have perfected their dynamics of songstructures and of constructing a song around a central theme with enough variation to keep you listening. With discernible parts and memorisable patterns. This is not all the same stupid shit that you’ve heard all along, where a record pounds out the same song riff after riff. (The curse of oh so many power violence superstars.) Of course, they sound very American, and maybe they’d prefer to live in a small beach-ressort in California (who wouldn’t) spending their days skating, surfing, partying and basically living a good life. (I sure would.)

In the meantime they try to get ahold of their very own personal demons, which they describe in their lyrics, which are, hm, open to interpretation, to say the least. Which means, I really don’t understand very much of them. They are the sort of very personal, little excerpts of concentrated emotions that don’t make a lot of sense, unless you’ve lived them yourself. But they leave enough of their source that they give you a feeling of what they are about. Loss, the inability to communicate, the pressures of live or trying to live right, being disappointed by people, because people are just that: human. What would you say to lines like these: “with concrete shoes and tape over our mouths we have to seize the dream we are the only ones who can hear the screams we dream with our eyes closed we live with our eyes closed what if dreams come true we want to live” (from: “Wake You”) And this is one of the more obvious lyrics.