Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Schelmish
Label: Napalm Records
Release: 2009
Rating: 1/5
With their eighth studio album, Schelmish remain devoted mixers of medieval rock, punk and, ahem,… maybe even metal? The latter doesn’t really come through, thanks to the deliberately “unpleasant” production of the guitar riffs. The band from Bonn is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, which makes them seriously prolific when it comes to putting out albums (and add one DVD and one live CD on top of that).
But what good does that do, when you first have to properly soak yourself in Bavarian beer and line your stomach with beer sausages at Oktoberfest just to get even a glimmer of what the joke of this band is. Yes, literally a joke. Schelmish simply aren’t for the sober.
Sure, their sound is chock-full of medieval trappings and you hear bagpipes at every turn, but they literally undermine that with song constructions that call to mind the cheerful party-time punk of Die Artzte, Farin Urlaub Racing Team, even Beatsteaks,… In fact, I dare say that only the German-speaking countries get Schelmish’s point. So Germans, Austrians and a handful of Swiss.
Although the album “Die Hässliche Kinder” (“ugly children”) opens interestingly, with the song Bist Du Berieit (Are You Ready), the listener’s ears perk up right away as the album pushes through sonic loops built on a lazy rhythm, with one-dimensional, harsh growling laid over the top, in German of course, which Schelmish could easily have inherited from Laibach or Rammstein, a kind of harshly low-pitched recitation. Truth be told, German works great in recitations. Sadly, though, the next song, Boulevard, already shows the bulk of what this album is about. Cheerful punk rock built on four chords of the Ostani z nami by Andrej Šifrer variety – even though our eternal jester Andrej has nothing to do with punk – and instead of solos there are single-voice melodic motifs played on bagpipes, which is the formula most of the album’s songs follow. The third song, Überladen, I’d describe as rock mixed with medieval influences and the melos typical of the endless horde of German bands that simply serve up German verses. And with that we can wrap up the more concrete analysis of this album, since all the remaining songs just alternate between the ingredients of those three.
It’s worth mentioning that not everything is in German. Too Late, with English verses and a deliberate imitation of an Irish dialect, is the most interesting thing on the album melodically, though you soak it up and chew it through in one go. The band pulls hard to “get out” of the danger of falling into that feeling of unoriginality, the “copy-paste” syndrome – already invented, with the obligatory bagpipe motifs thrown in – but a more careful ear can’t be fooled. Well, true enough. You rarely hear anywhere that medieval instruments can be combined with punk of authentic German boozing origin, where beer flows in streams and hulking tough guys from the German countryside, after carefully parking their tractors and combines, knocking the leftover manure off their boots and fortifying themselves with a ladle of sour milk, head off to the pub to lurch gluttonously across the floor under the weight of alcohol derivatives and puke all over the tables (the title track – a real funeral, for listeners outside the German-speaking countries!). And given all the talk of bagpipes, it was only a matter of time before the album started to smell of Scottish clans (the instrumental For The Clansmen, with an English title – a stunning decision, backed by a tribal rhythm). The opening seconds of the album’s most “metalized” moment, titled 1212, tremendously remind of the structure of the opening riff of the Porcupine Tree track Open Car – except here the guitar phrase is palm muted (“palm muted”). Good grief, with Schelmish everything already reminds you of something.
In short, I think I’ve spent enough time on “Die Hässliche Kinder”. Too much, even. At the same time, I don’t get Napalm Records forcing music on the masses outside the German-speaking countries that really only Germans and Austrians can understand and support. A perfect shot in the dark. It makes you think of money being thrown around on a band that’s totally uninteresting and unimportant on a global scale, while a hail of bands (with creativity all their own) patch together phenomenal self-released records out of their own pockets, only to be overlooked. Criminal. Schelmish, meanwhile, remain eternal, self-sufficient jokers who in their public statements certainly stand fully behind their new opus. Don’t let yourselves be fleeced. “One more bowl of beef broth with liver “dumpling” and a big ol’ mug of white beer please!”
Line-up
Dextro – bagpipes, “bouzouki”, flute, whistles, guitar, hurdy-gurdy, vocals
Des Demonia – bagpipes, whistles, vocals, bouzouki
Luzi das L – bagpipes, whistles, bouzouki
Samtron – drums, percussion
Picus von Corvin – davul, percussion, programmed samples, electronic percussion
Production
Schelmish & Sven Neumann
Track list
01. Bist du bereit
02. Boulevard
03. Ãœberladen
04. Too late
05. Die hässlichen Kinder
06. For the Clansmen
07. 1212
08. Blähsucht
09. Goresh
10. Sommer
11. Strangers
12. Sag nur ein Wort
13. Mosaik
14. Für Euch
