Viet Cong
Drilling down on the extremes of the *Cassette* EP, the first full-length from Viet Cong (later to be known as Preoccupations) is an inspired mix of gritty and beautiful, pairing fractured blasts of noise with plush synths (“Newspaper Spoons”) and deadpan vocals with striking lattices of guitar (“Bunker Buster”)—a sound that shouldn’t make as much sense as it does. Best of all is “March of Progress,” which opens with nearly three minutes of industrial wheezing before ascending to a breathless (and surprisingly catchy) rave-up—a high point on an album full of them.
Recorded in a barn-turned-studio in rural Ontario, the seven songs that make up 'Viet Cong' were born largely on the road, when Flegel and bandmates Mike Wallace, Scott Munro and Daniel Christiansen embarked on a 50-date tour that stretched virtually every limit imaginable. Close quarters hastened their exhaustion but also honed them as a group. You can designate records as seasonal, and you can feel Preoccupations's bleakness and declare it wintry. But the only way you get a frost is when there's something warmer to freeze up. So yes, 'Viet Cong' is a winter album, but only until it is a spring record, then a summer scorcher, then an autumn burner, then it ices over again.
Viet Cong's impressive full-length debut consists of dark, simmering post-punk. Their mission is not altogether different from that of Women, the short-lived and sorely missed indie deconstructionists in which half of Viet Cong previously served.
One of the most hotly anticipated of the year so far is a post-punk classic from Calgary's finest, an album which is richly thick with dread, terror and - inevitably - death.
The kind of piss and vinegar that brought a band like Women together was unlikely to just evaporate, despite guitarist Christopher Reimer's untimely death in 2012.
To some, Viet Cong will always live in the shadow of Matt Flegel and Mike Wallace's previous band, Women. That's fair. Plenty of people neve...
Album review: Viet Cong - Viet Cong. A debut as dark as Aleister Crowley’s boot heels…
Review of Viet Cong's new self titled full-length album, out January 20th on Jagjaguwar/Flemish Eye. The first single from the album is "Continental Shelf"
Calgary’s Viet Cong connect the dots between experimental noise and indie rock with some skill, writes <strong>Lanre Bakare</strong>