Trouble In Mind
Onyon - Last Days on Earth
Onyon - Last Days on Earth
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German post-punk band Onyon scrambled our brains when we heard them for the first time last year, so much so that we signed them and reissued their eponymous debut cassette EP (originally co-released in limited quantities by the Flennen / U-Bac labels) in June of ’22. Last Days On Earth is the band’s latest and first proper full-length for Trouble In Mind.
The oddball, synth-soaked world of Onyon is disorienting at first - the band’s herky-jerky rhythms may operate in a familiar fashion to bands like Devo, Kleenex/Liliput or label-mates Lithics, but Maria Untheim’s woozy synth squiggles that populate and punctuate the band’s songs keeps everything at arms-length. Flirting with the primitive cool of 80’s minimal-synth and the wire-haired cretinism of 60s garage, especially on tunes like the manic ‘Dogman’ or first single ‘Alien, Alien’. Guitarist Ilka Kellner’s six-string salvos rage unpretentiously with edges torn & frayed, rarely (if ever) soloing, but never afraid to unleash a spindly lead-line over Florian Schmidt’s rubbery bass lines and Mario Pongratz’s stuttering drum patterns that phase in and out of time imperceptibly like drunks doing their best to seem sober. Kellner and Untheim share vocal duties (in both English and German - sometimes in the same song), but the real magic comes when the two sing together, voices merging in loosely harmonic gang vocals; one deadpan, the other slightly unhinged. The group’s beguiling lyrics add to the mystique - inscrutable neu-world fables about egg machines, ghosts, worms that talk, and urges to consume newspaper that ooze a rural, old-world understanding of life & the imperceptible spaces in between reality and fiction, transmuted thru a modernist sci-fi lensflare.
For fans of Wet Leg, Es, Devo, Lithics, Maraudeur, Nots, The Staches, The Fates, Y Pants, Raincoats, Kleenex/Liliput, Chrisma.
The oddball, synth-soaked world of Onyon is disorienting at first - the band’s herky-jerky rhythms may operate in a familiar fashion to bands like Devo, Kleenex/Liliput or label-mates Lithics, but Maria Untheim’s woozy synth squiggles that populate and punctuate the band’s songs keeps everything at arms-length. Flirting with the primitive cool of 80’s minimal-synth and the wire-haired cretinism of 60s garage, especially on tunes like the manic ‘Dogman’ or first single ‘Alien, Alien’. Guitarist Ilka Kellner’s six-string salvos rage unpretentiously with edges torn & frayed, rarely (if ever) soloing, but never afraid to unleash a spindly lead-line over Florian Schmidt’s rubbery bass lines and Mario Pongratz’s stuttering drum patterns that phase in and out of time imperceptibly like drunks doing their best to seem sober. Kellner and Untheim share vocal duties (in both English and German - sometimes in the same song), but the real magic comes when the two sing together, voices merging in loosely harmonic gang vocals; one deadpan, the other slightly unhinged. The group’s beguiling lyrics add to the mystique - inscrutable neu-world fables about egg machines, ghosts, worms that talk, and urges to consume newspaper that ooze a rural, old-world understanding of life & the imperceptible spaces in between reality and fiction, transmuted thru a modernist sci-fi lensflare.
For fans of Wet Leg, Es, Devo, Lithics, Maraudeur, Nots, The Staches, The Fates, Y Pants, Raincoats, Kleenex/Liliput, Chrisma.
