We Are Wolves * Invisible Violence (cd 2009)
On their 2005 debut album (“Non Stop Je Te Plie En Deux”) and the great second album (2007 “Total Magique”) We Are Wolves wonderfully balanced between punkrock and electropunk with here and there a bit of electropop and some other experiments. Catchy, uptempo songs with a lot of guitars. The only thing is that I am not greatly fond of are the vocals (relatively high-pitched male), but they are not really irritating. This new album goes more in a normal poprock direction and the songs are not what they are on the previous albums; they are not as crazy anymore and less catchy. There are still some nice songs, but I highly prefer the second album.
Links: We Are Wolves, Dare To Care
Les Georges was a Canadian experimental (electronic) punk band. Somehow many of these seem to come from Canada (the band does no longer exist since May 2007). What also seems to be typical for this kind of music are the slightly distorted and rather childish female vocals. There are also male vocals here and there. The band has great uptempo weird punky tracks which are alternated with a great variety of experiments. Jazz, funk, industrial, Native American tribal music, whatever the band felt like is put on their albums. The experiments are not always my taste and take relatively much space on the albums, but the nice weird things and especially the electropunk (or postpunk or whatever I should call it) are good enough to recommend to people who like happy-tuned crazy music.
The NY progrock band White Hills is currently extensively touring Europe. I must say that their Myspace tracks sound better than their track here which reminds quite a bit of Der Blutharsch’s current style. Der Blutharsch’s own track is a long stretched tone with some singing, “prog”, but not very “rock”. The White Hills track is the better one, but they do have better tracks.
It has been five years since the interesting debut of this Romenian duo. “Dialogue” mixed different kinds of music into an interesting style. On “Divine Skinny” there is again a mix of styles, but the result differs from the previous album. After hearing the Myspace tracks I got myself a copy of the new album, but I must say that I am disappointed by it. The cd opens interestingly with a mix between folk and industrial, but most of the tracks are rather bluesy, minimalistic, slow tracks, mixed with electropop and other poppy sounds. Especially the female vocals are not my thing (I prefer the photos of the very skinny Julie in the booklet) and the music is quite boring at times. I do like the fact that the bands presents something very uncommon and perhaps some more (than four) listenings will make the album grow a bit, but I can currently not give too much praise to it.
The female half of 
There is this Dutch project called 
A fortunate coincidence made that I saw Der Blutharsch live twice in the last week. They would play at a festival in Tilburg for which I bought tickets months ago. When me and my girlfriend had to book our holiday we had to mind to be back yesterday for the festival so we went the week before. Then I noticed that three of the bands in Tilburg would play in København on Wednesday and since a concert in another country is probably something different, we went there to see the alright show of Bain Wolfkind, the not too good and very short show of Deutsch Nepal and the very nice performance of Der Blutharsch in The Rock with about 50 other people. Yesterday during the Incubate festival the set of three played in the Hall Of Fame with a bit more audience and a much bigger place. Friends who expected the old style of Der Blutharsch were disappointed, one found the performance tame and save and however I liked the show, I remember the København show more lively, but that may have been because of the much more lively audience there. Der Blutharsch mostly did new versions of old tracks again and most tracks were pretty heavy but rather slow rock songs. I suppose that spelled the style on the new album, but I wonder why they did not just play new songs. “Flying High!” was announced to be more “psychedelic” and that is true. The catchy rocksongs of the last albums have been replaced by a slower sound, sometimes a bit of progrock soundscapes, sometimes the sleasy Bain Wolfkind rocksong style. “Flying High!” is not a new masterpiece. I like the fact that the band keeps developing in style and it is only a matter of time before this goes into a direction that I do not like, but the new album is a nice one for background moody poprock music. And for people who saw Der Blutharsch on stage, the music on the last albums, especially “Flying High!”, is by far not as loud as the rock-performances the band gives. There is less guitar, several different (guest) vocalists, no drumkit, but more different instruments than that are brought on stage. Indeed, Der Blutharsch does not sound the way they used to, but I personally find that a good thing. I play the rock albums more often than the martial predecessors and I may or may not get more used to “Flying High!”, but the time of “Kampf, Sieg oder Tod!” are behind us, just get used to the idea and see if you like the new direction of the band.
I do not really follow Albin Julius’ Hau Ruck! label, I guess he is a bit too progressive for me (or he just has a very different taste in music). Ballo delle Castagne is mostly a progrock album with some folky influences and Italian vocals. I cannot say much about it, just that this is again not really my thing.
Recently I have searched through the electropop/-punk scene since I kept running into interesting music from that corner. Now there is a lot of typical electropop that comes nowhere near the level of Vive la Fête, but there also appears to be a lot of very experimental and progressive material with crazy humour and weird ideas. Dandi Wind is a female vocal artist who puts together some weird and wonderfull music. The music is more electropop than a Duchess Says or Motormark, but sounds nothing like Crystal Castles or ADULT.. This is mostly caused by Dandi’s use of vocals, but the music itself is not too typical either. The music is catchy and danceable, but you have to like to crazyness. “Concrete Igloo” (2005) is a great album, “Yolk Of The Golden Egg” is even more experimental, but it is a bit tame compared to the predecessor. There are a couple of more rock-oriented tracks that are nice, but overall I like “Concrete Igloo” better.
Here we have a very interesting band. Duchess Says easily goes from typical electropop to more rock-oriented experimental tracks with (apparently) real drums (“post-rock”?), but this album opens with a magnificent experimental punk song that even the 70’ies artpunk bands would have never come up with. Weird screaming female vocals, lots of guitars, is this perhaps a rock band with electronic influences? Modern artpunk? I don’t mind. This is great and weird stuff.