ZWIERZAKOM

Cisnienie make a glorious, glorious noise. It's instrumental and LOUD. The atmosphere is mostly dark, but the main thing here is the energy. Sometimes it is as if there is natural disaster and buildings come crashing down all around you. Like many post rock bands they love crescendos, except that often they start them already at a high level and increase the intensity from there. OK, there are some calmer parts in their music, which is needed to make the listener feel the energy of the more energetic ones, but they (the calmer parts) are few and far between. The beginning is one of them, and they take some time to get off from there, which works quite well as an opener.

We have drums, bass, keyboards (mostly piano), saxophone and violin. There is a distorted electric guitar that takes centre stage in certain parts despite not being mentioned in the line-up above. So the sound is rough and down to earth, with much human dynamics; electronics have little impact here. It is, I have to say, in many places not exactly subtle, and some parts are build up from very simple motifs. Also there is a lot of repetition, but this is at least as much of a feature as it is a bug, and the natural dynamics between the musicians work well to make also the repetitive parts enjoyable. The second track Wszyscy zdechniemy (Bydlo) is the most sophisticated one composition-wise and has some free jazzy parts and a unique sound-driven atmospheric intro. Otherwise making a dark rhythmic noise is the order of the day. I gave their earlier brass album 5 stars and they were probably my best fairly recent discovery, and now my favourite Polish band. Their 2023 effort (released end December so probably can't compete for 2024 album of the year and didn't really for 2023) is maybe not quite up there, or has just less novelty factor for me, but anyway, I love it and you can hear how much fun they are having. Fat 4.3 stars.