(no subject)
english not being my primary language, I guess there are some errors and oddities inside this new bio I wrote... Please help me find if there's anything to correct !
]Sex’n’beats’n’rock’n’roll, voodoo guns, fatal dolls, synthetic drugs, super-zeroes, rusting needles, spaghetti-cyberpunk, self-destruction, acid tricks, zombie clubbing : Punish Yourself’s universe is a cheerful mess with no way out. If you want to enter (at your own risk !), drop your inhibitions... Techno-punk, industrial-glam, electro-metal, there’s no genre or trend to fit PY - it’s fun like a Russ Meyer movie, dark like Romero zombie, fucked-up like a William Burroughs book - what’s the use of asking questions, anyway ?
After years of intensive touring (+ than 400 gigs throughout europe but also Canada, with bands like Oomph, Epica, The Young Gods, Therion, Hanin Elias, Queen Adreena, The Legendary Pink Dots, Senser, Clan Of Xymox, Das Ich, The Skatalites, Anorexia Nervosa...), PY now stands as the reference cyberpunk band in the french musical landscape. Probably not because they’re smart or write clever songs, but mainly because they got an infinite talent for messing up anything and make hormones boil. Goth, punk, ravers, rivetheads, metalheads, teenagers, old rockers, straight, gay, bi, everybody finds something to enjoy during their shows - shows that generally include full participation from the audience. Black UV neon-lights, glow-in-the-dark bodypaints, trashy cyber-pop-art scenery, the four members of PY are doomsday horsemen sweating blood, vodka and sex-sex-sex pheromones. And, if it wasn’t enough, there’s the incredible Klodia joining them with her magic metal grinder... + all the unexpected performers jumping onstage : when you go to a PY gig, you never know what’s gonna happen. Girls stripping, boys kissing, giant rabbits, naughty nurses - when the crowd tries to get wilder than the band, you can expect a high-level of comic-book madness. Finally, this is what it’s all about : a PY gig is a crazy comic book from hell, as if Jack Kirby was trapped inside a futuristic Titty Twister club. With more moloko...
Gore Baby Gore
With the release of Gore Baby Gore!, their fourth studio album, PY quit - temporarily ? - the BPM & Ultraviolence race which had led them to such extreme songs as « gimme cocaine » in the past. Even a bomber sometimes lands - does it make it less menacing ? This record sounds more organically built than previous works, under somewhat unexpected influences - Pink Floyd and Tangerine Dream sometimes roam in the dark corners of this record, thru the use of vintage electric piano, organs and mellotrons. You still will find heavy beats, screaming samples and distorted synths, but they’re not alone... They’re joined by noisy saxophones, acid guitars (in the most heavy-psychedelic sens of the word !), psycho-jazz elements, soundtrack-like parts : all these sound-layers, ranging from spacey to sonically frenetic (Coltrane ? who said Coltrane ?), add a new dimension to the unrelented driving patterns which are the band’s trademark. PY still are the naughty children of Ministry and Alien Sex Fiend, but seem to remember suddenly of all the stuff they used to listen to between two hardcore-techno parties : Ennio Morricone, Foetus, Lydia Lunch, Tuxedomoon, Birthday Party... The result may surprise those who were awaiting a Sexplosive Locomotive copy, but rather than repeating a formula, the band just recorded what they felt like at the precise moment. Nothing is sader than a band becoming its own copycat.
The overall mood on this album is overtly dark and cynical : between two cretinistic dancefloor anthems, apprehension and doubt creep, like a tube train up your spine. The dark side of drugs, the loneliness of sex, worms eating human links, all the stuff you can shout while no one seems to hear. But way, this is not fucking emo-stuff - Punish Yourself stand on the bad side of the fence with a joyful scar-like grin. And they still play party music - a necesary party, feeding on daily failures. Collective failures, individual failures, all these bad-bad-bad things one must drown by vodka like little little little kittens in the toilets... On Dead-White-Skin (a sad heroin story - yeah we’re talking about smack, and that ain’t glam....), Candice of Eths, the mythical female-fronted french hardcore band, joins PY with her posessed growls, but there can be no exorcism for that blood-freezing song. And she’s not the only guest : JL De Meyer (Front 242) sings on the track Voodoo Virus with his unique vocal attitude - a collaboration the band would never have dreamt of, only some months ago. Plus all the other friends who gave a helping hand, some with a guitar, some with a noise...
A record you may hate at first. But trust PY, because they are the devil : it will grow on you. There’s no other option.
The Voodoo Gun Night Live - DVD
Punish Yourself is clearly a band to be experienced onstage. There was a definite need for a visual rendition of what a PY show can be - even nothing can be compared to the real thing - and here it is, in two in-your-face-shots : first a full concert, taped in a litle sweaty club - most bands would have chosen a better-known venue, but Punish Yourself are definetely not like most bands. Then the « Are You Ready To Fuck el Diablo » bonus, featuring years of on-the-road madness archive, both onstage and backstage. The kind of images which either will give you the urge to create a band, or completely repell you from doing so. This whole DVD was filmed and edited with almost no money : maybe the first Z-musical in DVD history...
the voodoo gun night (live & Art’cade 2k5)
19 songs to blow your head off. Caged and voodoo-dolled, Punish Yourself slaughter the audience, using as weapons the best of their two previous albums, and two songs from the forthcoming Gore Baby Gore ! (which was in writing phase at the time). A really messy gig, with some obvious technical incidents, but no incident can stop the energy from overflowing anyone... Featuring countess Olga as dancer, and Sylvicious from the infamous Tamtrum on percussions (on the song CNN War). Some bands, when they work on a DVD, try to have it as polished and clean as possible : PY rather chose DIY madness. So you won’t find here neither the usual MTV-like epileptic HD multi-cam stuff, nor studio-sounding performance with some audience screams added - this performance smells and tastes like paint and sweat and blood, like bodies clashing, like an evil machine going wild. Plus some bunny-cheerleader additional madness between the songs, and images from outer movie space. Z movie ? Did anyone say Z ?
are you ready to fuck el diablo ?
Since their first performances, back in the mid 90’s, PY have been videotaping gigs and backstage scenes. Ten years of completely incoherent footage which led to this toxic « rockumentary » - no commentaries, no history, this is just a testimony to the madness. On and off the stage, which is the worse ? The answer is yours... But really, if you’re considering inviting PY at a party, make sure you have some good insurance for natural-catastrophe-like risks.
]Sex’n’beats’n’rock’n’roll, voodoo guns, fatal dolls, synthetic drugs, super-zeroes, rusting needles, spaghetti-cyberpunk, self-destruction, acid tricks, zombie clubbing : Punish Yourself’s universe is a cheerful mess with no way out. If you want to enter (at your own risk !), drop your inhibitions... Techno-punk, industrial-glam, electro-metal, there’s no genre or trend to fit PY - it’s fun like a Russ Meyer movie, dark like Romero zombie, fucked-up like a William Burroughs book - what’s the use of asking questions, anyway ?
After years of intensive touring (+ than 400 gigs throughout europe but also Canada, with bands like Oomph, Epica, The Young Gods, Therion, Hanin Elias, Queen Adreena, The Legendary Pink Dots, Senser, Clan Of Xymox, Das Ich, The Skatalites, Anorexia Nervosa...), PY now stands as the reference cyberpunk band in the french musical landscape. Probably not because they’re smart or write clever songs, but mainly because they got an infinite talent for messing up anything and make hormones boil. Goth, punk, ravers, rivetheads, metalheads, teenagers, old rockers, straight, gay, bi, everybody finds something to enjoy during their shows - shows that generally include full participation from the audience. Black UV neon-lights, glow-in-the-dark bodypaints, trashy cyber-pop-art scenery, the four members of PY are doomsday horsemen sweating blood, vodka and sex-sex-sex pheromones. And, if it wasn’t enough, there’s the incredible Klodia joining them with her magic metal grinder... + all the unexpected performers jumping onstage : when you go to a PY gig, you never know what’s gonna happen. Girls stripping, boys kissing, giant rabbits, naughty nurses - when the crowd tries to get wilder than the band, you can expect a high-level of comic-book madness. Finally, this is what it’s all about : a PY gig is a crazy comic book from hell, as if Jack Kirby was trapped inside a futuristic Titty Twister club. With more moloko...
Gore Baby Gore
With the release of Gore Baby Gore!, their fourth studio album, PY quit - temporarily ? - the BPM & Ultraviolence race which had led them to such extreme songs as « gimme cocaine » in the past. Even a bomber sometimes lands - does it make it less menacing ? This record sounds more organically built than previous works, under somewhat unexpected influences - Pink Floyd and Tangerine Dream sometimes roam in the dark corners of this record, thru the use of vintage electric piano, organs and mellotrons. You still will find heavy beats, screaming samples and distorted synths, but they’re not alone... They’re joined by noisy saxophones, acid guitars (in the most heavy-psychedelic sens of the word !), psycho-jazz elements, soundtrack-like parts : all these sound-layers, ranging from spacey to sonically frenetic (Coltrane ? who said Coltrane ?), add a new dimension to the unrelented driving patterns which are the band’s trademark. PY still are the naughty children of Ministry and Alien Sex Fiend, but seem to remember suddenly of all the stuff they used to listen to between two hardcore-techno parties : Ennio Morricone, Foetus, Lydia Lunch, Tuxedomoon, Birthday Party... The result may surprise those who were awaiting a Sexplosive Locomotive copy, but rather than repeating a formula, the band just recorded what they felt like at the precise moment. Nothing is sader than a band becoming its own copycat.
The overall mood on this album is overtly dark and cynical : between two cretinistic dancefloor anthems, apprehension and doubt creep, like a tube train up your spine. The dark side of drugs, the loneliness of sex, worms eating human links, all the stuff you can shout while no one seems to hear. But way, this is not fucking emo-stuff - Punish Yourself stand on the bad side of the fence with a joyful scar-like grin. And they still play party music - a necesary party, feeding on daily failures. Collective failures, individual failures, all these bad-bad-bad things one must drown by vodka like little little little kittens in the toilets... On Dead-White-Skin (a sad heroin story - yeah we’re talking about smack, and that ain’t glam....), Candice of Eths, the mythical female-fronted french hardcore band, joins PY with her posessed growls, but there can be no exorcism for that blood-freezing song. And she’s not the only guest : JL De Meyer (Front 242) sings on the track Voodoo Virus with his unique vocal attitude - a collaboration the band would never have dreamt of, only some months ago. Plus all the other friends who gave a helping hand, some with a guitar, some with a noise...
A record you may hate at first. But trust PY, because they are the devil : it will grow on you. There’s no other option.
The Voodoo Gun Night Live - DVD
Punish Yourself is clearly a band to be experienced onstage. There was a definite need for a visual rendition of what a PY show can be - even nothing can be compared to the real thing - and here it is, in two in-your-face-shots : first a full concert, taped in a litle sweaty club - most bands would have chosen a better-known venue, but Punish Yourself are definetely not like most bands. Then the « Are You Ready To Fuck el Diablo » bonus, featuring years of on-the-road madness archive, both onstage and backstage. The kind of images which either will give you the urge to create a band, or completely repell you from doing so. This whole DVD was filmed and edited with almost no money : maybe the first Z-musical in DVD history...
the voodoo gun night (live & Art’cade 2k5)
19 songs to blow your head off. Caged and voodoo-dolled, Punish Yourself slaughter the audience, using as weapons the best of their two previous albums, and two songs from the forthcoming Gore Baby Gore ! (which was in writing phase at the time). A really messy gig, with some obvious technical incidents, but no incident can stop the energy from overflowing anyone... Featuring countess Olga as dancer, and Sylvicious from the infamous Tamtrum on percussions (on the song CNN War). Some bands, when they work on a DVD, try to have it as polished and clean as possible : PY rather chose DIY madness. So you won’t find here neither the usual MTV-like epileptic HD multi-cam stuff, nor studio-sounding performance with some audience screams added - this performance smells and tastes like paint and sweat and blood, like bodies clashing, like an evil machine going wild. Plus some bunny-cheerleader additional madness between the songs, and images from outer movie space. Z movie ? Did anyone say Z ?
are you ready to fuck el diablo ?
Since their first performances, back in the mid 90’s, PY have been videotaping gigs and backstage scenes. Ten years of completely incoherent footage which led to this toxic « rockumentary » - no commentaries, no history, this is just a testimony to the madness. On and off the stage, which is the worse ? The answer is yours... But really, if you’re considering inviting PY at a party, make sure you have some good insurance for natural-catastrophe-like risks.