Reviews of the yet unreleased new album
cracked e-zine
A demo or what? All I know is the name of the band is “Gone Bald” and this was sent to me by my good friend Richie from Interstellar-Records (check out Bug) without any further information. Nevertheless this is the greatest piece of music I have heard in a long time – hard rocking, blues-crunching, early 80ies-Hardcore infused noise-rock that makes you think of the best names in town only: from Black Flag to Firewater to Fugazi. Hell, this rocks my walls like nothing else. Already the first song blew me away: “tango” is the perfect mixture between the hard-hitting, edgy guitarriffs of Black Flag and the raunchy, rough blues of Firewater and even the voice swings from Henry Rollins to Todd A and back. Yes, I know, I shouldn’t be comparing bands with other bands, and definitely, Gone Bald have enough power and energy to stand as their own, but I guess, with bands such as Black Flag and Firewater, no one is really angry about the comparison (except for the greatest of egomaniacs – I can’t tell if Gone Bald are, let’s see). I can’t tell you anything about the band actually and searching the internet has proven fruitless. It wouldn’t have been that futile if I had a hair problem, but that is a whole different story. See, Richie wrote the name of the band and the name of the seven songs on here, which clock in at close to one hour(!), on the case of the CD-R and nothing else. Yep, that’s punkrock. Actually, I don’t need anything more. Any further information about this CD is superfluous in the respect, that it has become one of my favourites and it couldn’t get better. Please write to him at http://www.interstellarrecords.at to get more info, especially on how to get this CD / CD-R.

One more thing before I rave on about the music again: there are still some people who go on about how they won’t review CD-Rs or don’t like to listen to CD-Rs. Well, you are pretentious, arrogant fools in my book. Just like the audiotape a few years ago, CD-Rs are the best way to spread music nowadays. If you insist on getting a case and a cover and a real CD then I get the notion that you want something to sell to your 2nd-Hand-Dealer, which makes you a greedy asshole. On the other hand, you’d be missing out on great stuff such as “Gone Bald” here, which makes you a stupid fool. Nuff said ‘bout that.

This CD-R will leave you breathing hard. Right after the first track has given you a thorough blow-through, the pace sets to a little more laid-back, though no less neurotic, distressed and angry. In other words: everything you ever liked about noise-rock. This band is also great on structuring songs and putting a lot of dynamics in there. “adict”, the second song, (if I read Richie’s handwriting correctly) is almost nine-minutes long and none of them boring. They’ll start with an intro, then hit you over the head with one of those harsh guitarriffs, connect this to another one, and so on. On the third track “boat” the distorted voice is close to early Cop Shoot Cop or Distorted Pony and when the singer cries “Come with me / come with me” you’d advise anyone with a sound mind better not to abide. Track three somehow loses itself in a broken guitar/drum-pattern, which gets more and more fractured, until it seems to stop completely, the listener thinking: what the heck is going on until – exactly at the right moment – the band breaks into a completely different song (though we are still on track three) but it fits. Yes, Gone Bald are good at putting technicality to work for emotionality.

Maybe some might say they are a little to fixated on repeating patterns and structuring the hell out of a song, when they could be pounding away straightforwardly like nothing else matters. And I’d say no, never. You get lost in a guitar riff like you get lost in a frustrating relationship, a job, your life. You need strength to break patterns and just keeping on pounding away only drives you deeper into the shit. Life ain’t no party, it is fucking painful, so you have to work hard on it, and if you can’t stand it any more, change it. Better now than later on. During the record, there are some parts that are almost like post-rock or even the power of Godspeed You Black Emperor! (especially in the drawn out middle-part of "woman" with the high-pitched wailing and the organ) in their complexity, instrumentality and technicality, but they also fit the picture. Just like real life, these parts leave you hanging in dry air waiting for the next kick to come. But isn’t that what we all like – being hit hard in the head sometimes? That is what I like about noise-rock – it is just like life, it keeps on being surprising and it rocks hard.
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