Clocking in at one minute and thirty seven seconds, ‘Apolitical’, the penultimate track on Strangers’ second self-titled release, could be considered Strangers’ version of an epic. Of the four other songs, two just pass the minute mark and the rest don’t even make thirty seconds. Strangers specialise in this fleeting brand of explosive, get-in-get-out hardcore, furious bursts of intensity and violence that are gone before you have time to fully comprehend what it is you’re even listening to. Each track is a sonic detonation, swathes of distortion spewing power chord fury, blitzkrieg drumming and the fractious cries of the damned. This is the true sound of catharsis.
Structures and separate parts start to emerge from the din on repeat listens, revealing the craft that has actually gone into what at first appear to be exercises in spontaneous combustion. This is composition on a microcosmic level, but without the tendency a lot of grindcore/power violence has to sounding like an experiment. None of this sounds like artifice, rather, each track feels like it has evolved of its own accord. Strangers’ music sounds oddly emotional, natural, and for lack of a better word soulful, for a style of music and track length that often leaves things sounding overly mathematical. Strangers are like a jam band operating at breakneck speed and with some serious group ESP.
The aforementioned ‘Apolitical’ is the definite outlier and true gem on this EP, almost entirely sonically distinct from the rest of the tracks. More an aural illustration of despair than fury, ‘Apolitical’ takes its time with a single, rolling bass line repeating for its entire, almost two minute run time, a groovy, surf/Peter Gunn-ish figure that bores its way through your consciousness underneath trebly, high-pitched guitar straight from Greg Ginn’s school of dissonance, and spirit-crushingly bleak and anguished cries. ‘Apolitical’ sounds like a man spent and broken after the destruction of the three fury-grenades before it, and calls to mind the sense of experimentalism and primal scream therapy evident in the dirge-y later tracks on Black Flag’s Damaged and Nick Cave’s early work with The Birthday Party.
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