Jungbluth : " Lovecult"

Heard a lot bout this German band's interesting take on punk rock , thought I would check it out for my self. It is screamed, but not what I would typically think of as screamo, to me it has more in common with old Iceage. The guitars a jagged and raw, sometimes jangly in their attack. The tone is not your typical punk sound. Of course their songs stay in the three minute range. The bass dominates "King of the Hill" allowing the guitar to be a few degrees more melodic than they were on the opener. Feedback squeals out of the songs corners. The production is really odd as the guitar tones are pretty clean, the snare sound is rough and the vocals sound like they are coming from a blown out p/a. The song following "King of the Hill" just kind of spill out of it. The pounded drums sound like they are being thrown down the stairs. Their punches are the only thing that strikes me as hardcore.

 The lyrics are buried in the mix , but sound like they are sung in German despite the perfect English their Bandcamp page is written in. Their Bandcamp page states the album title and theme to the album is about how love is a cult and how people don't feel complete unless they find a perfect person for them. "Untitled" is a darker instrumental, that while cool really only seems like the intro for "Sternstunden der Doppelmoral" which goes into a more manic yet straight forward temper tantrum as the guitar spasms around the drums. The bass thumps out the deliberate pace for "Dead Keys". Its gets a tad darker when it slows down and lets the bass rumble out again.They flirt with more typical punk sounds though coating it with darker noisy guitar parts."Lokalkolorit" is the longest song at four minutes.

 They charge ahead with "Overdose Us". They gang vocals accent a pretty cool stomped out breakdown. They close out the album with "Empathy is Not a Competition" At two minutes it's about as to the point as a song can get, despite the fact that the vocals do not come in until 45 seconds into the already short song. These guys are what you are looking for if you are tired of the same old same old in your punk collection, with that said while this is more adventurous than your average punk the fuzzy vocal mix against the lo-fi drums fights against the guitar, so I'll give it an 8.