A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Do You Really Wanna Know? LP by Plizzken. I confess that European punk (the stuff from mainland Europe – not from the British Isles) has often been a pretty hard sell, to me. I don’t mean that to come off as a slight or cultural bias, the music is just often hit or miss for me; even going back to albums like The State of Punk To Come and albums by bands like Millencolin, the music had to work unreasonably hard to generate favorable notice, for me, and that has never really changed – over the years. With that longstanding hesitation to really give Euro-punk a chance in mind, I feel like it’s saying something that, with the Do You Really Wanna Know? LP, Plizzken has really broken through the glass ceiling, for me. I’ve reviewed some of the band’s releases before, but Do You Really Wanna Know? Is the one which is truly worthy of praise, and really qualifies as an achievement.
As soon as “On The Hunt” opens the A-side of the album, Plizzken hits the ground running with more verve and power on previous releases. Singer Sebi Walkenhorst howls loud but without getting too ornate in his vocal melody, and guitarists Silvio Schlesier and Erik Henning, bassist Markus Walther and drummer Stefan Herz all fall quickly find their positions behind him in a needs-first kind of way; no extra sparks of chaos and no flash is thrown in, the band just blasts in and blasts out again. That first cut is a simple statement – and it’s perfect.
After “On The Hunt” gets the album moving, Piizzken begins shifting gears regularly to show listeners that they have have more to offer than just one note. “One More Time,” ironically, downshifts and flies through a great boot boy blast before “Nassau Nightlife” grunts its way through some beefy street punk and “Mad World” relies on gang vocals and leaner guitar tones to really get over with listeners, but the greatest surprise appears on the B-side of the album – when “Life Won’t Wait” converts what might have started as a stock song cribbed from Rancid into a great, classic punk anthem. There, Walkenhorst aims to just entertain with his lyrics, but this set quickly turns into something more affirming as listeners realize that while the standard hard luck and hard lessons lyrics are here, but also lines which actively tell listeners to take and ensure that no one gets hurt along the way through. “Life Won’t Wait” comes off as being almost hypnotic because, as was also true elsewhere on the album, no contrived sparkle gets added to prop up the song – it doesn’t need that – the guitars, bass and drums just batter listeners until they’re starry-eyed, and all they’ll do is ask for more – in the end.
As the B-side progresses, listeners will find more to love than just “Life Won’t Wait.” “Enough Is Enough” blasts out with pop-punk bombast and acoustic punk delicacy in the same song, in the name of highlighting diversity of form and it works surprisingly well, “Off To Reality” hey-hey-heys its way into a blissful state of contentment which sounds familiar but still plays as fresh and the album’s title track revives New Wave-era Against Me pop punk in a way that (defying probability) manages to not sound contrived. There’s really no way to overstate how easy it would have been for Plizzken to come off as a parody of both punk and themselves utilizing the tools they used to make Do You Really Wanna Know?, but there’s no denying that the album plays really well and can easily justify repeated listens on any day, at any time. It’s surprising how easy it is to say that this album marks a leap both up and forward for Plizzken and, after having run front-to-back with the album, it becomes very easy to hope for more music of the same calibre. Here’s hoping…. [Bill Adams]
Artist:
https://www.plizzken.com
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Album:
Plizzken’s Do You Really Wanna Know? LP is out now. Buy it here, directly from Pirates Press Records.
