Punk rock with a message in Catalan is going through a sweet moment thanks to bands like Crim. The Catalans fill venues like Razzmatazz from Barcelona without much difficulty and that says a lot about the state of health of the genre and above all the pull of this band from Tarragona.
The usual broken voice with contagious harmonies, riffs straight to the stomach, hummable solos and a fast and compact rhythmic base. The present “Death Songs” is another portion of ‘criminal’ punk rock to the delight of his legion of followers with some surprises like the spaghetti western sound of “We laughed so much.”
Recorded during the strictest confinement, locked up at Cal Pau Recordings with the now regular Santi García, “Death Songs” It is not a pandemic album, although the lyrics could not escape from that dystopian purgatory that we all suffered those days, portrayed allegorically in the rotten still life on the cover.
On this fourth album there are no paper boats or sandcastles, because nostalgia has no place. The dark present confronts us with the most existentialist and tremendous version of Crimwho sing to those “100 seconds for the world to end” andn the cut that gives the album its name.
His radically critical spirit is non-negotiable. There is the fatalistic portrait of his own hometown (“World Heritage”) and his lyrics against superficiality (“Shit summer”), the dictatorship of algorithms (“I’m fine without you”) and the political class that only thinks about keeping their easy chair (my favorite “Ultracentre”with that solo worthy of the best Brian May, and the solemn “Revolt of smiles”).
The level was very high “Our Father who art in hell” in 2019, best album in the punk and hardcore category on these same pages; but Crim have hit the nail on the head again with this “Cançons de mort”.