Just a few words today on guitar rock noise merchants Spielbergs. After the summer break it’s nice actually to be writing about relatively new releases, and ‘Vestli’ was came out just 2 weeks ago. It’s the bands 2nd album, a follow up to the excellent ‘This is Not the End’, which started as a buzz for the pre-album singles on small websites like this one, and ended up with reviews in NME, Pitchfork, the Guardian and a whole host of far more important places.
Somewhat ironically Spielbergs toured Europe with the album ‘This is Not the End’ just a couple of months before Covid struck, kindly stopping off on a quiet Sunday night in Manchester along the way. The success of that album was well deserved, helped by the fact that it had a huge stand out track in ‘We Are All Going To Die’.
Of course that does make Vestli quite tricky, because the benchmark they set with the lead song and album was so high. But actually for me the new release is more complete, coherent and probably polished too, whilst still retaining that rawness of sound they achieved in their debut.
Opening tracks are the blistering ‘The New Year’s Resolution’ and ‘When they Come for Me’, with the familiar mix of staccato and brutal guitars, yet with an attractive easy to like vocal melody to carry the song through. ‘Go!’ Is probably the closest to their big hit from the album, whilst in ‘Goodbye’ they venture into a previously uncharted direction with post rock poise, strings and a reflective break from the almighty racket of noise.
But of course it’s noise that these guys do so well, and ‘Me and My Friends’ and in particular the ‘Brother of Mine’ set the album back off at pace, with the searing ‘George Mcfly’ my personal favourite, alongside the irresistible concluding slow builder ‘You Can Be Yourself with Me’
At 12 tracks too it’s a fairly substantial release, and so relentless that I realise that it might not be quite everyone’s thing - the barrage of guitars do sometimes drown out the vocals and lyrics. But this is an excellent album, and Spielbergs remain at the forefront of Nordic Noise Rock, and they’re still the one band of their type most likely to start appearing more regularly at bigger European festivals.
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