Frank Raasch from Polyprisma reviews Angelspit’s 2017 album Black Dog Bite
(Translated from German)
Angelspit – Black Dog Bite
From Frank – October 30, 2017
Angelspit Black Dog Bite Review
Very new, quite different, just like always
The combination of horror punk pop electro is perfected by Angelspit over six albums. With the seventh album, ‘Black Dog Bite‘ , the band consists of Matthew Slegel, Kitsu Noir and Zoog Von Rock. This seventh studio album, which on the one hand is exactly the same as fans expect the music of Angelspit, but on the other hand it’s different…partially…even completely different. But this is what we’re come to expect from Angelspit.
The band announced ‘Black Dog Bite‘ as a “Sonic Earthquake” in summer 2017. Zoog Van Rock says about the album:
Angelspit worked tirelessly for months on the mixes, polishing the details in the layers of distortion, seamlessly merging industrial electro punk and slick production: this is the band’s most highly produced album to date.
Black Dog Bite‘ is sonically dense, well defined, yet harsh and driven.
– (Zoog Van Rock, Angelspit)
The official announcement of the album is far more humorous, as Zoog’s statement suggests. Cats seem to play a big role in the Angelspit albums, with ‘Black Dog Bite‘ even more than before.
In fact, the intensive production work is immediately noticeable. ‘Black Dog Bite‘ sounds extremely stylized, almost overproduced. Does Angelspit need this polish? No, she does not need it, but as so often in life it is not about “needing”. It is about the can, want and what is meant thereby. The raw, hash sound of the band is extremely compacted, rounded and trimmed to perfection. The production itself becomes the tool, the sound image of the band expanded by an unexpected element.
Black Dog Bite LP cover
On the other hand, there are the usual punk-rock aspects, aggressive samples and generally very driving compositions, which can be danced quite a bit, but yet still an unexpected sound – at least unexpected for Angelspit – because everything is somehow rounder at the corners, perhaps even more pleasant, less rough, harsh, unpolished, even pleasing. Although the music from the genre of the Harsh Electro perhaps more in the direction of the Electro Rock shifts, it does the album overall well.
The music sounds free, easy and very dynamic. Fun and pleasure in experimenting are transported cleanly. The suspicion is that Angelspit might want to point out here with more than one wink that the music should be seen with a bit more humor and less daring, that it is about fun and not about canonical and ultimately only static perfection.
Many of the sounds very old-school on ‘Black Dog Bite‘, and often the listener is reminded of familiar sounds of early 90s Industrial/Cyberpunk. Also the very successful dabbling into the vocal delivery (not Rap!) But also the strikingly unadulterated slap bass enrich the spectrum of the band. In it’s own way, ‘Black Dog Bite‘ is a liberation blow that frees the music of the band from a dead end where there was not much room for further development. Whether this is appreciated by the fans to the same extent, remains to be seen.
The album is definitely worth listening too and is innovative in its own way. ‘Black Dog Bite‘ is a powerful and bold album, which is played outside the “Comfortzone”. In essence it is very old school, but experimental, rocky, fresh and above all, very danceable. It is an album that wants to combine unmistakable fun and innovation, with a clear emphasis on fun!
>> Read the original German review
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