Coinciding with a reissue of Xmal Deutschland’s Early Singles (1981-1982), this debut of freshly minted tunes from the band’s lead-singer Anja Huwe is a pleasant and very welcome surprise.
I honestly thought Xmal Deutschland’s lead singer wouldn’t ever return to music, (very much like the much-missed Danielle Dax), but I’m glad to have her back, here collaborating with long-standing friend Mona Mur and involving fellow Xmal bandmate Manuela Rickers to produce something that’s still haunted by that punk / gothic angst of yore, but is so much more considered, oozing with a refreshed sleekness that’s closer to Viva than the ’80s glamourgast that was Devils.
Inspired by the diary entries of Moshe Shnitzki, Codes takes this seventeen-year-old’s tales of partisan life in the Russian forests of the Second World War as an emotional gauge to the album’s nine tracks, an idea that maybe isn’t immediately realised on the opener, “Skuggornas”.
A slow-soaked ballad that rubs against your expectation, and is probably best suited to an album’s end point than its beginning (it took a few listens for it to grow on me), but the very next track, “Rabenschwarz”, slams a satisfied reward for your patience. Goes straight to your gut in quaking percussive and vitriolic vocals, those diagonal guitars sinking their teeth into forbidden fruit. A brilliant show of strength that the Propaganda-like sheen of “Pariah” quickly follows on from, all laser-lit and stadium-worthy (a distant boomerang-like twang doesn’t go undetected).
In contrast “Oh Wald” injects a poppy splinter to the mix, a catchy disco kinetic diamonding a brushed dynamic that gets wedged in your head and refuses to move. Her words seductively buoyant within, the production capturing their bright curls. The polish on this album is superb, samurais you with its multi-tracked glory, kicking plenty of drama around your toybox.
The luxurious glisten of “Zwischenwelt” and its neon-splashed / staggered tensions; the adrenalised double shuffle of “Sleep With One Eye Open” too, diagonally dining like some mascara-orbed techno. The attentive details abound, weevil through the souped-up “Living In The Forest”. A track that re-lives “Rabenschwarz”‘s zeal as those spiralised guitars hungrily gouge away at that intense driven coda and those breath-taking slams.
-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
