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Bombfors

Casus Belli EP

Written by: PP on 25/03/2013 02:48:59

Swedish gnarly punk rockers Bombfors are back with a new EP called "Casus Belli", where they pick off pretty much exactly where their previous EP left off: they still play raw, old school punk rock with less focus on songwriting quality than on delivering an uncompromising expression in the spirit of the rebellious nature of the genre's origins. Its politically charged lyrical universe is sung all in Swedish, so foreigners may not get much out of it, other than the few reasonably catchy melodies they've embedded within their unpolished sound.

Unpolished, by the way, is the keyword here. For Bombfors, it seems, the clean nature of most modern punk rock is unacceptable, so they make Bad Religion sound like a pop punk band at times (although the riffs on "Kommer Aldrig" are like straight outta "Suffer" if you ask me). It has a certain charm, especially during the shouted chorus during that song, which is followed by a classic woo-hoo sing along. In this case, it's not that they didn't have the budget to record something cleaner, it's that they purposefully wanted to avoid sounding too clean for the sake of producing an authentic 80s style punk sound. Usually this type of experimentation results in an irrelevant and dated sound that just doesn't work anymore, but if you ignore the shortcomings of their vocalist, the retrospective melodies within "Idiotens Spel" and the aforementioned "Kommer Aldrig" are surprisingly good. For the vocals alone, this won't be everyone's preferred punk release, but it has some potential for people who like their punk based in Bad Religion riffs, but vocals more unpolished and rooted in hardcore.

6½

Download: Idiotens Spel, Kommer Aldrig
For the fans of: rawer version of Bad Religion
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Release date 2012