Punk – like beer, coffee and films about people in space fucking each other up with laser swords – is an uncomplicated thing. So why do so many people get it wrong? We get it, you have frills you wanna throw in, but throw in one too many and you’ve got a holy mess on your hands – or a record that no one gives a toss about.
Luckily, no one told Montreal’s Impotentie, whose punk racket is gloriously straight-ahead, beautifully ugly and a gritty pleasure to spend time with. Ok, it’s not without the aforementioned
frills (more specifically, they sing in Flemish… because why not, eh?) but its charms are rooted in the fuck-you-up brutality of hardcore, the fuzzed-out vim of your garage rock faves and a
direct simplicity that sounds like the gloopy chaos that comes out when you throw your turntable into a cement mixer. You know, just to see how the records sound inside churning liquid
concrete.
With members of Thee Nodes and Omegas on board, you know what you’re getting yourself into here. You can taste the bitterness of service station coffee, smell the beer-soaked floors of crappy
dive bars and feel the blown-out bass of rotting PAs – it’s the product of lifers who love the road and it hits home hard. Even if Demostratieve Opnamens (‘demonstrative recordings’) turns out to
be the only document this band ever produce, it’s a bundle of energy you’ll wanna drape all over yourself time and again.
"It's the sound of a greyly lit kitchen in some nothing town with pitched roofs and gables, the smell of stale cigars and vinegar and the taste of meat in a tube on moist bread with watery
coffee"
- Jonah Falco
