Fara - Továreň na odpadky (2019)
By Flork!
The first thing you may notice in the first couple of minutes of Koniec Našho Sveta, the opening track of the debut album Továreň na odpadky by the Košice duo Fara, is that there is a certain melodic element that accompanies an air of suspense, as the guitars, bass, and drums join each other until the heavier riffs take over around the 3 minute mark. My level of interest is high, right from the start. There are no vocals in this track, which is ok, and I’m left wondering what the next track will sound like. Depress is a cool transition with repeating riffs and lyrics that are nihilistic in nature. There isn’t actually much singing going on here, but rather more spoken poetry, with one making statements like ‚smrdí tota voda, je to na piču’ while the other singing ‘jednoducho povedane’ and something else which I can’t quite understand. Actually, the entire album is like this, with the third track summing up the overall them: “Nič sa nevyrieši“ (which means something like ‚nothing gets done about it‘ or ‚no resolution‘). This is not an upbeat album in any way, at least lyric-wise, but it definitely isn’t slow-paced either. The repetitive lyrics may be a bit naive, but this was the intention.
By the way, the entire album is sung in Slovak, so it may be a deterrent to those who prefer listening to post-punk industrial in English. In fact, the album isn’t targeted for an international audience, but rather for the Czecho-Slovak market. It gets heavier with more distortion and ‘statement-style’ lyrics that are poignant and witty, which are, unfortunately, only intelligible to speakers of Slovak. It’s like very sophisticated punk, yet it’s fine-tuned and organized with clean vocals where the comments are more deadpan than anthem based.
Nevertheless, it is a fun album to listen to. The production is first-class and the songs themselves aren’t overly-long. Fara uses a good blend of beats and guitar that keep the album’s tempo at an even flow. Several of the tracks just end without notice, no fading, no dramatic thud of the symbols, just a clean break. There are also tracks without lyrics too, or at least not many, such as Sedem rokov v bufete (seven years at the snackbar) or Tak ťažké (so hard). These are great tunes to be played at a party or large hall, where everyone already has a bit of a glow-on and needs to get up and dance a bit.
The end of the album contains the two best racks: the title track Továreň na odpadky (Waste Factory) and Ranná zmena (Morning Change). There are 14 tracks altogether on Továreň na odpadky with none of them lasting longer than five minutes.
I also need to point out that the album was released in 2019, so I’m not sure what the duo have been up to these days. No matter, I’m sure they are working on something as the pandemic has likely limited their ability to play live shows. Let’s hope 2022 will allow them to get out about and play some gigs.
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