Totenwald - Dirty Squats & Disco Lights

Totenwald's Dirty Squats & Disco Lights is a 2018 dark punk album that blends 1980s Berlin underground influences like Neue Deutsche Welle with positive punk, wave, and gothic elements, featuring saxophone and drum machine alongside guitars. Praised for its unique, eclectic sound and political, dystopian themes, the album received recognition, notably being listed among the top 10 guitar dark scene releases of 2018 by Reflections of Darkness.  

The German band TOTENWALD was created in 2014 in Berlin and a year later released the first official material as a digital self-release. In 2016 the first EP was out with very promising material in an explosive mixture of Deathrock and Postpunk genres with female vocals. 4 years after its foundation the project releases the debut full-length work. For 4 years the project did not lose its sound and garage original features. This is still the same Postpunk / Deathrock with dirty sound and female vocals in English flavoured with unusual use of the saxophone, the sound of which in such music is not expected at all. And even despite such an indie-seeming description the project plays an old-school music sometimes even closer to Punk Rock. Very crazy in good sense music, which you can listen to with pleasure at home and to join the Gothic pogo in front of the stage on the concert. The album was released in two vinyl editions on the German label Plastic Bomb Records, in the usual CD edition on the Polish label Bat-Cave Productions, as a cassette version on the Russian label Sierpen Records and even with all these numerous formats ‘Dirty Squats & Disco Lights’ is available for free download on the Bandcamp of the project. The work sounds fresh, not common and old-school, although comparisons with SIOUXSIE & THE BANSHEES, with which all postpunk projects with female vocals are usually compared, absolutely do not come to mind during the listening. Cool debut album from Germans.

Ripped to MP3

01. Falling Stars

02. Terror Age

03. Stereotypes

04. Shadows

05. Love Warning

06. Life Sentence Train

07. Life Style

08. The Sign

09. War Machinery

10. Alone (Cosmic Loveliness)

11. Radio Free Europe