It’s Friday! A new weekly music overdose is upon us, but luckily there’s >1000Followers to filter what’s good. And this brand new EP of Guerilla State, you guessed it, is exactly that. Half a dozen tracks for your pleasure, so where to start… The first track! Harbinger makes no secret of its early 2000’s Muse influences, including the theme, which is very much about the divide & conquer antics of media. Putting up groups of people against each other that’d normally peacefully coexist otherwise. Synth loops, dynamic changes, guitar heavy and grotesque. Stellar opener. The second track (Ready Aim Fire), even though it was written 1.5 decade ago, sticks to the theme: propaganda and media indoctrination – in this particular case giving that push to make people voluntarily (if you repeat it often enough, you believe it) sign up to fight wars elsewhere because that’s the patriotic thing to do. Compared to the previous track, this is more a straight up uptempo rocker – you could even dance to it, the rhythm section takes well care of that.
Never Taking Me, feels darker musically than the previous track. The added piano bits stand out, but again it’s rightfully critical of current affairs: Think of the Patriot Act, in which civil privacy rights were taken away to boost security. 6 amendments were violated, but eek: terrorists. Only one (!) senator voted against it. So can you put your liberties in the hands of government and trust them to take good care of it: evidently not. Hence this track. Rocks on so nicely too, though. The Terror Storm, the next track is kind of related. Except for that it doesn’t exist until it affects us directly. Just think of how much we’ve read about Al Qaeda before the twin towers… Not as much as one would hope for a group what’s been active and around since the end of the Afghan proxy war between the Soviet Union and the USA. That’s late 80’s… But no panic until it hits Western nations. Honest, we’re 2/3rds in and it touches on a lot of things that are wrong about society. Not just nowadays: structurally.
Fracture is “the ballad”, no matter how long or how short a release is, there’s this universal law that dictates there should be the ballad. Originally about self depression, dealing with it, not letting it win – but how recent global affairs (the ‘rona), yeah, depression has been offered a helping hand in this. Off-topic, it’s amazing how we’re keeping a fairly easy to avoid (to spread) virus alive and kicking for almost 1.5 year now. Well done, humanity. But this mantra’esque ballad telling himself he won’t break, he won’t give in… Keep repeating it, some really need the power. You’ll be rewarded with a rocking uptempo outro with an absolutely pumping bass at that point as well. String-synth outro, though. The ballad, remember.
As closer we have Bandit Country. Morricone meets Archive meets Steven Wilson in a grim Ireland versus United Kingdom setting at the peak of their religious conflict. In conclusion: Guerilla State rocks and Guerilla State is aware. At no point telling you what to do (thank god), but giving plenty of food for thought and discussion. I hope this sets an example to bands that sometimes get lost in endless rants to their audience, using the words “we” and “should” a lot. This is how I like it, how Guerilla State approaches it. Their observations paired with a good dose of rock and with great variation within this pretty wide spectrum makes this an absolute stand-out recommendation for New Music Friday.
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