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The long awaited return of contemporary D-Beat champions, PHYSIQUE with “Again” - their first release since 2019. PHYSIQUE offers 15 tracks of steamrolling, discharge-fueled, crasher crust, seamlessly overlapping the time honored and ever-present D-Beat themes of war and government oppression with their own take on the brutalizing and soul-crushing realities of everyday modern life.
With lyrics like: “Free yourself / Hope is the enemy, the enemy of change / Take your hope, smash it to pieces”, the overwhelming sense of life’s inevitable collapse and the dissolution of all the things we hold dear hits at the very core of modern existence. As you slog through the rut, a little more hope is lost each day. Life is empty and without purpose. One can't help but ask - “Again?”
But D-Beat is protest music at heart, and “Again”s desperation is complimented by a surging pulse of relentless energy that reminds us that as brutal as life may be, we can't resist the fury of noisy protest that brings us back - again - to scream and shout the "never agains" of our predecessors and ourselves alike.
Our take: The new album from Olympia’s Physique on Iron Lung Records is (as I expected) a total steamroller, but I had no idea it would blow me away as thoroughly as it has. On Again, Physique strikes this incredible balance between being blindingly raw and pissed, but still making room for subtlety and creativity at every turn. Again is steeped in the history of d-beat and raw punk—from the band’s new, Doom-inspired logo, to the way they end the album with a stretched-out, psychedelic reprise of the leadoff / title track, to the numerous beats, riffs, and musical motifs that reference this music’s long tradition—but the point isn’t just homage, but rather to use that music’s power as a spark to ignite something more original and exciting. When I first listened to Again, I didn’t really grasp that subtlety though, because the bulldozing power took a while to wrap my ears and brain around. As the logo change hints, this time around there’s a nod to Doom and their bottom-heavy, slightly groovier take on Discharge’s sound. And Physique are fucking great at channeling that… their drummer is so deeply in the pocket that all I could do on the first several spins was pump my fist and get lost in that relentless, pummeling groove. However, as I started to get a handle on the songs, Again’s lush sonic world revealed itself to me. Where Physique really excels on Again is in their explorations of rhythm and texture, which have a psychedelic intricacy that makes me think of Can’s best records. The d-beat never stops pounding, but the drummer, bassist, guitarist, and vocalist weave in and out of that rhythm, sometimes embellishing it with polyrhythms that pull it in different directions, sometimes chopping it up and reconfiguring it with brutal stops, starts, and accents. And then there are the tones and textures, which are equally as exciting. In much the same way the rhythm never loses sight of its pounding d-beat core, the tones are always harsh and fucked, but pull from a large library of distortion tones and effects. Sometimes the excitement comes from whiplashing between these different sounds, and sometimes it comes from layering them on top of one another, as on the closing track “Again (reprise),” which wrestles with the title track’s main riff for more than seven minutes, hammering on that motif as the band conjures a psychedelic whirlwind of multitracked madness. Inspirations like Discharge’s “Why? (reprise)” and Disclose’s “Wardead” are easy to spot, but if you think that’s all you’re meant to hear or understand, you’ve missed all the best parts of Physique’s music. So turn the stereo up loud as fuck and let this wave of brutality crash over you.
With lyrics like: “Free yourself / Hope is the enemy, the enemy of change / Take your hope, smash it to pieces”, the overwhelming sense of life’s inevitable collapse and the dissolution of all the things we hold dear hits at the very core of modern existence. As you slog through the rut, a little more hope is lost each day. Life is empty and without purpose. One can't help but ask - “Again?”
But D-Beat is protest music at heart, and “Again”s desperation is complimented by a surging pulse of relentless energy that reminds us that as brutal as life may be, we can't resist the fury of noisy protest that brings us back - again - to scream and shout the "never agains" of our predecessors and ourselves alike.
Our take: The new album from Olympia’s Physique on Iron Lung Records is (as I expected) a total steamroller, but I had no idea it would blow me away as thoroughly as it has. On Again, Physique strikes this incredible balance between being blindingly raw and pissed, but still making room for subtlety and creativity at every turn. Again is steeped in the history of d-beat and raw punk—from the band’s new, Doom-inspired logo, to the way they end the album with a stretched-out, psychedelic reprise of the leadoff / title track, to the numerous beats, riffs, and musical motifs that reference this music’s long tradition—but the point isn’t just homage, but rather to use that music’s power as a spark to ignite something more original and exciting. When I first listened to Again, I didn’t really grasp that subtlety though, because the bulldozing power took a while to wrap my ears and brain around. As the logo change hints, this time around there’s a nod to Doom and their bottom-heavy, slightly groovier take on Discharge’s sound. And Physique are fucking great at channeling that… their drummer is so deeply in the pocket that all I could do on the first several spins was pump my fist and get lost in that relentless, pummeling groove. However, as I started to get a handle on the songs, Again’s lush sonic world revealed itself to me. Where Physique really excels on Again is in their explorations of rhythm and texture, which have a psychedelic intricacy that makes me think of Can’s best records. The d-beat never stops pounding, but the drummer, bassist, guitarist, and vocalist weave in and out of that rhythm, sometimes embellishing it with polyrhythms that pull it in different directions, sometimes chopping it up and reconfiguring it with brutal stops, starts, and accents. And then there are the tones and textures, which are equally as exciting. In much the same way the rhythm never loses sight of its pounding d-beat core, the tones are always harsh and fucked, but pull from a large library of distortion tones and effects. Sometimes the excitement comes from whiplashing between these different sounds, and sometimes it comes from layering them on top of one another, as on the closing track “Again (reprise),” which wrestles with the title track’s main riff for more than seven minutes, hammering on that motif as the band conjures a psychedelic whirlwind of multitracked madness. Inspirations like Discharge’s “Why? (reprise)” and Disclose’s “Wardead” are easy to spot, but if you think that’s all you’re meant to hear or understand, you’ve missed all the best parts of Physique’s music. So turn the stereo up loud as fuck and let this wave of brutality crash over you.