Maybe this is and always has been more of a record that I wanted to like, than one that I really did like. I don’t recall the review I wrote for my fanzine, when “Out from the Void” came out, but I tend to believe that it wasn’t bad at all. Yet, in the years to follow, I sold the two copies I had of it. And when yesterday, I saw this single by ANTISECT for a reasonable price at some record store nearby, I just thought, what the hell – I’m buying this, but no matter what, I’m keeping it this time!
So I gave it some rounds today. I immediately knew what it was that I never liked, and that’s how the first song starts off. With these loud, reverby snare beats that sound like coming from some hairmetal band, and the main riff which sounds like many main riffs from particularly british punk bands that had caught the Metallica bug around the mid 80s (think of Concrete Sox or Broken Bones). But after a while, as the song evolves, I cannot deny a certain force it delivers. It’s well played, with a rather shitty production and yeah, the drumming is not the best, but it has some kind of a dark, eerie atmosphere that I’m fond of. The same could be said, except for the shittier metal parts, about the flipside. Generally, I appreciate the the way this single is done: No song titles, no info, just very basic, like a statement of some kind of urgency.
Don’t even talk about “In Darkness, there’s no Choice”, ANTISECT’s masterpiece, released two years prior to this. In a way, it’s grotesque to see how much the band changed and how little they seem to have understood what they did on the LP and what was so extraordinarily great about it. But that’s something you encounter quite often, maybe it’s even the regular process: Follow-up albums sometimes are trying too hard to come up with something new, at least from bands that are not just re-doing their formula over and over again. Maybe that’s a sign of artistic creativity and some form of bravery, whether or not the band succeeds. And when you listen to today’s boring crap in what’s left of the Punk or Hardcore scene, even a halfway failed attempt as this one here still gets the credit of at least trying something that was new at the time.
Out from the Void – Part 1.mp3
Out from the Void – Part 2.mp3
