Buzzkill, a name that sounds like an enticing promise! It took the Montpellier-based band a few years to find their feet. The trio became a duo, Nolwenn gave up the drums to take up singing, leaving Ronni to play with his bass and amps, and the drums became synthetic... After a first EP released in 2024, the post-punk band is finally releasing their first album, Wasteland.
Let's start wandering in the wastelands in the middle of Nowhere, the third track on the album, with its gloomy synth melody, purring and scraping bass, but a feverish fast tempo. You'll find yourself jumping around, but with a gloomy expression on your face. Buzzkill explains that opting for synthetic drums pushed them towards faster tempos. In terms of sound aesthetics, we love these cold, grey, industrial textures.
From Shout onwards, Buzzkill had already taken us on a frenetic ride. The music is expressionistic, full of contrasts, twisted angles and radical biases to better express emotions and torments. Wasteland is an album full of intensity and energy (the title track races along at a frantic pace typical of the genre). This doesn't prevent the bass from thickening the atmosphere with its rumblings during misty breaks, while Nolwenn's deep, theatrical vocals seem to reach us from another reality. There's a hint of Siouxsie, but more sepulchral, more funereal. We are seduced by the dreamlike atmosphere of Deus Rex, the bizarre futuristic dissonance of the synths on There Must Be A Place. Are we dreaming? Are we dying? Are we mediums or just crazy people hallucinating?
The journey through the wastelands continues unabated. At the end of the ride, Isolation (no, it's not a cover of you-know-who) leaves us on a panicked note: Buzzkill goes off in all directions with an approach that owes as much to contemporary cold wave as it does to more Dadaist and arty batcave tendencies. It's music to listen to while sulking, but with your eyes rolling around in all directions. Wasteland is a beautiful album for losing your mind and running around Dr Caligari's psychiatric hospital.
