W.A.L.H.F. MORE F. (WITH A LITTLE HELL FROM MORE FRIENDS)

This album is a sequel to an album by a similar name from 2022, With A Little Hell From My Friends. The gist was that Greco Bastian wrote some really complicated music, and had friends from throughout the progoshphere play it. It was among my favorite albums of that year, if not number one, so when I heard that there was another album with more music in the same manic vein, I had to hear it. After waiting fruitlessly in hopes it would appear on Spotify like it's predecessor for about a month, I gave in and bought it digitally on Bandcamp. The music is the same I believe (except for one exception I found), but the cover is Nursery Cryme yellow instead of the off-white shown here, and the album title is abbreviated as W.A.L.H.F More F.

The bookends of the album are Kobaian Call To War Parts 1and 2. Part 1 starts things off with some shrieking instruments repeating and building on each other, as the namesake Zeuhl often does. 4009, The Mezking comes next, starting with a fun bass riff before guitars and weird keyboards kick in. Everything speeds up and builds upon itself, breaks into a section of more avant noises, kicks back into the riffs from before, breaks into different noises, and returns again before ending on the fastest sections yet.

Extitled and Retitled come next. Extitled is a longer track, once again eargasmically mixing a bunch of chaotic elements from musicians worlds apart into a cohesive buildup. There's a xylophone going along with the bass for example, all sorts of satisfying synergies. Retitled continues the happy go lucky tone of the previous track with prominent sax this time, my favorite jaunty instrument. The next song, Blacaman, The Bad One, also has sax, albeit a different one played by a different person, to just as good effect. An earlier version of this song, Blacaman (el malo), is on an earlier collection on spotify, and most likely the same as appears on the album No Cover here on PA. It's just a bit less instrumentally dense on there, since it doesn't have the large ensemble. Cosmetology and Clowneccticut seem to also have their beginnings in the earlier albums as well, though I haven't heard these earlier versions. These songs are excellent here though, the former being a (relatively) slower burn with some infectious motifs appearing throughout, and the latter an appropriately flouncy circus swing dance for its name. Imagine a posse of clowns waltzing about, inhumanly speeding and slowing with the tempo? beautiful!

Finally we're back to Kobaian Call To War Part 2. The Bass thunders harder than De Futura, as distorted guitars burble over it. There's also some crazy keys and effects and the drumming is wild as can be, a fitting end for such a high-energy album. Interestingly, the digital version I have from Bandcamp is 3:09, not 2:57 as listed here on PA.

This album is great! It has a fun atmosphere and can hang with the big boys of humorous virtuosity any day. 5/5 from me, and perhaps my favorite of the year so far. While many of the songs can trace back to earlier releases, the great playing from everyone involved makes this sound truly special and unique.