Thought Police Brutality

The Final Battle For Total Control

Written by: PP on 08/01/2009 02:52:26

Thought Police Brutality are a pretty cool hardcore punk band originating from Denmark. You don't tend to hear much from the Danish punk scene, so I'm just gonna steal the introduction to this review to send a message to the punk scene in Denmark, hopefully resulting in a few bands or people with friends in bands seeing this: the Danish punk scene is criminally underground. Hardly anybody outside the tiny scene knows any of the punk bands in Denmark (aside from maybe Gob Squad, or Rock Hard Power Spray & Pinboys, who aren't really that punk anyway) because there isn't any coverage of the scene in any of the music magazines. Perhaps the bands just aren't there, but I for one refuse to believe that Denmark, the country that has indie bands, metal bands, and even hardcore bands (The Psyke Project anyone?) of international quality cannot produce a bunch of quality punk rock bands as well! But it doesn't have to be this way. Send us your stuff because I'd fucking love to hear it and you'll have visibility to tens of thousands of people every month...Alright, rant over, and back to the Thought Police Brutality review, whose name apparently stems from the George Orwell novel "1984".

"The Final Battle For Total Control" is their debut EP and contains seven tracks. It's angry, brutal, pissed off, politically charged hardcore punk, played sloppily and with attitude. Speed, fiery yelling and screaming are of primary importance here, melody of secondary. Not that there isn't enough melody scattered across the record, because for instance the opener "Pathology" had me singing along a few times on the chorus. The rhythm changes in "Quiet, Please!" are to my liking as well. "Dissent" continues on the same route of "yell yell yell yell yell slow rhythm down for the chorus, return speed, yell yell yell yell", but it's pretty cool after a few listens. Initially it might feel like the guys are smashing their guitars on your skull trying to make as much damage as possible, but soon you'll realize that these guys play their style with conviction. Think Sick Of It All's "Leader" with slightly sloppier, home-made production, make it a bit more punk than hardcore, throw in some semi-clean vocal melodies, and you're pretty close. Now there are a lot of ways how all this could go really wrong, but luckily the band doesn't take themselves too seriously, so the overall vibe isn't ruined. For instance, in their promo material the band says they initially labeled themselves "academiacore" until they realized they'd rather be shouting obscenities at people at shows and that they weren't really that into their studies to start out with - it's generally written in a tongue-in-cheek way, so thumbs up from here.

Additional bonus comes in the form of the inclusion of a three-track DIY demo at the end of the album, where the production is absolutely horrible (it makes lo-fi garage sound good) where the band's vocalist screams for absolutely no reason in an otherwise decent punk rock track ("Nineteen Eighty-Nine"). The other two tracks aren't much to hooray for, but then again, they provide a nice basis of comparison to how much these guys have progressed since then. The first 7 tracks on the EP last only 11 minutes so you know what you're going in for, but for what it's worth, Thought Police Brutality are an excellent example that talent and potential does indeed exist in the Danish punk rock scene - you are now under our "Danish bands to watch" magnifying glass.

7

Download: Pathology, Quiet Please!
For the fans of: Sick Of It All, Raised Fist, This Is Hell
Listen: Myspace

Release date October 2008
UNSIGNED BAND

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