German Army again. Given their prolificacy, that shouldn’t be a surprise. Given my obvious fandom, that should also not be a surprise, “that” referring to me posting here once again about German Army. I wish you’d all just leave me alone with my music crush and stop complaining that I write about so much German Army stuff.

Oh wait, nobody’s complaining? (Or, uh … reading?) Well great, because then you’ll indulge me once again in gushing over GeAr, this time about their late-2019 CD release Out of the Past on Valencia (Spain)’s Subsist Records. As usual, it gets in your head and under your skin, like a giant proto-industrial crystal jammed right through your forehead and into your brain. Which, as luck would have it, is the exact depiction on the cover of the CD, so I didn’t have to really reach that far for the simile. Whose bust is that crystal braining, Plato? Some Greek philosopher. Let’s go with Plato. I’m not up on my face-matching of ancient dudes.

We’re iced in dub from the get-go, the dank, dungeon-crawling antics of the duo a welcome intrusion upon my day. From there, obviously, we get industrial, post-punk, and even Thom Yorke–ian techno. Spoken word performances appear here and there, as do vocal samples. Often, GeAr releases have a thematic throughline, but Out of the Past seems to eschew that; still, the sonic cohesion more than makes up for it, and, while it’s hard to create a “best of” GeAr list or whatever, OOTP comes off as sort of a German Army greatest hits, if I have to pin it down. It’s a sock-knocker-offer from start to finish.

Might that be because I simply popped in a German Army disc today, and no matter what day I pop in a German Army disc I find myself listening to a sock-knocker-offer? Maybe. Or maybe that entire discography’s worth sinking your teeth into, no matter what point you pick it up at. Out of the Past is a great place to start. Or finish. Or interact with somewhere in the middle. Text by critical masses media