The sonic uncomfortably of "Ladders" by Berlin based Berliner Lvft is brilliant and while I am not privy to the lyrics of this sonically rich punk tune, imagine if you are carrying huge metal buckets of angst (which in this daydream is a black putrid stew of liquid muck) up an old wooden ladder placed on soft soil. You strain, your blood sweat and tears falling into one smelly bucket, and you fully know that if you spill any of the angst that it will spread out and you will feel it a 100 fold, maybe even more. For some reason, if you can carry the weight of all those buckets up to the top, you will feel better. The mere distance of those buckets away from the earth's soil will relieve your pain. When you reach the top you can feel one foot of the ladder start to sink in that soft soil.
This is what "Ladders" feels like to me. The bucket, by the way, is your angst of choice filled with a myriad of things. Uncertain economic times, the sense that powerful entities have rigged the system, impending war, the thought of all the horribleness in the world even in your own neighborhood, not being able to feel loved or even recognized by those around you... anything that you are struggling with.
Love the sonics going on here, Berliner Lvft, seems to recognize that volume is not the only thing that is the manifestations of a punk aesthetic, of that aforementioned angst. I appreciate the spatial quality, the bending feedback, the throttling bass juxtaposed against guitar steps that feel like stair stepping but missing steps in a zombie-esque way, the fevered drumming and especially the slowing down as if exasperation has set in resulting in droning guitars like failed breathes and the resolve, the sonic build up to start punching away with both fists and the vocal countenance here feeling perfectly real for this sound.
Again, I don't know what "Ladders" is about but those are my thoughts. Love the sound, love the veiled metaphors and the direct warnings.
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM
In the gutters of Berlin, there's a band that howls like a banshee in the night. Berliner Lvft, they call themselves, and they're a motley crew of misfits who live to drink and get high. Four weirdos, who make the devil's music with aluminum neck guitars and strange tunings that would make your ears bleed. But there's a strange beauty in their ugliness, a kind of poetry in their madness. They rage against the world, spitting out their disgust with society in every note they play. They don't care about social norms or polite company, they only care about the music that flows through their veins like a drug. And when they play, they create a kind of magic. A raw, unfiltered energy that shakes you to your core and leaves you gasping for air. They're not here to make friends or win fans, they're here to make noise and damn the consequences. So if you're looking for something pretty and polished, look elsewhere. But if you want to feel the raw power of rock and roll, then Berliner Lvft is the band for you.
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