As we've mentioned a few times before, the first bit of advice we always give a new band is to make their name memorable and easily 'googleable' - I say that as if actual real musicians ask us for advice, which would be hugely inadvisable for so many reasons. Certainly Swedish band DULL didn't get the message, and in my attempts to find them I half expected that googling variants of 'Dull Music' and 'Dull Band' would simply result in lists of 70's prog rock bands, interspersed with Of Monsters and Men photos. Thankfully it didn't, and up popped Swedish band Dull, and it's their new track 'Bad' that's our Single of the Week. - it was released today.
They're a new name to Nordic Music Review, but band members have played in other Swedish punk rock bands, notably previously NMR featured Dead Vibrations, the still 'alive and kicking' Twin Pigs (they released their charmingly titled 'Godspeed Little Shit-Eater' album earlier this year), and Boris and the Jeltsins, who I'd have featured just for an excuse to make (more) bad Boris Johnson 'jokes', but sadly they've not released anything since 2013.
I guess the main criteria for a punk rock track is that it should short and loud, and of course 'Bad' definitely ticks those boxes - it's 2 minutes of raucous, driven, high tempo guitar noise with an anthemic shouty chorus, a catchy feel throughout and a great mini pause half way through, as if the band needs 1/2 second to catch breath.
Vocalist Canan Rosén from the band has told us more about the song: "From the beginning we wanted to sound like American artist 'Bully'. That's not how it really turned out. At least the song has a skewed chord progression and a catchy outro melody which some people claim is 'to die for'. Also the detail-orientated person might notice we play downstrokes throughout the whole song. An accomplishment in and of itself given the tempo!"
Really enjoyed this, as I did previous track 'You're Lame', which they released last month. Their debut album 'Deep Dive Down' is due for release on February 17th next year through Startracks records. Looks like it's 10 tracks long, which I'm guessing equates to just 20 mins of high energy noise. Looking forward to it.
Single cover by Louise Erdman.