#doomtownrecords

Apsurd, Derealizacija / Svemu Će Doći Kraj (Doomtown, 2020)

Apsurd's first tape is pretty hard to top. I was on tour in Croatia the first time I listened to it, and both me and the rest of the band were absolutely blown away. It’s just a perfect nugget of old school hardcore punk: to us it sounded like BedBoys or early Peggio Punx, but we later found out it would’ve been more accurate to compare them to old school punk bands from ex-Yugoslavia like the incredible Tožibabe or Solunski Front.

Whatever. My point is, Derealizacija quickly became one of my favorite punk records of, what was it, 2018? 2018—and a very hard one to follow up. So what they did here, is they took that and put it on side A of this, and the new EP is on side B. This could’ve not worked—but fortunately two years later Apsurd still got it and give themselves a run for their money.

First of all, the sound is so consistent between the two EPs they could easily pass as the same album. Brittly, mean bass, crunchy and sharp guitar, and a dry, two-mic drum sound, with single vocals fiercely jumping at you from the mix. Just the perfect 4-track live recording, if you ask me.

The six songs on Svemu Će Doći Kraj don’t veer very far from what the trio did on ‘Derealizacija’: the songwriting is clever and alternates fast, short bursts of energy with more thoughtful, suspended parts and just mid-tempo rock grooves that remind me of Dead Moon at times, before they swell up and explode into hardcore fury.

Being from Belgrade, Serbia, a city still dealing with a recent war and racial tensions on top of contemporary political uproar, their lyrics reflect that darkness; but apart from the jabs taken at a violent culture and the State’s oppression, there’s also room for introspection and existential questions, and significatively closes screaming for “Sloboda!” (Freedom). I’ll drink to that while I give this record another spin.

Click here to listen to Derealizacija / Svemu Će Doći Kraj on Bandcamp.