FROGRESSIVE PUNK

There has been a change in guitarist since the release of the previous album, 'V Obshchikh Chertyakh', but apart from that it very much seems like business as usual for these guys. In my review for that 2015 album I said "here we can be listening to ska-style hardcore which drops into funk, or hard rock, or Can, or all of this at once with Fantômas also being an obvious influence. It is a mess." I still hold to all that, but here we are also getting much more a stoner influence (although rather worryingly I am sure I hear squeaky toys at one point as well). New guitarist Alexander Kosarenko has a very strong sound, but one still has no idea where the music is going as while it can be apparently heading in one direction that is just ploy to lure the listener into a false sense of security. Those keyboards and strong melodies will be gone in a second, and when they sound like they are off and running like a locomotive with no brakes they can turn on a dime and head off in a direction where there aren't even any tracks!

Through all this, it is somehow still compelling in a weird and twisted way. I have no idea what is going on musically, and my knowledge of Russian is non-existent, so the few sentences here and there mean nothing to me. They themselves describe their music as "Progressive Funk", hence the switch for the album title, but this is Faith No More in a weird dimension, where there simply are no rules. Complex, complicated, simplistic, basic, I still have no idea what is going on. The last album made no sense to me either and that is the same here, a musical maze with trapdoors and snares for the unwary so that just when it starts to become sane it disappears into another realm altogether. This is only for those who want their music to be weird, challenging and very, very strange. But I think I like it?