Neu AUTOBAHN

Name: AUTOBAHN
Based: Leeds
Listen: ‘Seizure’
Similar to: piL, The Horrors
 

Heavy with introspective doom and caustically cryptic, AUTOBAHN have been unleashed amongst Leeds in the last couple of months, cavorting with fellow brash basement dwellers EAGULLS. That’s where the comparison ends though and the same goes for the moniker too - don’t expect any twenty minute symphonic synthesisers, expect three minutes of disorder.
 

Tight, jarring, and urgent, AUTOBAHN’s chaos is mirrored in the raw and powerful ‘Seizure’, which often sounds as though each member is playing an entirely different song to each other. Anything that starts with this amount of feedback is a recipe for discordance, but what makes AUTOBAHN unsettling is their intense focus on the corporeal body, eg. ‘Waiting for the next time I drop to the floor / Like a big dead weight falling through the devil’s claws, to you’. Craig Johnson’s vocals are baiting and cathartic, said to be related to a small fit in Brighton. The result is unhinged and violent, as terrifying as a derailed train carriage.
 

An EP is due out of the basement on Tough Love in November, one that will be very much of the same dark image that ‘Seizure’ presents. While AUTOBAHN are certainly unwelcoming, the vitality of their frankness and pursuit of a dystopian future is an expression of their deepest thoughts and fears.