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Review: 'SEBASTIAN MELMOTH'
'Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta'   

-  Label: 'Must Die Records'
-  Genre: 'Post-Rock' -  Release Date: '12th September 2016'

Our Rating:
Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta is apparently a reference to an aboriginal Nuclear disarmament group and the existential question of what would it be like living in a post-war bunker existence. This is, of course, if you believe the press release and why wouldn't you?

It opens with the Kings Cross Delta Blues, where you'd probably dream of going to if you were stuck in the bunker beneath Cavendish Square. I wonder if the band may have had involvement in events down there a while ago? But, anyway, the song is a dark plea for lust and love from a woman they can manipulate and turn into the street-walking cheetahs they are surrounded by in the bunker. This plays out over a dark, insistent underground garage come nuclear bunker rock rumble.

Rooftop Surfing is something a cave dweller would certainly be dreaming of. It's framed by a slow surf guitar riff that keeps repeating while they dream of getting stoned and going surfing. Even if I can't imagine former singer Andreas Baader ever going surfing, but then the band change all their names for every release so this time it's Laika, Belka and Strelka down in the bunker together.

Cellophane is a new bunker-style version of an old song that is a bit more insistent than the original if a little bit less claustrophobic. Laika intones that "everybody dies alone in the end." As the song builds it becomes more like a lost Joy Division song.

The new bunkered-up version of Sunshine Blues sounds as gloomy as any song about sunshine could ever be. It's downbeat and downright dowdy dreaming of seeing sunshine while stuck beneath the ground having all sorts of depressed and suppressed feelings being wrung out.

Sciatica is the third of the old songs they have re-worked and this has a fairground happy-clappy feel to it musically, which is totally at odds with the despairing scenes the song's lyrics depict, which speak of broken-faced junkies; the sort who might hang out at Disastrodrome whining and moaning of despair as the drums rumble and sirens seem ready to blare at the dystopian reality around them.

Carcinoma is the big single. There's a bit of a jaunty edge to the music with some nice ringing bells as the obviously twisted lyrics explore lives that feel like carcinomas to the people living and surviving them and all the venomous schemes they are caught up in.

Public House sounds like no pub music you'd expect to hear. Its slow and exploratory ruminations come on like you've been served a pint of half and half of Guinness and Budweiser and are trying to get the courage up to try to drink it as the song become more of a question about the guy who only talks about one thing all the time. It's the same old story over and over and over again. Around and around it goes, probably the last day it all made sense to him unless he's got it backwards.

Wrong Side Of The Sun is a 9-minute journey into darkness. It's all dank despairing guitars rumbling through your brains propelled along by basic snare and bass drum patterns and it descends to deep dark bass tones as they sit looking into the black void on the wrong side of the sun. As they slowly decide to do nothing at all while sitting getting stoned, it seems the perfect thing to do to this song. Then just sit back and let the waves of noise insinuate themselves into your brain.

The album closes with the wry humour of the #21 Century Blues about how you can be close friends with people you have never met or even want to meet in our interactive interconnected world where you are all connected and always online somewhere. This one develops over a slowly-strummed acoustic that lends a nice undertone to the paranoia of realizing everyone knows everything about you if they want to down to the time you decided to embrace Dianetics.

If you haven't already heard of Sebastian Melmoth this is as good a place to start as any. In a nutshell, it's another good dark slice of 21st century dystopian underground rock.

This album is available to by now from Must Die Records on cassette and download here:

Must Dies Records Bandcamp
  author: simonovitch

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SEBASTIAN MELMOTH - Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta