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More noise than punk

Silver Rocket blasts off with hard-core rock 'n' roll
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By Darrell Jónsson
For The Prague Post
August 15th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
They may look harmless enough in this pastoral setting, but onstage Esgmeq puts out a raw, angst-filled sound.
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Silver Rocket Festival

When: Aug. 18, beginning at 4
Where: Střelecký ostrov
Tickets: 150 Kč, available at the venue

In the 1979 documentary film Dancing Barefoot, proto-punk Stooges founder Iggy Pop spared no words when expressing his disappointment with Ivan Kral, the Czech émigré and former Patti Smith guitarist. “Where I had a problem with him is that I wanted to take Bohemian folk music and fuck it up … but he wanted to be John Lennon,” Iggy said about his short-lived songwriting partnership with Kral.
Sometimes one has to agree: Czech rock music weighs in on the light side. Seeking to tip the scales since 1997 has been one of the country’s open musical secrets, the independent label Silver Rocket. For Iggy or anyone seeking to find that elusive Czech rock ’n’ roll gravity, Silver Rocket’s upcoming mini-festival on Střelecký Island may be just the ticket.
Take Gnu, for instance, with its two bass guitars throbbing a foundation for a drum and guitar-noise thrall. “You’ll either listen with fists and jaw tightly clenched or sing along in a joyful, wordless howl,” was how Splendid magazine correctly summed up Gnu’s 2002 CD Milimetry Ticha. It’s true that Gnu is not for the faint-hearted. Yet there is a compelling pulse in the band’s sound as ardent as a coal-fed engine steaming toward Prague’s Masaryk station. On top of the strident rhythm section, guitars tastefully fume against tortured yet defiant vocals. Both onstage and at rehearsals lately, the band has been building a new body of work that Gnu vocalist/bassist Adam Nenadal describes as “more simple, basic, animal and primal.”  
To answer Gnu’s thunder, there is Esgmeq’s metallic lightning. As Gnu’s Nenadal once told the webzine Petre and Fracas, “If rock ’n’ roll wasn’t invented, the members of Esgmeq would be dead now.” Hailing from one of Czechland’s most notorious border towns, which Esgmeq has code-named Cheb/Eber/Hell, this group offers a definite shout from one of Central Europe’s urban fractures. To describe its distorted, guitar-driven sound, one could say something like “MC5 on steroids.” But “The Fall, amped up on Slavonic angst and survival instincts,” would be closer to the truth.
What most Silver Rocket acts have in common is a seemingly unwritten manifesto to enfold a bit of smarts with personal style into the hurricane. So it’s no surprise to find Esgmeq borrowing from Goethe for lyrics on its eponymous 2007 CD. Previously, Esgmeq’s music was only available on Silver Rocket 10-inch vinyl EPs. Despite the band’s recent outreach to the digital audience, during the production of its new CD it became obvious that the sound was still far too ominous to be restrained to bits and bytes. Limited editions of Esgmeq’s freshly minted 12-inch vinyl are now available at their shows.
“From the point of view of sound, the Silver Rocket bands are more ‘noise’ than ‘punk,’ ” says the label’s producer, Odre Jezek. Of all the bands taking the stage at the Silver Rocket mini-fest, the one that most embodies that aesthetic might be OTK, which certainly knows how to erupt a wall of glorious cacophony right into the place you might expect a guitar solo to land. Tabor’s Deverova chyba has its own approach to high-strung expression, yet has been known to add a touch of cello to the steaming broth. And Děti děstě’s “industrial garage blues” swerves close to death metal, but never falls off the post-hardcore cliff.
The blowout on Střelecký will be the final show on a five-stop Silver Rocket summer tour that included the exclusive annual bash known as the Silver Rocket Summer Swinger at Tocník Castle. Even though Silver Rocket bands are the least likely to wax sentimental about such things, rumor is the tour also comprises part of the label’s 10th-anniversary celebration. And whatever else it is or isn’t, the Střelecký show should close the book on anybody thinking Czech bands are simply lighter replays of trends found elsewhere. If that Iggy dude shows up wanting to toss around his attitude about missing Czech punk ’n’ roll thunder, Esgmeq and Gnu will be waiting for him.

Darrell Jónsson can be reached at features@praguepost.com


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