A picture can paint a thousand words and this one, the cover of Ke has an incredibly striking one. A figure, possibly in lockdown looks out their window in screaming agony as what I assume is snow or maybe bird-shit coats everything in a charcoal vision of hell. It could be you, it could be me, it could be my next door neighbour thinking of throwing themselves out the window due to the fact “he’s playing that damn Trup album again and I just can’t cope!” It’s as well we have that picture as the track titles numerically sequenced, give nothing away. Trup continue what they did on the two EP’s preceding this, their debut album with 14 numbers entitled 15-28 They can run anything from under a minute to the finale a whopping 14. Once play is pressed, they come thick and fat in one harrowing caustic blur, there is no escape.
With last release ‘Szmula’ I declared V, B & P as mentalists and there is no changing that description of the Poles involved in this. Pigeonholing genre was not as easy, it’s a bit of everything including the kitchen sink, noise, grind, black & sludge will do for starters but the second I put this one on the overriding factor is a big abrasive coat of Crust! The sound of heaving punkish force assails the lugholes along with the sound of 3 primitive men battering their instruments and yelling for all they are worth. It’s an opening statement and a half, a DIY squat assault and filthy with it. Now its time to hang on for dear life as brute battering force takes over and for the next half an hour or so the listener is put through the wringer and can expect to come out bloody and bruised if they make it to the other end.
All 3 of our noisy reprobates join in vocally, yelling, screaming, gibbering and vomiting their parts out at all ranges. It’s quite spectacular just focussing on that part of it, not that the barrage from the musicianship is not going to distract you along the way. There is melody even if that is a lurching and maddening stumbling over itself assault and occasionally it slows allowing the vocals to seem even the more deranged in their lunacy. One thing I have noted between the two releases is that this has less (or indeed nothing) really in the way of electronic sounds adding atmosphere. It’s as though the group have said ‘fuck that, let’s just go for it” this time around, relying on distortion and feedback to fill in the gaps. It’s no bad thing either as the urgency and rawness here really help deliver the goods. You could look at a track like 19 which is just 31 secs of shrill feedback and a stop start drum pound but on the whole, this is an album that like a good set of batteries just keeps going and going, never running out of power and throwing the listener all over the place in the process. A sudden passage of silence with a fizzing noise whilst the vocals grow in the background is a sudden respite but its not long before things go absolutely nutzoid with bouncing drums, fuzzy bass and guitars and preposterous vocal gymnastics.
I would like to mention other bands but this is rather unique and I feel I would be stumbling around in the dark a bit, besides it’s difficult to think while I am being yelled at writing and listening in real time. Yep, I did mention track 28 being 14 minutes long. I could just cheat and say it is a massive amalgamation of everything that came before it but nothing can really prepare you for it or listening to the album as a whole. That’s something I can only urge you to do at the Bandcamp link below so you too can wallow in this depraved filthy, glorious noisy bastard of an album. Progression, forget that, however it easily gets an extra mark on the last one from me. Sorry neighbours, I’m playing this again….
(8/10 Pete Woods)
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