(The review was meant to be much shorter but there you go, I couldn't help digressing like a madman.)
Modern postpunk: that thing everyone pretended to love in 2013.
Honestly even a well-respected clairvoyant scholar such as myself could have never predicted the postpunk trend that took the DIY hardcore punk scene by storm in the 2010's (and caused eyeliners sales to increase significantly). But then, did anyone? I still struggle to understand how the phenomena spread so quickly and what artistic or indeed emotional needs - both from the musicians and the audience's point of view - postpunk answered at that point in time. But it undeniably filled a gap.
From my understanding it did not just emerge from a newer generation of punks that tried to offer something different or maybe something that was absent but some older punks also went for it. And, punk being an endless game of referring to the past, it relied on an 80's influence that was different than your usual anarcho/hardcore department: that liminal zone when and where punk went dark and grew a fascination for graveyards, weird shirts and dark eyes, basically the Siouxsie and the Banshees school and all that followed. When what came to be called and understood collectively as "postpunk" (I will get back to this linguistic shift) hit the scene, I must confess that I did not really give a shit about the genre or indeed the term and notion, having grown up very uninterested with it. It therefore brought a new conceptual tool into my punk arsenal as I had to used to point to and define bands that were starting to merge with the DIY hardcore.
Beside the odd new wave song at parties that I would willfully dance to when sufficiently pissed, I was still scarred by the Blitz incident and rejected anything remotely (mostly terminologically) connected with what I thought of as the inherently evil "postpunk galaxy". Let me digress for a bit. When I was 16 I bought a Blitz double cd called Voice of a Generation - The New Future Years. The first one included the Lp while the other had the singles. Half way through the second cd I noticed some alarming changes on songs like "New age" - that still had a great singalong chorus about "the kids" so that was alright - but when the songs off Telecommunication or Solar kicked in I felt personally betrayed. Despite being 2000 and the boy of Blitz being long cold, I felt cheated by a band who had sold out to new wave (or whatever) that stole and corrupted the band who stopped singing about the "punks on the streets" I identified with. Since that day, I want to punch the people who claim "postpunk Blitz" is as good or even better (that's the ultimate outrage) than the early stuff. They are almost always people who also listen to shoegaze or noiserock, have moustaches and live in nice flats to be fair. They are lucky I am too much of a wimp.
Fast forward 10 laters and there we were, with a new generation of bands actually into postpunk and not just victims of a certain 80's trend when otherwise decent bands were mislead into shamefully going postpunk. Some made it rather safely - I'll admit - while others crashed miserably. At least they did not go shit metal like Discharge did. Hairspray had a lot to answer for in these terrible developments I reckon. To get back to the story, I associated the name "postpunk" with negative things without knowing much about it and had no idea that Siouxsie, New Model Army or Killing Joke could fall under this umbrella. I thought postpunk was either all edgy and intellectual (like Devo or Adam and the Ants) or silly new wave for middle-class people with an unhealthy obsession with their hair and looking straight at the camera. As a result I was absolutely flabbergasted when some fellow punks (who admittedly did not grow up with UK punk at all) started to refer as Lost Cherrees or even The Mob as postpunk. I called the bands I listen to but were a bit darker and moodier "goth-influenced" but the term postpunk wouldn't have come to mind. This shift happened really fast and after years of enduring neocrust and fastcore bands in the 00's it was time for a new global trend that I knew little about. On the one hand, it proved to be a fantastic excuse for moaning and complaining, on the other it did make me dig deeper into a genre I knew very little about. It was at least stimulating.
From my Paris-based experience, I locate the start of the postpunk wave with two gigs: Spectres in April, 2011, and Belgrado and The Estranged in June, 2011. This was a turning point, not just musically (although it was indeed very unlike what I had seen before in DIY hardcore punk gigs), but also because of the personnel involved in these bands, people who had played or were playing in hardcore or crust bands and suddenly opened up to a different style. As taken aback as I was, I still enjoyed the gigs and mostly did until the mid 2010's when every new touring band sounded just like the former. It would be unfair to dismiss this wave on the face of the average bands that joined in opportunistically. The fact some bands have been sticking to it and are still active means that the genre is here to stay. Beside I enjoy even the most average 90's eurocrust band so it would hypocritical for me to judge the mid table 10's postpunk band too harshly.
While the term postpunk can encompass a very large array of sounds (from Joy Division, Siekiera, New Model Army, Siouxsie, The Cure to Christian Death, Crisis, UK Decay, Paralisis Permanente or Trisomie 21) the core style of the wave, your typical 10's postpunk band, lived in the locality of, I felt, Skeletal Family - themselves not exactly pioneers. It was dark and melancholy but danceable, tuneful and completely metal-free. And you were allowed to look good and take showers as opposed to the previous punk trends which saw such activities as definite signs of gentrification. Until the end of the decade, almost every large towns and countries started to have their very own postpunk bands. But among the first to resurrect postpunk were Funeral Parade from fucking Portland.
Funeral Parade - the tone-setting name comes from Part 1's iconic record obviously - exemplifies what a good 2010's postpunk was supposed to sound like. I suppose the coinage "anarcho goth-punk" would have been more relevant in their case, especially since their sole recording was released in 2010, at the beginning of the trend (it has to be pointed out that Spectres' first Ep came out as early as 2007 which makes this Vancouver band genuine trail blazers of modern Joy Division cosplay) when the term postpunk had not quite dominated and overrun anything that was even vaguely melancholy. Funeral Parade's music stands as a wonderful illustration of the genre that, despite all the hair spray, started out as more PUNK than it was post and therefore made it much more palatable, enjoyable and indeed enjoyed by close-minded me. You have the signature melodic and gloomy guitar leads, that typical dynamic drum beat with a lot of cymbals and a lot of chorus on the bass guitar, all classic 80's goth signifiers. It is a demo so that the production remains raw and very punk-oriented, which suits me just fine. The vocals are angry, halfway between spoken and shouted, very much in the anarchopunk tradition. The songs are mostly catchy and the length (5 songs in 15 minutes) is appropriate for me as I can quickly get bored with the postpunk guitar leads when they are overwhelming. Beside 80's gothpunk influences like the aforementioned Skeletal Family and early Screaming Dead, I can hear a snottier and more traditional UK punk influence like The System or Subhumans and also anarcho bands that incorporated seamlessly postpunk or goth influences (after they can be seen as both) like Part 1 (duh), Lost Cherrees or even Chumba.
What made Funeral Parade so representative was also that all its members were involved in noisy (if not noizy) hardcore bands like Lebenden Toten, Nerveskade or Ripper at the same time and may have wanted a bit of fresh hair through a more old-school 80's sound that your mum could still vaguely nod to. Two members of Funeral Parade also played in the very goth-oriented (not to mention longer-running and better-known) Bellicose Minds so that something was definitely in the water - and in the hairspray. Funeral Parade did not last long, unfortunately because listening to this 2010 tunes again I realize that it's exactly I want my gothpunk (or postpunk or dark punk or whatever) to sound like. Originally self-released on tape, this is the European version released in 2013 on Voice From Inside, a DIY or Die label then based in Kyiv. It was reissued on vinyl the following year on Mata La Musica Records, a label that put out materials from Bi-Marks, Mundo Muerto or Generacion Suicida in the early/mid 10's.
Did I mention hairspray?
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