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Band: Dystopian Society
Album title: Cages
Release date: 8 June 2012
Label: AF-music
Dystopian Society is last year formed band coming from Italy and they already made their debut album named Cages. The band's primary idea is to create socially critical lyrics and music to novadays repressive and controlled state in which the population is being involved. They succed with this, but what about the sole music?
Mostly old school punk with some more darker or gothy death rock parts didn't made a big impression on me. Everything begins with a nice intro, introducing us in what is all about: mass media controlled world, but latter development with songs like "Last Crusade", "No Hope" or "Antisocial" is lame, no special energy as you would expect from punk band. The vocals from Max, which I would not know if they are male or female if I didn't read the info sheet, are boring, without any dynamics and energy, somehow you can't find the right flow in them. Distorted garage kind of punk guitars don't satisfy either, except for some rare parts, like in "Death Signals" magnificient guitar lead at the end of the song, or Christian Death meets Dead Kennedys influenced band title song "Dystopian Society" with it's melancholic start and followed by one of rare energetic outbrakes. On the other side I was quite amazed by pure old school punk bass lines, primitive, but it works well, just listen for example to "Masquerade". Among twelve songs present on this album, there are some, beside before mentioned, that could reach a lot of attention, like dark "The Spiral" or violent "Heretic" and short, right to the point "The City With No Name", but they are spoiled with a bad vocal performance and a lack of further ideas which could be developed inside those.
If this album was released around thirty or more years before it could be interesting, but today it's just a repetition of what was done before by bands like UK Decay, Dead Kennedys, The Damned or Christian Death, but not in an interesting way, as those bands had that special something that made them who they are and it's missed in the case of Dystopian Society. Anyway, I can imagine that this kind of release will find it's fans in some drunken punk partys where the conversation is around the rotten and corrupted world of today. Cages production is not that bad, garage kind, but it gives no special flavour or some positive points to the overall perception of this album. Just for die-hard fans of the genre.
Review written by: T.V.
Rating: 5,5/10
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