My favorite Dutch swear words are “natte krant” (wet newspaper), “zak hooi” (bag of hay) while “pannekoek” (pancake) gets an honorable mention. As you can see, these don’t translate very well to English. You could tell me to look to the English for more creative English curses, but to my ears they only sound good if you say them with the right accent, which I don’t have. Along comes a New Zealand band that suggests the best swear word I’ve heard so far: Unsanitary Napkin.
Just for this small fact I am eternally grateful. Another thing that I am grateful for is their album All Billionaires Are Bastards (even though I would have loved a more creative swear word here. I can understand the need for something short and catchy, so I’ll forgive them). This album is something to behold. Every now and then you listen to a band and not just hear something that is good, no, instead you hear something that makes the adrenaline pump through your body like crazy and makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. All Billionaires Are Bastards is one such album. Once I read a story about a soldier that took all the amphetamine of his entire regiment so he would have enough energy for the task ahead of him. I imagine if that task was to play a punk album dealing with a whole range of issues that pissed him off, the outcome would sound something like this.
This album is incredibly angry and fast. With a name and an album title like this it would be foolish not to expect this amount of rage unleashed upon an unexpecting population, but still, I looked up in surprise when I first listened to the album. All subtlety is left at the door from the first second till the end of the record (not much later). This album gets extra love from me for how incredibly bass driven the album is. In fact, I would say that the bass is, for once, a more important instrument than the guitar. It really drives the album forward. The whole album is as subtle as the lyrics. Which means there’s little subtlety about it. The album deals with a whole range of political and societal topics, ranging from feminism to facism, to trans rights to industrial farming to the evils of captilism. All lyrics are on bandcamp if you are interested. They are all caps locked and if you listen to how they are delivered you can see that that is the right choice.
If you by now think this is mindless rage, I gave you the wrong impression. In all their anger and rage Unsanitary Napkin managed to still focus on the most important weapon of all musical artists: the song. The band knows how to incorporate a legitimate hook into their compositions. And to spice things up include keys in a couple of songs that really add something to the sound.
I was blown away by this album, in case you hadn’t noticed by now. It is one of those albums that I am sure I will return to often and it is already in my most played albums on bandcamp. I highly recommend you give this a try too.
