It’s always nice to hear new music in the form of yesterdays or decades gone by or in terms of genre. This may be even more true in the case of musicians who come from a background of extreme metal.
This is just the case for Publicist UK, who have created a post-punk era album with some catchy and at times heavy edge. The band consists of David Obuchowski (Goes Cube, Distant Correspondent) on vocals, Brett Bamberger (Revocation, ex-East of the wall) on bass, Zachary Lipez (ex Fresh Kills) on guitars and the one and only Dave Witte (Municipal Waste, Melt Banana, Discordance Axis, Burnt by the Sun et al) on drums. It could be quite a surprise that this group decided to create this type of music. But when it comes down to it music fans will play what they find interesting and inspiring as well as having fun doing it.
The songs are unique, each one going with a different feel and sound. “Cowards” has some fantastic hypnotic riffs and memorable gang vocals, while “Slow Dancing to this Bitter End” has some discussion and focus on materialistic ideas.
Vocally David does a fantastic job doing Ian Curtis meets Robert Smith mixed with a dash of Sisters of Mercy goth!
Vocals are powerful, clear and concise and on “Levitate the Pentagon” you hear him say “Pains a secret no one keeps” and then “You’re the lie that I believe” and later he adds more to the insightful tune by adding “half our friends are in recovery, half our friends are dead.” Later the “Blood Relative” starts out fairly mellow but has some very crushing riffs possibly reminiscent of early Isis (the band). “Telegraphing” could be the most catchy, beautiful song Joy Division never wrote.
All over this record the listener can’t help but recognize the tight playing and passion the band performs with. Dave demonstrates that his type playing style is perfect for this type of music and the drums push these songs up into the fore front of the listeners’ ears while Brett adds that missing link between good song and great song by adding a back drop of distorted and clean loud bass work.
Maybe the biggest compliment to this band is Zachery’s guitar playing. It sounds almost seemless as he blends post rock, gothic, shoe gaze and Neurosis style leads to create an insatiable hunger for all fans of the post punk genre.
The surprises here are interesting and fun and go a long way to tuning new and old fans’ ears in a new emotive, depressive yet beautiful high. One can only imagine what the likes of producer Martin Hannet and music reporter would have said about this album had it come out in the late seventies or early eighties! So if the listener gives Forgive Yourself a good overnight listening party they might just admit that this older genre still has a lot to offer!
Solid.
