Odbrana I Poslednji Dani
by Идоли [Idoli]

Muito bom!! Ainda mais a se considerar a data de lançamento. Post punk da melhor qualidade, rivalizando com os melhores do estilo, com produção impecável.

The language barrier proved to be unbreakable for me.

So it's been about a year since my first comment, and I have to say that my appreciation for this album just kept growing stronger to the point that I now have it in my top 20 and as the top rated yugoslavian album (I think at the time of my first entry it just gained the chart entry at the last spot - #50 at the time).

Out of all albums that came from this area, this is the one that I would recommend the most to the fellow BEA users. Not just because it was voted as the best yugo-album of all time in '98, not because it's so high on my chart or even because I feel it's the kind of music that people here would like. It might sound weird, but it's mostly because it's the one album from this area of the world that I don't generally have any emotional attachment from "before". I could easily see myself overrating some other "non-english" albums on my chart (for the "emotional reason"), but this is the one I discovered very late, and thus approached it somewhat differently.

Anyway, a year ago I commented on some weaker songs. This was a problem for me because listening to "Odbrana..." felt less of an "album experience", because I more or less focused on the better songs. Now it's different. "Moja si", which I disliked before, I now find pretty... awesome. It's a brilliantly strange song with a somewhat dark and sinister atmosphere, with its slightly bizarre lyrics and ending (the songs ends with a prayer). The shorter songs I'm no longer bothered with at all, in fact the only song I feel is unnecessary is "Igrale se Delije", but it's less than 3 minutes long, so it's not that bad.

Overall, what I like the most about this album is, that it offers quite a variety of styles, while still being connected in way that it maintains the "feel" of being an album. The general atmosphere, mainly created by distinctive rough (some might say a bit amateurish) production and synth experimentation. I love it when artists experiment with their sounds, while still being able to create songs that are accessible and easy to listen. This album is a perfect example of that.

Track picks: Poslednji Dani, Rusija, Nebeška Tema, Glavna Ptica

At first, while I loved most of the tracks, I had trouble getting into some of them (like Moja si, or shorter ones - Igrale se delije, Gde si sad cica maco).. Listening to this now, I'm not really bothered by any of them and while they are the reason I don't put this higher up my chart, I feel the brilliant songs like "Rusija" (Russia), "Poslednji Dani" (Last Days), Odbrana ("Defense"), "Nebeška Tama" (Heavenly Darkness) or even short album closing "Hajde sanjaj me sanjaj" (Come On, Dream of me, dream) easily outweight them and make this album really really great. It's not hard to see (hear) why this was voted as the best rock album of ex-Yugoslavia by Serbian critics, journalists and artists... Highly recommended