Double Crush Syndrome - 'Death To Pop' Album Review

Tracklist:

1. Whore

2. Death To Pop

3. Refuse To Kiss Ass

4. Cocaine Lips

5. Souls To Sell

6. I’m In Love With You

7. With Me

8. Mistakes We Love To Make

9. We Cannot Be Ruled

10. Tonight

11. Die Berühmten Drei Worte

Andy Brings, Slick Prolidol and Julian Fischer, collectively known as Double Crush Syndrome unleash their second album imminently on Arising Empire Records. It is called ‘Death To Pop’ and is phase 2 of their plans to “Save Rock ‘n’ Roll”, it follows their debut album ‘Die For Rock ‘n’ Roll’ released in 2017. They have been pretty busy since then though, releasing a mostly live album, ‘Flash & Blood’ last year. Their name comes from a medical term for describing when compressed nerves at one site causing the nerve to be susceptible to damage at another site. The band are from Mülheim an der Ruhr in Germany. If Wikipedia is to believed Double Crush Syndrome are the first full on rockers to emerge from the town, it has produced many sports people, but never until now any saviours of Rock ‘n’ Roll!

The album opens with “Whore” one of the catchiest Metal songs that I have heard in a while, let me whisper this, but it sounds like the band are very much in touch with their Pop sensibilities with this tune. The ‘woah oh oh’ hooks and thunderous wave of riffs grabs you by the scruff of the neck and doesn’t let you go. If you don’t want to mosh to this song, then I fear for your health! The title track, “Death To Pop” was released as a single earlier this year and it is another banging tune featuring more great hooks and a real earworm of a chorus.

On a few tracks, notably “Refuse To Kiss Ass” and “Mistakes We Love To Make” they remind me of Sweet when they were given free reign to explore their full on Rock sound rather than all the sappy early 70s saccharine overdosed Pop stuff. Perhaps it’s the skilful use of female backing vocals but for me “Cocaine Lips” sounds like something the Runaways might have done well. I liked this record on first listen and in my opinion, it gets better with each further spin. These guys are not easily pinned to a genre either, sure they might be predominantly a Metal band, but songs like “I’m In Love With You” and “With Me” are truly evocative of the best of late 70s power Pop, like the Motors maybe. “We Cannot Be Ruled” is probably my favourite song from the album, at least at the moment, but that will almost certainly change on my next listen!

I am not multilingual, in fact I am monolingual, so it always amazes me when bands and artists whose first language isn’t English write such great lyrics in English, as Double Crush Syndrome do on this LP. There is one song in their native tongue, “Die Berühmten Drei Worte” which in a couple of places has a kind of Sex Pistols feel to the guitar work. I have no idea what they are singing about, but music is universal, and this is simply a great tune. Having listened to the new album I have binged on earlier Double Crush Syndrome releases and now I would love to see them live! If you love great Rock music then get you lugholes around “Death To Pop”, I am absolutely certain you will not regret it!