KILLED BY
9V BATTERIES – escape plans make it hard to wait for success
(CD/LP, siluh)
At first a little guitar feedback noise, and then they
rip into the first song “I was caught by some popular lines” with a dose
of fresh energy and intensity, that makes me feel good all over right from
the beginning. Then the song loses all its structure, sways, breaks, becomes
something different and finally drifts off into slow strumming and fading
out. Perfect example of what Killed by 9V batteries have in mind for the rest
of the album. The idea to make something different, to add something
unexpected here and to bend or skip away something ordinary there, runs
through all of the songs, more or less. A possible hitsingle like “The
city is lit when you’re on top of it” has it less, of course, other
songs spark and shine with obscurity. My favorite parts, of course, are the
ones where they get out the old distorted, amped guitars to shred out some
noise.
Don’t worry for all the hype they had when their
album came out om 2006, that you might look like a stupid loser because you
are jumping the bandwagon only now, so late. First, because it was still a
minor scale hype, Austria could never be big enough for a major hype anyway.
Secondly, because Killed by 9V batteries had their first release out in 2004
and I know only two people who knew about them back them, and neither was
me. And finally, because “escape plans make it hard to wait for success”
is a great, energetic bugger of a record, a punk in the oldest sense of the
word, a noisemonger and rioter, and also a thoughtful friend if needed. Two
years ago, when their “breakthrough”-album came out, a lot of people had
the feeling that this was their debut album. Mostly because it was the first
time they had heard from the band. Which sheds an awful light on what the
future might become if all those blogging and twittering really destroys the
economic fundament of real journalism and anybodies opinion on anything
really becomes equal to facts that have been researched and opinions that
are based on years and years of expirience and long time of reflecting by
the opinionmaker on his own perceptions, prejudices and processes. But I
digress.
What is most remarkable is that the four members of the
band are way too young to have lived through all the great bands and albums
that I hear in their songs and that they combine to a fresh and modern
sounding melée of feedback and rock. There is the grace and melodic noise
of J Mascis, the guitar swirl and magic trance of Green Magnet School (if
you know anything about this band apart from the fact that they released an
album, please drop me a line and join the information), the screaming
emotionality of many a Summer of Revolution Dischord band, and the
unabridged willingness to destroy expectations but nevertheless fully
satisfy that many cool bands had fifteen years ago, but that is seldomly
found today. “The Freezer is on Fire” sounds so much like a bunch of my
favorite bands that all have one thing in common, their singer is Chris
Thomson (Circus Lupus, The Monorchid, Skull Control, amongst others) I check
the names on the inner sleeve. Nope.
