Search - Nomeansno :: All Roads Lead to Ausfahrt

Derivative and original, familiar and surprising...at the sa

musicdoesnthavetobeboring | U.K. | 09/18/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Wow, what a great album. 12 songs of often strange familiarity. Whether it's playing with simple generic rhythms (is one even based on a hymn?!)...before breaking into their trademark complexity, or resurrecting familiar sounds from earlier more bass-n-drum albums but twisted and reformed into something new and vital. All with their trademark dark vitriolic take on life. Lyrically it's pure poetry, of the type you won't be reading in school any time soon. A masterful album and THE release of the year for anyone who cares about genuine creativity in music. NMN are truly one of a kind. Let's hope it's not the last album!



The band are touring as we speak - go check em out, they're about the finest rock band you can hope to see live too and still have more energy on stage than a thousand Green Days or Offsprings combined.

"

Still wrong and brilliant.

Vaughn Deyhle | 03/02/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Several years ago when I was living in Dayton, Ohio, the whole bloody town was indulging in self high-fives, congratulating itself on being the home of the Wright Brothers, celebrating their acheivement of flight. Phooey!! Their importance and acheivements are nugatory in comparison to the Wright brothers from the north. Yeah, I guess inventing the air plane is kind of cool ... so what? On the other hand you've got the contributions of Nomeansno. If I could choose only one or the other: the band or the inventors, the music or the vehicle ... I'm gonna choose Nomeansno.



And thank god they're back!! Gentlemen, we missed you. Maybe there weren't many of us that missed you, but the world of music needs you.



I'm ashamed to say I didn't manage to score every album by these guys before they suddenly left Alternative Tentacles Records and their discography disappeared into the aether. But hot crap, do I ever love their music. No one, NO ONE sounds like Nomeansno. There isn't a bass out there that sounds like theirs, even though it's a fairly simple rig and a P-bass. No band has vocals like Nomeansno, no one is even marginally similar, sounding simultaneously like speech and singing from a podium in a Leni Reifenstahl film ... yeah, that's the atmosphere you sense in their music sometimes. Does anyone write lyrics like them? It's possible, but good luck searching. It's all back: the swirling cynicism of a jaundiced world view in all its scathing glory. When you don't take yourselves seriously, you have license to make fun of everyone and everything. Yet, they're also able to be shockingly poetic in spite of their very discomforting nature. Truth is madness and madness is truth.



Look, these guys have been around a long time. MTV won't introduce you to them because in their eyes "they're not a group the kids can relate to." Suck it, MTV!! Just keep on pumping that bubblegum punk and we'll keep laughing at you. Yes, the Wright brothers' hair is gray without even an attempt to hide it. Yes, they look like my dad and to some of you they might look like your grandfather. Get over it. Nomeansno still crank out music with an energy and urgency that fools like Blink 182 aren't even worthy to attempt.



Ausfahrt continues the tradition of everything that makes this band great. The rusty razor wit and uncomfortable rythms are all there after all these years. Aren't they supposed to mellow out now and make something new agey to put us to sleep? Frankly, these guys HAVE NO RIGHT TO BE THIS GOOD. If you have no right, then you might as well be wrong. "Be strong, be wrong." Wrong and beautiful as ever."