by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
There’s been a resurgence of hardcore in mainstream music recently, mostly punks bands that aim for pop crossover appeal, with squeaky clean production and oft-manufactured aesthetics. Then there’s the opposite… band’s like Geld, the relentless, intense, and maniacal Melbourne based quartet, a band that have never been mistaken for “clean” in any manner. For the past five years they’ve been making music that both’s brutal and artistic, their impenetrable approach to hardcore blending itself together with nightmarish psych, creating a sound that’s savagely dense, yet texturally nuanced. Make no mistakes though, Geld aren’t wandering into spacey atmospherics or long winded stretches of warbling ambiance, their attack is ferocious at every moment, the chaos breeds further chaos. Their first two albums, Perfect Texture and Beyond The Floor, released via the gold standard of hardcore/punk label partnerships, Static Shock and Iron Lung Records, were thoroughly unhinged, ruthless, unapologetic, and increasingly primal. They served as a brash introduction to a band that can channel claustrophobic carnage at a whim, their recordings both deranged and brilliantly understated as far as “clarity” goes.
In the years since, society has come increasingly unglued, and there’s only so much we can collectively take. Geld understand this, and while they don’t pretend to have the answers or profound insight, they’ve harnessed the dread and tension and they’ve come to viciously exorcise it from our skulls, regardless if they have to tear a few heads off in the process. The bad vibes are thick, watching the collapse in real time, both among the world around us and within the confines of our own minds, there’s a fog of violent notions come to swallow us all. Ain’t shit pretty about Currency // Castration and that’s the beauty of it. The band’s third album, and first for Relapse Records (Poison Ruïn, Outer Heaven, Yautja), is ensnared in filth and dissonance, at home amid the depravity, for better or worse, this is where we’re at and Geld aren’t delusional. Far from it, but rather than collapse under the weight of it all, they chose to decimate, creating something that feels relevant and timeless. The band continue to push their sound with each record, determined to build upon where they’ve been without looking back. If Beyond The Floor felt like the abject terror at the dawn of the apocalypse, Currency // Castration has settled into the end times and it’s an observant portrait of indulgence and horror.
The sense of disgust is palpable, oozing from the garbled howls and piercing riffs, this is anti-social music for the less than well-adjusted. The songs are full of forward thinking structures, pummeling one moment with stampeding drums and locked into a mesmerizing (yet sludgy) motorik groove the next. Geld push the envelope to obliteration, shredding with a sonic assault that often feels like an alien invasion, scattering and rearranging limbs, spinning so far outside the axis that disorientation feels natural. The band stomp and spit, the songs blasting through clamorous tempos only to arrive in a place of sonic waste, digging the pits ever deeper. For a band that never holds back, there’s plenty of dynamics to be found, pulling in accents of noise rock abrasion into the cyclone of mangled psych annihilation. They tear into solos at unpredictable times. Rabid and unleashed, Geld aren’t for the faint of heart.
They’re also not afraid to get weird. Hell, it’s the getting weird that separates Geld from the pack, it’s a progression of their sound, brutality in the light of all that’s strange. After all, these are strange days. Currency // Castration looks at all sides of it, the way things continue to crumble and the way we react to it. They’re exploring the internal, from the personal conceits of trying to exist in this world (“Fog of War”), to the fear of becoming saturated in the dread and despair (“The Fix Is In”), and the external, the gross accumulation of wealth (“Success”), the exploitation of others (“Cut You Down”), and feelings of existential captivity (“Hanging From A Rope”). The darkness is always threatening to swallow us all, destroy our minds and the body follows. Geld are kicking against the destruction of deteriorating mental states. It’s raw and austere, but a reminder that we’re still here, and despite it all, we will pull through.