MAKAZORUKI – s/t

(CD, narrominded)

These four Bosnians from Amsterdam give me the feeling of being ten years younger than I really am. Mainly because I connect their wonderful style of hardcore / rock with a time in my life, which I recall as my most favourite one: still studying or starting in my first job, having lots and lots of time to listen to music and finding so much pleasure in emotional, guitar driven, straining hardcore. But a kind of hardcore that was mainly about broadening and opening the rules of hardcore and about building an emotional atmosphere and transferring that to the listener that mainly consisted of being discontent with life, the state, the system. Yes, it is quite contradictory that I recall years of my life as the most gratifying ones in which I was mainly concerned with defining all the things I am dissatisfied about, but there are certain reasons to that: live was so much easier, because good and bad was still clearly defined and the youthful feeling of being on top of the world and knowing how things run was still there. Nowadays I had so much experience and glimpses of what makes our world run, made so many compromises, starting with the exchange of workforce for food-money and ending up in doing overhours to buy a new car, that I look back upon this naïve viewpoint with melancholy. Moreover it was a time were is was still able to fall into an issue, a band, a musical style, whatever, with full force, intent and head on without looking sidewards. I miss that. Things used to be easier back then, which is more a result of me changing and not the world changing. But there is no turning back time, is there?

Don't mistake my self-centered and nostalgic introduction to this review with this record being old-fashioned - it is not. It is wonderful, filled with great dynamic songs that build a wave of gratifying rock in the best manner, using the same manners but keeping it real so as to get nowhere near the blandness and style-over-matter manners of modern alternative rock. Because this is where the efforts of bands like Bad Trip, Fuel (the old hardcore-band not the altrock band appearing on horror-movie soundtracks - but that is exactly what I am talking about, isn't it) and others seeped into. The mainstream is dividing into branches - metal, alternative rock, electronic, rap - and trying to eat us all up. The difference between here and there is not in the style of music but in the way it is made. And it is one vast area of grey shades and compromises. Makazoruki keep well on the right side, the side that interests me (and hopefully you, the honoured readers), because this difference in doing things is what matters just as much as the music itself. Thinking about it, this is the main connection to hardcore bands like these or the ones mentioned have / had. Otherwise they lead quite singular lives, trying to carve out a niche or path for themselves. Things aren't that easy (see first paragraph), but one thing is for sure: I'd rather do 1.000 reviews about great bands like Makazoruki than waste one single word on U2.

If anything, Makazoruki sound honest, as if they really mean it. It is in the voice and intonation of singer Skusho, drenched with emotion and haste as if in a hurry (and some echo that reaches back even further to the way singers used to shroud their songs in late Eighties "heavy" bands such as Sisters of Mercy or The Mission - another genre these bands mentioned at the beginning used to fight against), but also in the determination that you can feel in the way the instruments are played. Set down arguments, fix points, mark the borders. This translates into densely defined structures in songs, dynamic tension spanning from one part to the next and an energizing feeling of right now being a very important moment in time, the point where a lot of things are decided that will be influential in the future. Give us time to breathe - some human warmth is provded all the time. Doing all this in midtempo and with clearly defined instruments and a very structured sound is just cream on top of this great debut album. Yes, epic is another word that comes to mind regarding the longevity of their approach. From the opener "Eskimo Girl" with its closing screams of "she's hunting" to the passing sense of "Sense of Snow" at the end of the record, there is a whole array of highlights. Me, I'll go searching for some of those old t-shirts that have to be somewhere still.