Goodbye, Old Me - 'Schade Dass Beton Nicht Brennt' EP Review

Tracklist:

1, Intro

2. Konsum

3. Only Memories Will Remain

4. Alles Was Bleibt

5. Distanz

6. Way Back Home

7. Truth

8. Zeit Steht Still

When I was handed this EP by Goodbye, Old me, a Post-Hardcore outfit hailing all the way from Germany, I really felt like I had my work cut out for me, because I didn’t want to do them a disservice but they do say music transcends all barriers. I may be paraphrasing there, but the point holds true regardless.

The Intro to this EP is a nice ambient instrumental which was certainly indicative of what was to come, starting off quite soft and then building up to a scream from the vocals. Very much a set opener if ever I heard one.

The first track 'Konsum', which with my extensive knowledge (or lack thereof) of languages tells me means consume or consumption (google translate also corroborated this theory for me) gave me an idea of the potentially anti-establishment feel to this track, but without getting too bogged down, the sound was not what I was expecting. The track is actually quite soft, the tempo was a lot steadier too for the most part, with a build up toward the end leading to shouted lyrics. The tempo however pretty much remained the same.

'Only Memories Will Remain' (didn’t even need translate for that one) comes in with a much moodier feeling intro and this time the vocals start off in a gang chant call and response style. Before moving on and allowing the bass and drum a good chance to strut their stuff a bit.

'Alles Was Bleibt' ( All That Remains) follows this same style with a steady intro with a more spoken word feel to the vocals. Things change about a minute and a half into the track when a bit of a chant builds up starting with lead vocals and then accompanied by backing vocals. This leads into a slightly faster tempo and more gang vocals.

'Distanz' comes in next with another quite steady tempo and sound, the instruments leaving a lot of the room for the vocals to ring through in another spoken word feel before building to more of a rallying cry as the instruments pick up a little in sound.

'Way Back Home' changed things up a bit this time with a shouted vocal and a bit more bite in the music, especially when the gang chants break in again leading to a more built up feel to the track. Another call and response style vocal part is used in this track though this time between the main vocalist and another singular backing vocalist and I enjoyed the contrasting sounds in the two voices.

'Truth' comes in next with a quote from a series, which admittedly I had to google to find out about.

The reason I didn’t recognise it is because it’s from Mr Robot, a series that my good friend Chris Halsall here at 3 Songs and Out has heavily suggested to me in the past and the contrarian in me has made sure I don’t watch it, I should probably do something about that. I admit after hearing that and completely understanding the direction the message was meant to go in this song, I expected it to go in hard. These guys however take another steady build in which incidentally dies out in another slow tempo song with more spoken word style vocals.

'Zeit Steht Still' closes out the album with the drummer presumably getting himself into position, which i found quite fitting with the more raw feel to this whole EP. Again this track has a more more steady build up, the guitar in this track sounds quite similar in places to that played in the first track 'Konsum' which made for a nice symbolic feel, you know sort of like going out the way you came in.

Ultimately there were parts of this EP I enjoyed and others that didn’t quite work for me. The punkier style vocal lead along with the gang chants worked really well. The second singular vocalist could also do with some more lines as I loved his sound which nicely contrasted the main vocalist’s own.

I enjoyed the really raw sort of feel and sound to the tracks, some music from a variety of genres these days can have a lot of doctoring (which obviously isn’t a bad thing, we all want our creations to be the best they can be) but I must say it was refreshing to hear a more raw sound which fit the style of music quite well in this EP. However a lot of the time this EP felt like a build up which never really reached its peak.

I admit I may be a little biased, I do prefer a lot higher tempo in my music but if I were to offer some constructive criticism it would be for these guys to maybe consider really picking up the tempo for a few tracks in the future, because they’ve already got the feel and the build up for it.

This in itself will help with the other problem I had, and that is that a lot of the tracks felt quite similar a lot of the time. There’s really only so much you can do when the tempo remains mostly the same and so like previously stated I think speeding things up could be just the thing these guys need.