punk.cat: TURBOSTAAT

Monday 25 March 2024

TURBOSTAAT

"uthlande"

Year: 2020

Country: Germany

City: Husum

Label: PIAS

Format: CD, LP

Tracks: 12

Time: 36 min.

Genre: rock

Style: Emo Punk

Let's not kid ourselves, let's just keep it short: the new Turbostaat album Uthlande is a masterpiece. Actually the review could stop here, what else can you say? Well, one could point out that this time it's not a concept album like Abalonia and its predecessor. One could point out that the album is much harder and rougher than its predecessor. But one could also point out that the choruses are more melodic.

A lot of the album has to be seen in the context of the Northern Lights, after all, it's not for nothing that the album is called Uthlande, an old term for islands, halls and marshes off the North Frisian mainland (see also Uthlande). The opening piece, Rat Line North, is very good. Anyone who knows the video already knows what it's about. The Rat Line North was an escape route for the Nazis, who did not go south, but first up to Flensburg. Statements from the Nuremberg Trials are incorporated into the song. And it's hard to hear the language of the perpetrators in a song that is also about the fact that it could soon happen again. An important song and perhaps that's why it's a more successful opening to the album than any other.

But the other songs are also tough. There are Luzi and Stormi, who share a few lines of text, which you only notice after several listens because they are delivered completely differently. Both probably also refer to Theodor Storm or Luzi is probably a great-grandson of Theodor Storm, a city or island original. One song is upbeat, the other is melancholic, diffuse, with strange, overlapping parts towards the end.

And so there are many parts on the album that are surprising. Night terrors are so hard that they could have been on the band's first albums. Schwienholt inspires with his anthemic refrain. Meisengeige is based on the work of Louis Soutter, a Swiss Art Brut artist.

Then I still have to praise the wonderful vinyl edition, which unfortunately I don't own. Uthlande comes on 180 gr. vinyl including CD. The album is also released in digipak and as an MC. These two editions are also lovingly designed with a booklet and all texts. Maybe I'll order another version of this...

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