Pora Konchat – self titled album review
http://www.myspace.com/porakonchat
A one who’s enough familiar with Russian post-punk scene can easily find out that a kind of weird picture appears: the public prefer to ignore the native scene, being sure that there’s nothing interesting, so they prefer to dream about west. The same thing happens with many bands. But whereas these bands try to make their sound a western one, sometimes even swelling “westernism” from themselves, we have an unexpected strike of Russian post-punk from the Moscow band “Pora Konchat”. So we have the band’s self-titled album, which, actually, may seem a demo by its design and pressing. But its sound is much closer to an album one. For a start, the music may seem a bit artificial and some patience is needed to start listening to it without an effort. For the stuff itself, it’s a well balanced mixture of punk and aristocracy by lyrics and spirit, which takes its references in the 80’s Soviet post-punk/new wave scene. But if to mention texts, that’s a wound in the band’s body. Since they all are in Russian, they’re pretty long and whereas they seem really well as “messages”, they’re exactly weak as poems, so if there was a competition for the most ridiculous lyrical constructions, “Pora Konchat” could have a chance to win a prize.
So in conclusion we have a very Russian reflection of post-punk music, in which even quoting Jim Morrison and Patti Smith doesn’t add western approach. The album is done very well, though, of course, not perfect. And having these nice impressions about it I certainly will pay attention to the band’s future achievements with much interest.
Grade: 8/10
Pall ‘Nattsol’ Zarutskiy
‘Grave Jibes Fanzine’
