Artist: Bosanski Psiho (Diplomatz alias Damir Avdić)
Label: Moonlee Records
Released: 2008
At last, something for the lovers of pastoral music again. Straight out of Tuzla, the tireless master of verbal masochism Damir Avdić a.k.a. Diplomatz is storming the gates once more! Mrtvi su mrtvi follows the controversial debut …od trnja i žaoka, which saw the light of day in 2004, and it’s the second album from our Bosnian nightingale, on which Damir drills even deeper into the banality of postwar Bosnian society.
Damir Avdić is basically your typical Bosnian loudmouth, but with one big difference! A true-blue rocker, he uses a cold vocal delivery and the skillfully wielded sharpness of his own vocabulary, stripped of compromises and illusions, to fence himself off from the makeup-wearing poseurs of the turbo-oriented ex-Yugo scene. Damir is merciless, and some wouldn’t hesitate to call him plain nuts. Fuck Trkaj, and fuck that even bigger Trnovo clown Klemen, because real controversy gets forged on the hilly ground between the Drina and the Neretva. The sheer willfulness with which Damir, riding a wave of indescribably aggressive guitar noise, shoots down and grinds to dust everything that dares cross his path without a second thought is simply unrivaled. His words cut deep into your consciousness, and with the communication channels wide open they stir up painful memories of the recent past, which probably also explains the distrustful glance toward the future.
A singular brand of singer-songwriting, with a raw “philosophical” approach and a vocabulary pushed to the extreme, brimming with aggressive spitting in every direction, knocks your teeth out right from the start with Komunist Vs. nju bosniše kultural revolušn. Sure, Damir spits, swears and provokes nonstop, but his anger is completely justified and, most importantly, often comes straight from the heart without any mind control (censorship). His uncompromising take on the split between moral norms in the modern Balkans leaps right over well-chewed-over civilizational confrontations, this time soaked mainly in the unforgiving crossroads of post-socialist conflicts, loaded with an enviable dose of intolerance and that typical Balkan temperament, which, given the theme of the whole album, could probably remind you of a transcript of Bulatović’s minutes from the 14th Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia! Under the sharpness of Damir’s tongue, the old ideals turn into caricatures, though you can always sense a measure of sympathy for the guiding principles of the past. Mrtvi su mrtvi, Miran kao mina and Ljubavi are simple yet shattering mirrors of the mental state of probably most of the little countries of the former Yugoslavia, which, in their teenage years, caught in the vise of an East-versus-West power struggle, are completely lost and busy mainly with searching for their own identity. No two ways about it. The world that Damir Avdić lays bare in front of us without a shred of hesitation is cruel, but all too real.
Lineup
Damir Avdić: vocals, guitar
Production
Damir Avdić & Dragan Divjak
Tracklist
1.Komunist Vs nju bosniše kultural revolušn
2.Osječam se slobodnim
3.Ljubavi
4.Miran kao mina
5.Po asfaltu i betonu
6.Mrtvi su mrtvi
7.Lijeni spori mrtvi
8.Rahatluk
9.Sjećaću se tebe ja
10.Dobro došli
11.Revolucija je prošla
12.Baš
Album length: 38.28
