However hipsterish and delicate my taste in music might seem, from time to time, I just love to whore myself to the satanical rythms of death or black metal. I don’t know why, really. Maybe, on a subconscious level, I want to get into .chester’s bed.
Because I don’t want to overshadow my friend .chester in his own area of interest, I won’t write about a death or black metal band, but about a band as equally ballsy called Amplifier. With a sound that draws as much from post-rock’s modernity as it does from the old-school wacca wacca grooves of the beloved space rock, I’m proud to announce that they have been awarded by the Hipster’s Telegraph with Hipster’s First Choice Band Wheen Feeling Horny. The Manchester-based three piece group of outlaws have released in their 14 years of existence a total of three records, their latest one, The Octopus, being the most critically acclaimed of the bunch.
And it’s no wonder why. The Octopus is a 120 minute long bash-a-thon, in which ‘’the man’’ is systematically fucked in a cunningly subtle manner, lyrically speaking. Wall Street, greedy corporations, colonialism, the media,the fucking annual Oscar Awards, homelessness, racial discrimination, consumerism, war, poverty and many, many other wacky shenanigans are discussed and criticized. But what gave me a gigantic fuck-the-system boner were not the subjects per se, but the way they are handled and put into perspective. Away with the ridiculously over the top socialist-oriented political views of Rage Against of the Machine and the useless noise that comes with it. Amplifier is here to offer us the stuff that only our wet rebellious dreams were made of: something with substance and an actual message. And you don’t even have to wear a Che Guevara t-shirt to fully enjoy it.
Without getting too cocky or exaggerating its merits, The Octopus creates an atmosphere that, academically put, crushes your fucking skull and then feeds some random demonic minions with the pieces of brain that escaped the horrible process of being pulverized in mid air by the album’s sonic laser of sheer awesomeness. Whenever I play this record I instantaneously get mental images of gargantuan buildings, oppressive, shadowey ruling figures, dystopian polluted city-scapes and filthy streets roamed by midget Lady Gagas, and that’s really just putting it lightly. Songs like Fall Of the Empire, Trading Dark Matter On The Stock Exchange and Planet Of Insects are some brilliant examples of dystopian crazyness. They made me picture a nightmarish scenario in which the world would be taken over by some oppressive totalitarian super-power, making the process of writing dick-jokes on Tzeeac not only difficult, but utterly impossible. Uuuuh, fuck me with a pitchfork.
Sound-wise, it’s a really powerful and noisy album, but very well paced and structured. It’s the kind of loud album that is like that because there’s a REASON for it, and not just for the sake of it. The Octopus comes with mesmerizing guitar solos, barbaric drumming and intricate bass lines. I’m not an expert in post/space rock or in anything else, to be fair, but I have to say that this is probably the most complex and mind-fucking albums I had ever had the chance to listen to. And that’s coming from the guy that spent an entire month trying to write about Justin Bieber’s latest record, but couldn’t find the necessary intelectual resources to do so.
Now stop expecting for a conclusive ending paragraph and go play the fucking record.
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