Schlagenheim (studio album) by Black Midi

There is some great instrumental moments on here that are the bright spark of the album. The music is also interesting and experimental which leads to some of the most unique and enjoyable songs on the record. However, this record feels very confused on what it wants to be. All the influences the group have seem to be crushed together and do not work in unison with one another. This leads to a lot of clunky and messy moments which are not enjoyable to listen to. The vocal is very up and down as well and I find it to be annoying more often than not. Overall, this is not an album I will be rushing back to but there are moments of greatness and a few songs I will revisit.

From JoaoMoreira 03/17/2022 23:51

They will probably be good.
Need to drop the teen angst approach and those pretentious vocals.

From VictorVale 01/26/2022 11:26

Muita força e preciosismo nos instrumentos. Muito foda!

Sounds like all my favorite experimental, progressive rock, and art-punk albums got in a fight with each other

From teague 08/26/2021 20:20

The diffusion of genre is impressive, unfortunately that's all this album really has going for it. Somehow the music isn't very interesting at all, and the vocals are just straight up awful, especially on bmbmbm, which I felt was the weakest song by far. It sounds like the French knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

"Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries!"

From Timestarter 07/13/2021 16:28

Highlights:

- 953
- Western
- Ducter

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Wow, I guess this album will become a classic in time!

Only song that I liked was Western, also Ducter was okay, the other songs sounds more or less like chaotic noise. I like bands like Mars Volta or Swans, which have a similar approach, but this doesn't sound appealing or interesting to me. Sometimes there are good ideas in a song, but I wouldn't want to hear the whole song again.

From Boltzmann 02/20/2020 22:28

I can really appreciate music that plays with rhythms, but I'm not just gonna praise everyone that does that. I've heard better. It's too random: I want my experimental music to make me go "how do you come up with that?", and not "why do you come up with that. Here and there they go into Trout Mask Replica territory too with melodies that don't make sense, quite succesfully I have to say, but I still have to hear one example of that style that really convinces me to take it serious. This is definitely not going to do the trick, for me (which isn't important) and for future artists. That is: we will not hear anything of this in the future, if we're going to assume this band added anything considerably to the style in the first place. The vocals sound like all '80s metal bands. The riffs too (I mean the snippets), even though they sometimes seem to go to hardcore punk too; I mean why not, it's already decades after any of those genres are any relevant, so there's no need to feel any rivalry.