"hey man, it's quality not quantity..."-Slater, Dazed & Confused If you could boil punk down to a DNA strand, Svart Framtid's 1984 might be the product. This is the only thing SF recorded before dissolving. Yet it contains all the virtues of punk as a musical form, and lacks its downsides, which are legion.
Many years ago one of my friends was critiquing a band that another friend had just started, saying that "these dudes don't know how to write songs, they only know how to write hardcore songs. A good hardcore song isn't the same thing as a good song." Substitute "punk" for "hardcore" there, and you've got Svart Framtid.
Every moment on this EP is essential to the band's majestic coherence: the guitar lead on "Religious Terror"; the perfectly paired drum-bass intro to "Disiplin"; the intro to "Milliarder," which puts a dozen Dead Kennedys bass leads to shame; the singer's fucking urgency.
I don't speak Norwegian. I don't know shit about Norway. Except that Vikings and Knut Hamsun were in part or whole from there. But I do know that this guy MEANT every fuckin' word he sang! How many punks, this 'un included, could ever say that without lying?
I remember hearing SF for the first time on the Red Line, headin' down to Boystown for another teen blooz New Year's Eve party in 2008. It was about 6 in the evening, I was already wasted, and the Navy Pier-bound yuppie revelers were clearly disgusted as I started slam-dancing in my seat to this slab of nordic brilliance.
Please don't be waiting for me. Shit is ~30 years outta print, but all you spiky-haired punx should peeps the blog I stole this sweet wax from, here!
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