Not Quiet on the Eastern Front

Teenage Panzerkorp
Harmful Emotions LP
Siltbreeze (SB83), 2007

Afternoon, comrades. Just wanted to take a few minutes out of your busy Friday to request that you do two things over the weekend. First, go and take a look around Marble Stature, my good friend and Columbus legend Sean "Seanzilla" Wright's fantastic music blog that is the major inspiration behind what I'm doing here. How Sean finds time between graduate school at RISD (finals this weekend) and songwriting duties in the Stapler to come up with such dead-on cultural analysis remains a miracle. He'll be writing for the Z-Gun print zine as well. A complete joy to read. Next, get out and buy a copy of the new limited edition LP by Teenage Panzerkorp, also known as Der TPK (or even Teenage PzKps, if you are keeping track), the newest brigade in Lax's Siltbreeze army.
2007 will most definitely be the year of the Siltbreeze, and what a way to start out a season crammed full of incredible releases. After two cdr-EP's on the Pink Skulls label, the label run by Korps member Glenn Donaldson (of the Jewelled Antler collective...in fact every member minus singer Bunker Wolf are/were in various Jewelled Antler bands) and a 7'' reissue of the Gleich Heilt Gleich EP on Skulltones, comes Harmful Emotions, the full-length that does nothing but further mystify these Bay Area bandits. The sound of TPK on Harmful Emotions is gloriously damaged art-punk. And I really mean damaged. If you've ever heard the fuzzed-out, ghostly sound of the legendary German Oak record you have an idea of where this is going. Bunker Wolf's heavily inflected German accent will surely pile-up the Mark E. Smith Dragnet-era comparisons, as it should, along with Lydon's howl. Plenty of Anglo post-punk love here. Also a total Mars obsession, as the guitars rhythmically swell and scatter like only the no wave legends could. Throw in some 60's-beat organ drones and another layer of mushroom cloud fuzz and you almost have it. Now, project that noise through air raid sirens across the Eastern Front and you have Harmful Emotions.
The songs are completely delirious. They start then stop, stomp along with the Neu! motorik, stop again, carry on in waves of feedback for minutes at a time, then coagulate into a muddy ballad straight out of Peter Laughner's bedroom. There's a locked groove that ends Side A that moans like a demon for as long as you like, and when you start Side B that melody is reinterpreted in song. Fucking amazing. All of it fits perfectly alongside Siltbreeze's most cherished albums, nudging up with Harsh 70's Reality or Under the Blood Red Lava Lamp just fine. A psychedelic-punk mindfuck of the highest order! I could go on and on but lemme just say that this is instant cult material. Limited to only 500 vinyl copies, you better get in now. Try your local record dealer or, if you prefer the online method, Midheaven and Aquarius still have copies. Don't sleep.