Schnellertollermeier, house band at the court of the neo-brutalist regime, and makers of music to accompany Salvador Dali’s darkest thoughts, return nearly two years after the fearsome X to punish your ears with another fistful of their precise but punishing noise, leavened by occasional introspection while the blood and detritus is mopped from the once elegant but now pockmarked marbled floor of your psyche.
Combining the precision of compatriots Sonar with the industrial clamour and klang of DAF, this band do not build glass cathedrals of sound in the sky, oh no. What Schnellertollermeier construct are soundtracks to accompany the stark brutalist structures that emerged across the Soviet empire in post war Communist Europa. Utilitarian and angular, the opening title track hefts layer upon layer of heavily treated guitar rhythm as the tower takes form, only to fade and be replaced with a guitar jerking under electro shock treatment before being rejoined by clattering drums and the slavering reverb guitar monster with an appetite for destruction.
A false dawn of calm grins at you during the intro to the no less hypnotic Piccadilly Sources, a tune that soon finds its own evil groove, where a razor guitar appears to shave you down to the bone. You are now grinding away in a pit of horrors as more impossible rhythms collide as drums and riffs in sympatico hammer nails into your skull. Marvellous!
Manuel Toller is something of an anti-guitar hero, as his squalls of righteous noise on closer Round testify. Adding Teutonic discipline to the kind of feral racket beloved of Thurston Moore, the climax in the middle of this number will have you gripping the arms of your chair in delight… or maybe in a display of pure angst. I would imagine that witnessing this band live is akin to a religious experience!
TRACK LISTING
01. Rights (13:16)
02. Piccadilly Sources (6:59)
03. Praise / Eleven (8:22)
04. Round (10:38)
Total Time – 39:18
MUSICIANS
Andi Schnellmann – Bass
Manuel Troller – Guitar
David Meier – Drums
ADDITIONAL INFO
Record Label: Cuneiform Records – Website | Facebook
Catalogue#: RUNE 442
Date of Release: 6th October 2017