Billy Zach - A Momentary Bliss (2023) Hi-Res

Billy Zach - the post-punk project based in Hamburg since 2019 is back with its second album "A Momentary Bliss" and picks out those barely definable moments in the chaotic, confused and merciless whirl of the modern social race/competitive life, which are located between despair, sadness, hope, anger and excess. The artistic processing of these moments by the Hamburg-based indie label La Pochette Surprise Records is just as diverse as their emotional range suggests. Between melancholic ballads, fast, biting punk whines and cold-blooded, rousing vocal interludes, an eerily beautiful musical contrast is created with which only a few artists can captivate: Drifting in a maelstrom of melancholy and longing just below the surface - continually on the verge of leaping out angrily-foaming in the best noise-rock manner - and yet at the same time sinking like a stone weighing tons and surrendering to the dreamy synthesizer soundscape of the stream.

Billy Zach invite you to follow them into the swampy, morassy abysses of the social undercity - teasing out the human abysses with pulsatingly monotonous bass lines and drum sets, yawning like a black hole between idealism and perpetual inner turmoil, and rendered by Max Zacherl with the shuddering calm of an experienced storyteller. Like graffiti on the collapsed walls of one's own self-image, the catchy songs sometimes jump out at you with a wall of sound consisting of shrill and insistently driving riffs by the two guitarists*, sometimes with the artistic finesse of the artist in a state of madness. But whether punky-loud or melancholic-dreamy - they crumblingly point to the vulnerable humanity that can be lost so quickly in the colorful neon light of the alleys.