Zuletzt – The Abandoned Flesh LP

With members spanning London and Munich, the debut album from Zuletzt (Last) deals in post-punk that brims with an aura of ominous drama.  The pulsing synths, resonant bass lines, shimmering guitar, and crisply punchy percussion are all given room to unfold with striking clarity.

Yet there is also a restless invention that permeates through the album.  This is post-punk in its broadest iteration, calling upon darkwave, cold wave, anarcho-punk influences, even flourishes of new romantic pop, and then refracting them through the band’s own anarchic lens.

But, perhaps, it is the vocal delivery that proves the defining factor.  The lead vocals lean into a sonorous baritone and passages of austere, mechanical detachment.  They are then layered almost continually with supporting vocals that skitter with a vibrant melodic energy.  The result is an almost boisterous austerity as bleakly allusive themes of social atomisation, dystopian futures, and personal isolation are rendered.
It is telling that, across the album’s fifty-minute run time, the band’s propulsion barely dims for even a moment.  Personal stand out moments are the raucous Trains In My Tunnel Vision, the brooding Time Without Purpose, and the darkly pulsating Non-Linear Future.

FFO Joy Division, Chameleons, The Cure, Xmal Deutschland,  Bauhaus, Sisters Of Mercy
(NFT/ 2024)

Tracklist:
A1 Imprinted Onto The Being    
A2 Driven By The Fear Of Inertia    
A3 Trains In My Tunnel Vision    
A4 A Thousand Ways    
A5 Perpetuated Misery    
A6 Malignant View    
A7 Time Without Purpose    
B1 Re//Action    
B2 Further Fractured    
B3 Non-Linear Future    
B4 When Reflections Become Silhouettes    
B5 The Guilt Of Sleep    
B6 Defined By One Moment Of Weakness
B7 Gravitational Pull