Laat het mij even 'goed in het oor liggende (post) punk' noemen. Energiek en fun, zonder al te veel randjes. Een band die volgens mij live een héél pak rauwer overkomt dan op een schijfke of via bits & bytes. Ik moet wel toegeven dat ik niet zo'n fan ben van het refrein en de wending die het nummer op 2'10" krijgt, al weet ik dat een jong (vrouwelijk?) publiek hier helemaal wild van wordt.
Rhyme & Reason verschijnt dit najaar via PIAS.
Luister ook naar:
LIVE Check hier voor de aankomende shows. Hopelijk wordt dit snel aangevuld, want er valt méér te rapen.
Lees
As long as life is doubtful and fraught with sorrow, people will find a way to sing themselves out of their own sorrow. It is exactly what Captain Kaiser’s Sascha Vansant does on ‘Goodnight’, a touching song about how to wave your mother goodbye for the last time. Halfway, the post punk banger turns into a resolving salute like Sum 41 once wrote them by the dozens.
One stage at a time, Captain Kaiser has conquered the punk scene while driving the van, celebrating life and making the walls drip with sweat.
The band has grown, but that word means more than bigger rooms or stage. It refers to a new stage in their musical development, a level of emotional depth they’ve never explored before, Captain Kaiser sounds more raw and pure than ever, thanks to producer and hardcore wizard Jay Maas (Defeater, Title Fight, Death Of A Nation), without having lost their knack for catchy melodies. One calls it hardcore and others talks about postpunk, but let’s forget the tags and just feel it, right there where it hurts.
Their latest record RHYME&REASON, scheduled for Fall 2023, shows a band in their prime. After losing his mother four years ago, frontman Sascha Vansant only now screams what he couldn’t tell his mates for so long in lyrics that soothe the soul as much as they cut it like a knife. You hear him search for every word, and at the end, the catharsis is deserved. It’s easy to imagine how he looks up to the sky, his band giving it all one more time in a rare euphoric moment on this quite dark record.
“In spite of it all, life is beautiful”, Joe Talbot from IDLES screams from the top of his lungs in The End. Never has there been a better slogan to describe Captain Kaiser. Their music still celebrates life, only they know better than ever that life sometimes can kick you in the guts. One day you throw a party with friends, while the next there’s only the grim reaper on the dancefloor. Captain Kaiser gives them all their statues, only to break them down and throw them in the moshpit.
Captain Kaiser is:
Sascha Vansant – vocals
Pieter De Krock – guitar
Senne Van Houdt – bass
Sebastiaan Schillebeeckx – drums
Maarten Van Dam – guitar
