Review Summary: Viet Cong's debut channels fervor reminiscent of purposeful and captivating post-punk bands of old.
Viet Cong’s self-titled full length debut shuttles off with booming drums and minor third harmonies opening up the album on “Newspaper Spoons”, with a confusingly ominous synth leading into “Pointless Experience”, leaving neither an essence of joy nor sadness, but more a morose gloom. Lead singer Matthew Flegel, now given spotlight front and center on vocals in the band, injects a new flavor of eeriness into the music. Compare this to riding shotgun in his last band, Women, where his brother Patrick assumed duties as the primary lyricist and singer. As dark and moaning as Patrick, Matthew invokes a much shakier, jittery delivery on the first four tracks of
Viet Cong, not before letting out raspy screams on “Bunker Buster”, as well as versatile, falsetto as the climax of “Silhouettes” screeches to a halt, coming back down to earth in a crash landing of cymbals. Flegel often times tag teams with with lead guitar Scott “Monty” Munro as well, where Flegel’s desperate vocal impresario is complemented by the tormented harmonies of Munro, making for a wonderful concoction of melody channeling prime time output by The Chameleons circa
Script of the Bridge and layered vocals reminiscent of This Heat on their masterpiece,
Deceit. Viet Cong wears their influences as flamboyantly as is to be expected by an entire budding post-punk revival scene in general, but their strong suit is primarily driven by their ability to meld the hodgepodge of sounds into one cohesive package.
Viet Cong is indeed short and sweet, with no fat to be trimmed at just seven tracks total. The first three songs serve as a wave of mellower, standard rock tracks, given the catalyst label to lead into an abrasive second half of the record. “March of Progress” comes in on the latter of side one with complex drums pounding like a heartbeat, switching time signatures back and forth between each pursuing measure. A bleak synth lurks in the background until a few minutes in when the listener has journeyed to a new universe of Flegel’s ghostly, chanting vocals, bracing his audience for the sheer power of what is to come.
Viet Cong is captivating on “Bunker Buster” and going forward. Each progressing track is brimming with a new confidence. Each manic guitar line, complete with the building tension of bursting drums and wailing vocals captivates in a waving crescendo of noise mixed with brooding melody. “Silhouettes” hearkens to a breakneck version of Joy Division, with synths leading the fury of riffs and Flegel’s “oohs” and “ahhs”, preparing for
Viet Cong’s grand finale. “Death” arrives just 25 minutes into the record, an untimely fate. The epic eleven minute conclusion is what I like to think of as Viet Cong’s own trump card to Women’s “Eyesore”. Separated into three parts, it begins with noodling guitar and driving drums, transitioning into a claustrophobic chamber of each instrument building and building to the ultimate climax of crashing cymbals and perfect unleashing of all the tension that had pent up over the course of the entire
Viet Cong experience.
Not to sound too much like Rick McCallum, but every one of these songs churned out are so dense, so complex, bursting with equal parts firepower and slithering dark aura, all coming together to form a most-cohesive package. Technically speaking, it’s not by any means groundbreaking guitar work, but the inventive writing for a budding post-punk revival speaks volumes to the band’s stature in the “indiesphere”. Guitar dominated music is a supposedly dead narrative in 2015, but Viet Cong with others are keeping it afloat with ever-increasing pursuit. Tack on impressive time signatures and fluid cohesiveness among the guitars and drums, and
Viet Cong makes for an extremely compelling listen.
Viet Cong’s debut record being only seven tracks long and roughly 37 minutes running provides for high replay-ability and quick playthroughs. This proves a short listen, but also a walloping burst of energy and noise nonetheless. In a growing “post-punk revival” over the last few years, new and upcoming bands, much like their counterparts of old reach into their grab bags of influences and experimentation to bring forth new and exciting outputs of creative art and expression. The difference here with our present day exemplifiers of post-punk revolves more around the music and feelings surrounding it, as opposed to an ethos of artful expression of beliefs and self-evident truths ready to be instilled to a world of both followers and dissenters. It’s harder to say a band like Viet Cong or their contemporaries are on the same level of prudent yet rebellious zeal reminiscent of the formations of the post-punk scenes across the globe in the late 1970s and early 1980s. That’s not their fault though, nor is it the primary goal of a record such as this. You see that in such controversies as the one surrounding their band name. As a collective, the band made a careful decision to change their name (still to be determined), and that reflects a characteristic of belief apt to today’s day and age. The music is not made or broken as a result of christening their group one thing or another. Instead, they let it speak for itself. It’s hard to imagine bands like Joy Division or Throbbing Gristle would change their names in spite of any dissent or social pressures. We live in a different cultural landscape, where a band like Viet Cong approaches their image and ethos with a new 21st century fervor. Like the “Planateer” kids announcing their “team beam” of powers combining before changing into the final form that is Captain Planet, Viet Cong channeled the hype and churned out one of 2015’s most memorable debuts. Hey, maybe “Captain Planet” should be their new band name!
