Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Artist: Demolition Group
Label: Self-released
Release: 2011
Duration: 51:56
Rating: 4.8/5
Is it the release of the year or not? That was the dilemma we faced after a decade of total musical absence and lazy, deep slumber, during which the contours of both the “real” and the “imaginary” world and universe changed radically and reshaped themselves, and the passion for creating again finally flared up. Demolition Group are undoubtedly a phenomenon of the Slovenian music scene and, with their poetics of a slightly different kind of love and longing, one of the main pillars of alternative music on this side of the Alps. Almost three decades of existence in various incarnations has put Brežice on the map of the most important and promising music happenings here – from the days when they were Gast’r’bajrt’s, Temni angeli usode, or in the final form of creative shake-up – under the umbrella name Demolition Group. They were never commercially minded, but in their own rebellious way they always followed the tectonic shifts of the world and of thought, sticking to their own punk-inspired path of defiance and artistic revolt. The record Planet starcev is no exception, as the main common thread of this deliberate leap into a state of knowingly embraced studio stress is the expression of disagreement with a world of capitalist depravity and hollowed-out ideals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oUrbOwA_sM
As Matjaž Pegam, the behind-the-scenes member of Demolition Group and a fully fledged eminence among the six rulers of their own DG world, put it in an interview, “recording records for Demolition Group is stressful in its own way. In the creative process, opinions clash as ego trips assert themselves. We didn’t start a new album because we’d set it as some big goal. No. The tracks started coming together and the need was born to package them into a whole. We’re not a band that follows the rock’n’roll rule that you have to put out a record every two years. We don’t want a mould.” That’s backed up by their willful retreat into the safe haven of a peculiar anonymity and silence for a full ten years. Then the time for rock’n’roll came, and in this primal feeling of total surrender to unbridled impulses, the renewed line-up, bolstered by two new members, was able to forge a bundle of “unlucky” thirteen tracks and offer it to listeners, returning to the alternative throne of undisputed despots of sound.
If youth is the time of rebellion, revolt and loud opposition, and old age the period of conformism and stubborn rotting away in the stagnant moment of an eternal status quo, many might jump too quickly to the conclusion that Demolition Group have succumbed to the spell of ageing, but that simply doesn’t hold up. Despite almost sixty years on their shoulders, Demolition Group squeezed out of their innards a loud, freshly loud, screaming creature that fervently voices its disagreement with the world around it in the best and most authentic way possible. Neovangelij is the closest match in their discography when it comes to making the decibel needles jump, as the elementary challenging of self-proclaimed masters, gods, corporations and ideological enslavers is set up this time so that it’ll be damn hard to ignore or miss. The basic strategy unfolds with the opening track Gospodar, in which a noisy desire for liberation shows itself. As singer Goran Šalamon puts it, “the free sky is the antipode to a world of rules, laws, cloning that has gone to unimaginable dimensions. Relationships are only held together through legal sanctioning. In this confused forest of rules, the open, free sky above us is closing.” What will win you over amid the fat bass lines of Tomi Gregl, which are outstandingly and rawly complemented by the muscular tone of the gifted drummer Ivica Gregl and the body of the old, well-known beast from the past, is the fact that Demolition Group sound rejuvenated and even sharper than before. You barely miss the former bass wizard and longtime comrade-in-arms Nikola Sekulović, though it’s true that the collective consciousness now sounds a bit different together and damn well spiced. Nimam rad boga continues the string of excellence, where the apparent atheism of blasphemous defiance of the norms of religiosity puts the blinded palette of the world in the crosshairs more than any standard deities. Religion is the opium of the masses, Marx wrote in his day, and Demolition Group line up all the generators of intolerance for the firing squad – corporations, laws, political careerists and gurus. Dan dolgih sanj ramps up an anxiety that fits damn well and that we’d been missing in this form. The juicy guitar sound of Bojan Fifnja and the screaming sax melodies of Jože Pegam, together with the growling voice – by the sound of it, drenched in sweat – of singer Goran Šalamon, complement each other in a punk-funkadelic play of form and content so that it forces you to dance, with the peak of that dance being the song Stokrat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-v4Pz-4A5dY
There’s no deliberate radicalism or overkill here. It’s as if Demolition Group had consciously set a ceiling on their experimenting and decided this time to go for a less stressful, yet certainly challenging, organic blending of the five elements and blood nectar into a shared chalice – but in proven, non-revolutionary doses. Novelties are for young zealots, and the declared settling into a juicy old-school retro mood is far from boring or tiring you out, or needlessly stealing your time. The intro to the outstanding Romantika sounds almost like something straight out of the film Odpisani, and on the track Še in več you sway into a haze of pure jazz-punk that aims to smash through mental walls by picking up speed. “In broad daylight I steal your future / I bash, I grab liars in the eyes / I soothe you, stroke you and some day comfort you / Just like me, you can too …” goes a chorus that could accompany the rhetoric of a pension reform. No less is delivered by the outstanding, rhythmically bristling Kriv sem za vse, which Demolition Group infuse in their own way with cynicism and humorous bitterness. And so it goes on – a flight from one extreme and elation to another moment of only temporary calm. The unwritten and indefinable peak of the record ignites with the intro of Planet starcev – an outstanding vignette of all the states only fleetingly described before, which, through mounting pain and a racing heartbeat, dissolves like mist on the skerries of a firm and decisive cut on the words of the title track. A sense and foreboding of passing heralds another farewell, topped off by the dreamy ballad kiss of the song Ljubiva za svet. The salvation of this rotten world can only be procreation and generation – a rebirth that we can reach only through genuine, sweaty physicality and effort.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qq2_aBZaTmA
The poetry of sex, fucking and swaying hips glorifies the passion and nectar of indestructible youth, and a record about ageing and the fragility of existence dreams of and calls for an eternal spring, the kind that makes it worth being alive, pulsing and yearning for more. Planet starcev may not bring a pile of novelties at first glance, but as a whole it feels confident and fresh, and it satisfies even the most demanding lovers of quality music. Demolition Group have exceeded all expectations! Correction – they merely confirmed their status as music elite, which only a few can match on our turf. In style and with a creative power that we can only hope will never dry up!
Line-up
Goran Šalamon – vocals
Bojan Fifnja – guitar, theremin
Ivica Gregel – drums, vocals
Tomi Gregel – bass, vocals
Jože Pegam – tenor sax, baritone sax, vocals
Matjaž Pegam – sound, finances, personnel
Production
Demolition Group
Tracklist
1. Gospodar
2. Nimam rad boga
3. Dan dolgih sanj
4. Stokrat
5. Nisva tu
6. Romantika
7. Še in več
8. Kriv sem za vse
9. Kak dan
10. Nujno ni
11. Planet starcev – intro
12. Planet starcev
13. Ljubiva za svet
