I don’t know about you, but if I want to really piss off the landlord where I live, there’s no quicker way than to BLAST the SHIT out of some absolutely banging industrial punk jams in the wee hours of the morning: invariably, all the other L7 tenants in my building will be calling him so fast to complain about me it’ll make his head spin.
Fortunately/unfortunately, one of those reeeeally socrchin’-hot, “tool chest falling down the stairs”-style industrial tracks (one that’s basically tailor-made to annoy the piss out of everyone within a quarter mile radius) is hard to come by these days — which is precisely why it’s so clutch that the London-based duo known as Test Dept have just triumphant returned to the throne of 90s-era battle-zone techno with the recent announcement of their first new album together in 20 years, fittingly-titled Disturbance.
Out March 1 via One Little Indian, Disturbance basically finds members Graham Cunnington and Paul Jamrozy picking up where they left off: melding face-melting industrial proto-punk jams with no-filter political vitriol. “The mess we’re in now is unbelievable, hence the title. It’s disturbing in the extreme” the band explains. “We try not to be too literal, but some things need to be said.”
And hey: speaking of saying things that need to be said: the album’s first taste “Landlord” is an absolutely pummeling screed whose battery of “machine gun snare rolls” and “coruscating arpeggios” only heighten the urgency of its blunt cries to for British citizens living amidst Grenfell-era housing failures to stand up and throw “a fist in the face of rapacious greed.”
Stream the new track (as loudly as possible?) down below, and pre-order Disturbance on CD and vinyl from One Little Indian here. Just don’t expect to make any new friends in your dorm or apartment building anytime super soon.
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