If the Sex Pistols popularized the slogan “No future”, now Pilseners return to the front line of the barricades with a new work titled “There is no tomorrow” (Kasba, 22) which has a very combative and apocalyptic design.
Take note: there is no tomorrow, the future is now, and the veteran Catalan band wants to be part of the soundtrack of the revolts of the present.
I make an appointment with the two guitarists from Pilseners, Guifré and Joan, in a bar next to the mythical Tallers street in Barcelona to find out all the details of this return to the musical arena. Strangely, no one orders a beer; things of health and age, I suppose. None of us here are kids anymore. “We met when we were sixteen or seventeen and we rode Pilseners. Ten years later, in 2004, we released the last album but we had reached a point of exhaustion in terms of generating ideas and creativity. At the time we did not release any announcement of dissolution of the group or anything like that; the cycle had simply ended, period. Then each one went his own way”.
Eighteen years later the group launches “There is no tomorrow” as if it were a Molotov cocktail, a length that contains eleven new street punk hits with touches of oi! and also rock’n’roll. “With this album we have not sought speed but forcefulness. The recording process was tough but we had very clear ideas when we got to the studio. We are very happy with the result: we have managed to do something worthy and that sounds current, although it has been like a painful birth”.
“If we don’t keep an eye on it, we’ll end up without a place to live, and that fits perfectly with the apocalyptic concept of the album.”
The album cover and the artwork in general are very striking, showing a Barcelona on fire, semi-destroyed by the popular revolts that have recently taken place in Barcelona. Some titles speak for themselves: “Rock for independence”, “We will return to the streets”, “Urquinaona”… Joan and Guifré explain it: “We wanted to give an apocalyptic focus to the album derived from the COVID pandemic, from the revolts of 2017, etc. Always under the premise of destroying everything to create something new. You have to do it now. Whatever happens, we are not happy with what is there and we are going to destroy it so that something new can be born”.
That idea of destroying everything you don’t like is very punk, but the concept of building something positive later from the ruins is more like hardcore. The reasons? Pilseners have them clear. “We have lived a large part of our lives with Pujolismo and we were already tired. When we were young we had the hope that there could be a significant change and it has not been like that; The faces are changing but the speech is the same as always. We have gotten worse as a society. It seemed that the pandemic was going to give a wake-up call that would mean a radical turn in many aspects, but most things remain the same.
Next we get into the field of letters, an aspect that Pilseners he takes care of detail and this is evident in the elaborate texts of songs such as “Crucified”, “Third World War”, “We are a generation” o “Jove pilot”. “Marc’s lyrics are very thought out word for word. It is not trivial to write a good letter. That of ‘Crucificat’, for example, may have certain reminiscences of the hymn ‘Crucified’, like the crucified skin and all that, but after all, it talks about all those people who, because they don’t follow conventional rules, are left out of the system and that same system crucifies and stigmatizes them. Even if you are not skin or punk, in some way you have experienced it in your own flesh “. “Third World war”, on the other hand they wrote it “during the pandemic and is about its effects on personal relationships, but with everything that is happening in Ukraine it has taken on a new meaning. Hopefully we are not at the gates of a Third World War. The lyrics of this song can also be interpreted as an alert about the critical climate situation on the planet: if we don’t keep an eye on it, we’ll end up without a place to live, and that fits perfectly with the apocalyptic concept of the album”.
The letter that is not so obvious is that of “We are a generation” because at no time is anyone specifically named. “We are a generation marked by the murder of Guillem Agulló. At that time there was a lot of violence by Nazi groups and Guillem had to pay for all of them. There is a Guillem Agulló inside each one of us”. Pilseners It arose at the beginning of the nineties as a response to all that rise of neo-Nazi groups in the city; there was a real danger that could be felt. Then things calmed down. Now it is different, it is not so tangible. After so many years after the murder, Jordi still maintains contact with Guillem Agulló’s family and from there came the idea of making a tribute song and having the collaboration of his sister Betlem for the lyrics.. “The song is a tribute that could be extended to all those who have lost their lives at the hands of fascism.”
Changing the third, the new album by Pilseners It was presented live for the first time at the end of 2022 in the Bóveda room in Barcelona, so I ask you about the feelings you had on stage. “We were very nervous but we managed to get a very positive adrenaline rush. Everything flowed well, we were comfortable and the people reacted in an incredible way, especially to the new songs. There was no room for anyone else in the room, we had exhausted the available tickets. The gig was intense, we played twenty-three songs reviewing our entire musical career and we had a great time”.
Even so, we continue to be concerned about the continuity of punk music, a style that has been waging war for almost half a century and that seems not to permeate as much with the younger generations. Is there relief? Is there interest on the part of the kids or will it die with us? Can it still be relevant after so many years? “At our concert we saw quite a few twenty-somethings and this gives us hope for the future of punk. We were afraid of being frozen in a photograph from twenty or twenty-five years ago, without a doubt the atmosphere is not the same as in the nineties, but what is good about punk is that it is an aggressive kick, a brutal adrenaline rush, and this is going to be maintained regardless of how old you are. Of course, new ways of doing punk or hardcore appear and things are evolving… Now the young groups that start playing are not so pigeonholed; New paths have appeared at a musical level. That eclecticism is positive and a healthier scene has been created. In addition, today’s kids have a great musical level and have much better equipment and means than what we had when we started”.
