Campingsex 1914! LP reissue
Reissue of the 1985 full-length from this German no wave crew—Thurston Moore is apparently a big fan, even claiming that SONIC YOUTH was inspired by CAMPINGSEX, but the admiration was almost certainly mutual. 1914! came out two years after Confusion is Sex (which might as well be the lost-in-translation origin of CAMPINGSEX’s bizarre band name), and it’s a similarly harrowing trip through a shaking hell. Industrial terror-clang rhythms nicked from EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN and filthy BIRTHDAY PARTY-descended bass grind beneath stern, ranting vocals that frequently lapse into distressed primal screams, channeling the bombed-out urban decay and no-future nihilism of Cold War-era Berlin into a series of eight howling, pitch-black post-punk dirges. But much like with mid-’80s SONIC YOUTH, there’s some gnarled moments of melody to be found lurking within CAMPINGSEX’s fucked-up feedback sprawls—the male/female trade-off backing shouts intersecting with Max Müller’s raw, unraveling vocals in “Schließ Die Tür,” the almost sing-song break toward the end of “Liebe” where the guitar squall briefly drops out, or the Peter Hook-styled bass run that launches the droning bile-spew of “Guten Morgen.” Brutal and brutalist.