Rozpor - Hrubá sila (2022)
By Flork!
The great thing about bands like Rozpor is that they continue to produce amazing music and bring attention to social issues, while at the same time having loads of fun. Hrubá sila (Raw Power) is the band’s 8th full-length album that includes several guests, such as the rapper Edúv syn, pianist Jakub Vizner, as well as the Chick2Chick Trio.
Rozpor has been around for several years now, in fact, for more than a couple of decades, but have also seen a few changes in their line-up. In spite of that, they continue to retain their strict anti-fascist stance, maybe even more so now than ever before. Yet they still write great songs that deal with stuff going on in today’s crazy world, especially here in Slovakia.
The album is full of catchy melodies with both heavy and light guitar riffs. There is no experimentation here, as there never is, keeping true to the punk rock and oi! genre of their previous work. The album opens with the title track and acknowledges that raw power is still alive and well and sets the mood and energy level for the songs to follow. Neďaleko od raja (Near Paradise) is a nice tribute to Bratislava, reminding us that geographically, it is situated in the best part of Europe with the beauty of the Little Carpathians and the Danube River offering us our own garden of Eden. The tune itself has great arrangements and makes a good supporting argument to Regi-análna osveta (Regi-anal Enlightenment), where lead vocalist Fabko is obviously sick of the longstanding east-west competition and reminds us that Slovakia is too small for such shit.
As with all their music, the entire album is sung in Slovak, however, it does come with lyric sheets in both English and Slovak. They are all worth reading since they deal with political issues, such as extremists in parliament (Požehnanie od Vsetkých Svätých Kokotov), social change and activism (Benefit nie Charita), homophobia and xenophobia (Dobrá Správa), and of course the omnipresent evil all around us, disguised like a wolf in sheep’s clothing (Zlo).
With 2022 still very much ahead of us, a year where Slovakia finds itself divided by Russia and the USA, vaxers versus anti-vaxers, a society that never seems to fully agree and unite on anything, Rozpor will have no trouble at all finding content and material for future songs and albums. At present, the album is available for download (Uložto) and has 2 videos up on Youtube for Milujeme Vulgarizmy and Dobrá Správa.
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