Consisting of 6 tracks blessed by a unique, experimental blend of melancholy, mathy emo, a lot of howling, and a little shoegaze and grunge, the newest EP from Budapest based band BERRILOOM AND THE DOOM locates the point of confluence between the genres and offers a unique take on the possibilities of contemporary open-minded, well-balanced and charismatic rock. We caught up with the band to appreciate its artistry and give you a full track by track roundup below!
Here’s what the band had to say about the idea behind the record:
The title can be interpreted as the cohesive force between the lyrics and the aesthetics of the fanzine and the artwork. The album came out on a limited edition fanzine including download links. The zine reports about a tragically indifferent, ordinary office worker’s tragically average and not so serious existetntial crisis, which ordinariness is tragical in a very serious way. The lyrics tries to respond on this unsolvable and fatal despair of everyday life.
It’s a classic debut album, which pronounce us as a band, the coherence and unity between three people. The songs clearly represent our evolution as a band, from the adaptation of an old song to quite unlikely tracks. The cohesion of the album makes sense for itself, there are no serious conception apart from making seriously uncompromising music, music which entertains us. It’s just something added bonus if someone else enjoys it as well.
The band consists of Ákos Déri (vocals, guitar), Gábor Kővári (vocals, bass) and Gábor Kovács (vocals, drums).
A Lake Filled With Sand
The first one is a quite simple pop song about the tranquility of paralysis, when you’re facing with an unsolvable situation. You can not move forward, retrace, however you reiterate your track again and again. The song was set together in a few hours, it came as easy as it sounds. That uncomplicatedness tries to resonate between the music and the beforementioned feeling.
Poor Creature
The second is the newest track on the EP. The song is a bit like if Drive Like Jehu were covering some alt-pop and some gloomy metal tunes or whatevs. This one was also an easier affair. The lyrics are about the total loss of any expactations, when you regret that you were born. This awareness can be truly serious at times. In the studio we had some issues with that song, and the afterwork also was quite difficult with that one.
Frontal
One of our favourite tracks to play live. Frontal was a really difficult track to put together last year. The beginning theme sounded so catchy that we could not decide whether we should repeat it during the song or not. The ending theme just cleaned out of our minds. The entire song’s atmosphere and the pressure awake some memories of The Bends era Radiohead due to the vocals and the emotional shifts. The lyrics are about the state of being worried and mad at your hectically disorganized character, which pulls you back day by day to live an ordinary life with others, to love, or just to keep the things in mind. When anxiety turns into anger and vice versa.
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams was one of the greatest American poet ever, whose poetry incorporates a lot of delicate playfulness, purity, sharpness and transparency. His poem The Fool’s Song has been sliced, inscribed and overwritten. The song’s friskiness had a match with the rejoicement of editing and inscribing William Carlos Williams’ poems etc. Formerly we wanted to write some words dedicated to a pretty young amigo, Ágoston Samu, but this entertaining method can also be interpreted as a song written to a little boy unless being too sentimental.
Ears of Wheat
The song is a louder and more heavier adaptation of an older track from the Discontinuous Man LP. It’s an absolutely simle song (literally 4 chords), which was the first thing we have put together as a band. So it can be defined as an emotionally overloaded track, it is the first thing we have ever created together. The lyrics are about the pointless, irrational, unreal anger what you feel at night against everything. That uncontrolled, reckless and destructive behavior is only an inner storm, which splits only you apart and it may can not be so visible. Thus if you recognize this attitude or condition, you can force to reshape this tension to something more effective. We’ve also made a music video for that track with horses, snakes and stuff.
The Semaphore Line
The last song has a quite religious attitude, a little imaginary conversation with some divine companion, who is doubtlessly a hypthetical entity. The semaphore line was an optical telegraph invented in the late 18th century. Mostly towers with paddles, arms, and several moving shutter-systems. With these shutter-telegraph chains people could communicate faster and cheaper than before. The semaphore line was the precursor of the electric telegraph. We try to communicate using really complex sytems, with varied patterns and methods, however each of us are immured in our monadic dialogues with separeted imaginary partners, friends, people who futilely take part in that procedure.
