giglinger

I had forgotten about Giglinger, it’s been some years since I reviewed their Distortion+ MCD, where I dubbed their style as industrial goth punk rock. I remember to have been utterly confused about their sound, but with this new output I can at least feel a little saner.
200 bpm is still weird, but no way near as weird as its predecessor. Apparently it was originally released back in 2008, but now re-released for an international market. It was recorded on an old 8-track from the 70ies, and I think the influences from that decade shines through a little (but if it’s because of the 8-track or not I’ll left unsaid). I still find some similarities to Misfits, but the goth aspects of it are nowhere to be found, fortunately. It’s like a spastic 70s/80s punk style revisited, like if New York Dolls teamed up with the earliest of Dead Kennedys and the previously mentioned Misfits, possibly even borrowing a note or two from Iggy Pop and having a young David Bowie lend them a hand. It is just so freakin’ unheard of in today’s punk scene.
I can’t say this is my chosen style of punk, truthfully it’s pretty much as far from it as possible. But I do however appreciate the charming end-result of such a lo-fi style of playing, and the ‘fuck you’ to the modern scene. The production makes it hard to tell whether or not it’s a drum machine behind the beats, so I won’t even venture a guess. Riff-wise it’s fantastic in all of its simplicity and rocking aesthetics. The music’s hauntingly catchy, yet incredibly difficult to grasp. The opening track Dead wrong feels like it’d be a hit to put on during a party, in particular if it’s already been going on for a couple of hours and people are approaching the drunken stupor where they don’t mind making a fool of themselves and dance like crazy and scream at the top of their lungs. I’m not sure what to make of Giglinger, but they come highly recommended to people with an open state of mind. Music journalists with a deep knowledge of punk rock’s development should really go ape-shit over it.