Artist: The Open Up And Bleeds
Title: An Act of Love and Violence
Genre: Indie / Post Punk
Release Date: 4th October 2011
Label: afmusic
Album Review
It was the song ‘Open Up And Bleed’ by IGGY & THE STOOGES (released at around 1973), that was the inspiration for the name of the quartet, that is domiciled in Sweden’s capital Stockholm. It was that feeling of realness and noticeability, of unadorned emotions sourced from the bottom of heart, infiltrated and filthy, bleeding and hard to digest, that marked the direction singer Joel Segerstedt wanted his own music move to. And (to say it in advance) it succeeded with every step! After the bands foundation in 2006 and several singles and EPs this is the first full-time album, re-released after it’s first coming out in winter 2010. If J. Segerstedt names THE STOOGES (the band not the comedians!) as an big influence, it not so much the savageness and the roughness, that found their way in the albums 10 songs, it’s more the attitude to renounce curlicue and pathos, the denial of window-dressing and softener. ‘An Act Of Love And Violence’ (a description for their own song writing) is an album that feels like sandpaper on the skin, it roughens and causes scars and so it makes itself so fragile and vulnerable. You can feel the disarming honesty of the music, masked with anger and regrets, just for disarming itself.
But let’s take some steps into it… The opener ‘In Darkest Hours’ comes along with rusty guitars and tinny marching drums, sounding like a fermented intoxication, that fights towards your bloodstream, but it’s the voice, that turns the coin, illustrating the emotional abyss with it’s fragility, like scab on a fresh wound. ‘Stiv Bators in All Of Us’ (Stiv Bators was the front man of The Dead Boys and The Lords of the New Church) is a bloody Rock 'n' Roll bastard, with a great dragging guitar line and a pumping bass… “life takes it down”… Segerstedt is spitting over the grinding harmonies and in that shrugging moment you feel that there’s no pathos, no ambiguities and nothing hidden between the lines. It’s that simple… pure and honest. ‘This Noise’ is a beautiful melancholic self-mortification, full of regrets and bacchanal nihilism, that manages to guide the cutting guitars, the firing bass and the wobbly vocals in a warming, almost sentimental direction. Arriving at ‘Ok Is Not Ok’ we’re entering an atmospheric masterpiece. Gloomy piano sounds drifting in a breathing bass line, flanked by sharp-edged guitars, which out-sparkle each other with strangely fitting harp tunes. And again it’s the despair and the tide-like resignation, that covers you like a protecting coat on a cold winter day. ‘Cut Me A Live One’ (what is my personal highlight!) takes the sticky and stained melancholy to extremes, sounding like a dirty version of the Mary Onettes, with a great melodic current, that grabs you and sweeps you away… wanted and rewarded.
There’s no real use to waste any more words, cause the content would be the same with all: ‘Everyone I Know’, what surprises with an almost eighties-electro-arrangement, ‘Let’s Go Back To Modernism’, that brings us back again to the dirty shores of Rock 'n' Roll, evoking memories of the melodic energy of THE CLASH, ‘What John said’ with it’s cloud-covered welkin, ‘I Don’t Wanna Die (Anymore)’, a hybrid of gentle sensibility and hard driven rhythms and finally ‘The End’ what is an epic 9 minutes free-fall, that tears and pulls you from above and below with it’s tumbling intensity and circling peaks, changing from quiet laments to noisy despair without any respect of space and this time, that wraps you and keeps you caught throughout the whole trip. I honestly can’t remember when I heard a (quasi) debut at last, that impressed me the way ‘An Act Of Love And Violence’ did. It’s mixture of melancholy, melody, roughness and fragility is fascinating, sprouting from the ground of palpable despair and negation, which move through your veins with every throat-born word and every filthy note. Unaffected and honest… a genuine pain, that poisons you with addiction…
Tracklist
01. In Darkest Hours
02. Stiv Bators In All Of Us
03. This Noise
04. Ok Is Not Ok
05. Cut Me A Live One
06. Everyone I Know
07. Let’s Go Back To Modernism
08. What John Said
09. I Don’t Wanna Die (Anymore)
10. The End
Line-up
Joel Segerstedt – Vocals, Guitars
Thomas Meyer – Bass
Markus Johansson – Lead Guitar
Andreas Thunmarker – Drums
Website
http://www.myspace.com/openupandbleeds
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 9
Sound: 8
Total: 8.5 / 10
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