Hey citizens, it’s this time of the year again. The going away for summer time without any posts, and i decided to leave you with a gift.
This has been quite a long coming since I ‘ve been listening to them a lot lately. Not deathrock straightforward, but gloomy punk certainly. This is the group of people that coined the “romantic punx” term anyway. Changed my mind a few times whether i should upload this or that album of theirs, what is my favorite period of them, and ended up settling at getting a full discography out there, because it’s not easily available in other blogs (in just a few easy clicks anyway). It was an easy task since the milanese band collective have all their stuff available in the bandcamp or official site. GO read the manifesto dammit, it is not just a music thing or an aesthetic band. I wish i knew more italian to be able to get the lyrics better.
http://kalashnikovcollective.bandcamp.com/
http://www.kalashni.net/
Support the god damn band dammit, and for god’s sake, bring’em to Athens again.
Wait, I’m supposed to go through all that, now? Awkward, unrelated, personal stuff below.
For what seems like a long time now in my eyes, the local greek punk scene has been very inward, obsessed with doom, misery and general chaos.
There is something uncomfortable in the air. There is a faint feeling, a vague thought, something we all seem to suspect in our heads, but it’s never being discussed about. It is a fear we all seem to share, too deep to be put in words. It is a fear that music does NOT MATTER any more. That it has stopped shaping our lives, we have stopped living IN and through music, but it has rather become one more of our commodities. Another discussion item to prove how hip we are. Postmodern nonsensical lyrics, or repetitive endless experimentation, triangles and for no apparent reason-minimalist linear covers everywhere, maybe people just stopped expressing their fears and hopes, stopped singing about how they’re imagining the new world, the one we’re supposed to be building and decided to bottle everything up.
So much of our reality is bleak and hopeless. So many spent days staring at walls’ corners and screens, suffering bitter jobs. And perhaps as a direct result, so much of our punk is doomed, heavy and unbearable sounding, offering no hope whatsoever. Things in punk have taken a turn to the crust-d-beat-stoner side of things. As if nothing has any meaning any more. Just speed ridden distorted guitars and drums, endless amounts of beer gurgling because what else is there to do, violent pogoing against others not with others and just destruction toward all directions. As if we have already lost. Totally disconnected from the 77 roots, you can no longer make out any melodies or catch a lyric, chaotic accelerating rhythms totally disconnected from any eventual meaning or release. Everybody wants to be on a stage, and guess what, you now have the social media to convince you the rest of the world is your audience, and your badly rehearsed songs are ready to be put out there,and as long as they get a few likes, your laziness is justified.
Perhaps we have been in the circles of music too long. It is the air which we breathe, our passion, a center around all our expression is based. We’ve long been stuck in a rut IN this or that specific subcultures, cruising scenes, learning trivia, listening to this or that side-project f the bassist of…,comparing stretching bodymods or bat shaped accessories instead of looking out to the world, offering alternatives to our miserable day-to-day routines, answering tough questions about what steps must be made to create a new better one. And it is all too important to leave behind, too precious to categorize as just more of our comforts, our luxuries. Music is not something on the sides of our lives, it doesn’t play on a stereo somewhere while we do our jobs, our other stuff. Rather, it IS the stuff we do, while we work our day jobs to support our music addiction. Much of our time has been spent avoiding the tough questions, rather than answering them. What steps we should make to change ourselves to be ready for a new world? Do we have skills required to survive without THEM? Well, maybe I haven’t been paying enough attention to the hardcore zines lately. But we simply cannot abide any more passable singles. catchy riffs and forgettable EP’s, music to just make another year go by, the 2015 new album of this or that artist, we cant afford just another conversation item to go by. Music is supposed to be able to change things, to be how we live our lives. This is the case with kalashnikov.
I believe this band is offering the world not the answers, but the first steps of beginning the discussion of what we should do, and how we should proceed to change some of the wrong stuff. Not the solution to the problems but rather their point of view, and the words, the language to start talking about what has been going on.. They record not as a commodity, but because they want what they have to say to get out there. Of course, this band is very political.
Each songs lives in its own world, and it wants to drag you into it, sometimes from the hair if necessary. They play good, female vocal driven, synth-y, melodic romantic punk. If unsure where to start first, listen to 2009’s ” Living in a psycho-caos era” and if you like it, proceed with their debut.
“Kalashnikov were born in 1996 on the dirty floor of a squat in Milano, Italy, to give vent to the adolescent restlessness of three punx. Under the drunkenness of the heavenly libertarian nectar and rejecting the ruling culture, Kalashnikov are created with the wish to put together their own utopias and passion…”
Get the kalashnikov discography below.