THCulture Review - Individual: 10 Fucking Stars

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New material from THCulture-less “ethno" than before, more punk. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I don't know. I do know that Yogi's band (formerly Smar SW) remains a unique phenomenon on the HC/punk scene.

"Individual" still features many sounds and instruments usually absent from this type of music, so-in my opinion-calling what THCulture does "ethno-core" still makes some sense (if pigeonholing music makes any sense at all). The guys breathe a lot of fresh air into the HC-punk aesthetic, which is evident, for example, in the album's opening (the beginning and other parts of “Kultura"), “Wolność" also starts off uniquely, and other tracks are similar... You could basically list every track one by one in this context. Maybe there are fewer of these “non-punk" moments on the new album than before, but there are still plenty. The whole thing sounds very good: the guitars are on point, as are the bass and drums, and the vocals are probably the best-recorded of any THCulture album.

Exactly, “Wolność." When writing about the previous album, I half-jokingly accused THCulture of lacking a hit. Here, that role is certainly filled by the aforementioned “Wolność," which I've put on repeat several times.

As for the lyrics, THCulture consistently sings about the freedom of the individual clashing with state control and violence. Nothing has changed in this regard and probably won't, especially since scientific progress also seems to be leading to total control ("there's an idea that populations / can be conditioned / that people are Pavlov's dogs / programmed bio-machines / they sell this as / social progress / it's absurd / and dangerous"), a topic Yuval Noah Harari, for example, writes about very interestingly in his books. So is it worth singing about this? If the lyrics don't delve into the specifics of current Polish politics but address the issues in question in a universal way-in my opinion, yes.

And maybe THCulture's lyrics have lost a bit of their originality. After all, they have their own distinct style, which we encounter less frequently on “Individual" than before. They are-however it may sound-simpler.

"Individual" is an album I'll keep coming back to, even though I seem to be drifting further and further away from HC/punk as I get older. That speaks well of THCulture. Besides, how could I not like a band that samples a passage from Max Stirner's "The Ego and Its Own"? And the fact that Johann Kaspar Schmidt considered freedom an empty concept (“Why chase after freedom, your pipe dream?") is a topic for another story.

And I highly recommend Yogi's band as a live video act. The music combined with the visuals works perfectly.

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