Atterkop – The Debut Full-Length ‘Liber Abaci’.
Atterkop – Bristol, England, United Kingdom.
Cover photo credit: Pay No More Than Photography – Click Here.
An album as hard-hitting in its beliefs as much as it is in its vibrant and genre-crossing Punk-Rock sound, Liber Abaci is chaotic, intense and quite beautiful in its focussed, tenacious and unrelenting rage.
Now if that doesn’t make you want to read on I don’t know what will. Perhaps some name drops for those aficionados? The band cite ‘…the cream of Ska-Punk bands from early 2000’s (King Prawn, Capdown, Five Knuckle) fusing this sound with a more politically aggressive sentiment.’
You listen to the album and quickly hear the company this Ska-Punk is keeping. Skate Punk, old-school Hardcore and its more modern variant, as well as the dark and cutting melodies and abrasiveness of contemporary Crust Punk are all well and truly entrenched, as is a very welcome and well deployed Post-Hardcore appeal lathered over the top of the wound this band are creating in the sound barrier.
\\Liber Abaci//
If you haven’t already guessed, the album is an absolute thrill-ride.
‘Introduction’ is the calm before the storm and the opening notes of ‘Every Boy, Every Girl’ inform you of the melodic destruction that is about befall you. The Hardcore Punk/Dub crossover of ‘Trees Will Fall’ in its warning against humankind’s reckless natural exploitation is somewhat disjointed but seems to rescue itself from the sharp change in direction.
‘Safer Spaces’ for the most part is a pure Dub/Hardcore Punk crossover but for the driven melodic guitar leads that give a hint of Crust Punk to the mix. By this point you find yourself less bothered by the sharp direction changes, instead embracing the formation of band’s signature Punk-Rock.
The passion put into this release pulsates from the slower, riff-laden tracks as much as it does the breakneck pace or the deceptively gentle Ska and Dub infusions. ‘Break The Sequence’ gives us a taster of this before the tempo is amped up again for the supercharged “crack rock steady” of ‘General Practitioner’.
The melodic guitars are a highlight of the Atterkop sound, despite their forte lying in fast, abrasive and discordant tenacity. The likes of From Ashes Rise come to mind, as well as a slight penchant for a more stripped melodic sound in the likes of ‘Hope Will Float’.
‘Forgotten, Found’ sounds akin to old-school Fugazi if it had happened now and focussed more on the Dub influence. The whole album is conditioned with this more technical, precisely chaotic Post-Hardcore agenda but in ‘Forgotten, Found’, it really shines.
Picket Fence is by far the best track on the album. Its blunt and to the point, showing Atterkop for who they are and musically, the more melodic Crust Punk sound wouldn’t be without its almost mischievous brass and Ska-string flutter.
Atterkop’s skill is something that can’t fault. Punk may a lot of the time be simple music and technique brashly sped-up but the skill to do so that fast should never be underpinned. Atterkop show themselves off throughout with the simple, the fast and the complex standing equally tall in their layered sound.
The albums final two punches one and the same with the previous nine and are well worth your time, off you go.
Find all things Atterkop below:
- For updates, head to Facebook and Twitter.
- For digital and hardcopies, head to Atterkop’s bandcamp page.
- The band are currently on Riotska Records who carry a huge number of amazing band’s so do check them out on Facebook, Twitter, bandcamp and their Official Website.
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