De Staat / “Machinery” / Cool Green Recordings

Gosh, there’s a lot here. Something like psych rock maybe to sum it up? Dutch psych rock, no less! Lyrics in English. Male singer, though it ranges from metered yelling, to melodic talking, to outright epic singing. A lot of nice dramatic sounds, some outright bizarre. Favorites listed below are probably the more accessible-to-most tracks, so if you’re feeling experimental, feel free to try the others too (1 and 6 in particular were a little strange but great). Not quite on the levels of Mike Patton, but still pretty strange-yet-melodic often times. Good stuff!

FCC clean.
Favorite tracks: 3, 5, 6, 9

1. 3:29 Starts ~8 sec in, uptempo hard rock, moments of eerie Halloweeny sounds and metered borderline yelling and honking. Kind of awesome.
2. 3:17 Midtempo, many voices taking turns talking about hard labor in a sweatshop. Kind of upbeat?
3. * 3:02 Mid, some nice eerie fun chords and melodies, great, and pretty accessible for all (kind of)!
4. 4:02 Clapping, yelling, stomping, synths, chorus. No FCC but some lines about cutting various farm animals’ throats, blood and what not.
5. * 3:49 Almost dancy pop feel to it, synths, solid beat, high pitched male singing. Catchy!
6. * 4:35 Epic sound - slow solid beat, big voice, eerie choir chorus, nice! LAST 16 SEC MOSTLY BUZZY, can cut out early.
7. 2:50 Lots of metered sounds (singing, synths, drums), not quite ear-epilepsy, but repetitive spurty synth that builds.
8. 3:16 Metered, mathematical sound to the beat again - like a robot dance. Eerie serious robots. But they still like to let loose.
9. * 4:03 Slow, rockin’ riff in beginning, like a bizarro-world Black Keys. Halloweeny synthy sounds come in, nice big sound.
10. 3:34 Twitch-inducing drum/guitar beat at first, turns pretty catchy though.
11. 4:59 Doesn’t really start until 18sec in, slow intermittent beat even then. Song comes in around 45sec, slow beat, basic electric chords, big vocals, like a blues singer... not singing blues though. Ends w/15sec to go.

Deniz Cebenoyan