Trainer – Oh, Mandy
Fidel Bastro / Broken Silence – 2025
Rock, Noise, Punk
Rated: ****
Some bands know how to do things the proper way and get you all psyched before you’ve even heard those first tones... Those first piano keys... And often, they turn out to be the old soldiers. The old punks. Evoking memories of a lovely Barry Manilow, selling tea towels as merch and musically turning on every screw, yes, Trainer belongs to that selection of bands. The four geezers from Germany deliver their tunes with two guitars, drums and a vocalist. And on their second album Oh, Mandy they hand you almost forty minutes of punk. But it’s a funky bunch though, experimental, noisy on occasion, more wave related at other times or even moshing through hardcore slam dance territory, but always slightly manic and blazing a trail of rage and melody. Choppy by default, you’re being cast about like a ragdoll in a washing machine. Which seems fitting for the emotional charge; turbulent, anger, frenzy. It’s all there as the four translate personal strife and difficulties as well as world wide issues. Nicely bookended with that beautiful opening piano ditty Powietrze and closing it all with El Luchador Nihilista that clangs itself slowly away into the dark night. But the beat meat and the guitar poetry is between the covers and soon worms its way into soul and under your skin as New Economy Symptoms delivers its sonic environment, like the ever evolving complexity of our surroundings. The rhythm starting almost primordial, soon turning more into the sounds of a steam train, imploring the cracks, creaks and clangs of early industrialization. And that’s the exploration they take the listener on, discerning the sounds that make up our western civilization and dissecting them into rhythmic pounces and punches. And they do this to such a wonderful degree, that you will be moving around like boxer on speed, shadow boxing like a madman! Following track Mandy will leave you breathless, but so will almost all of the other tracks. Longest track I Would Have Said 'Fuck You!' opens its six and a half minute long stretch of anxiety with a nervous guitar and a building energy that never actually grows larger until it finally blows. Like the nextdoor neighbor on every news story... Beautifully crafted, the explosion is not what you'd expect and becomes this matter of fact uttering and break down. It's one of the many gifts Oh, Mandy has to offer, no instant gratification, but a slightly psychotic struggle to get the upper hand on the rhythms and your own shadow. And as the silhouette of the luchador saunters of stage you feel refreshened by the skin you shed and all that angry sweat you lost… Oh Trainer, you came and you gave without taking…
(Written by JK)
You can listen to their debut album Athletic Statics right now and be all jazzed up for Oh, Mandy which will arrive on 08-08-25!
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