Remember a time when bands could have big riffs and juddering basslines and angular guitars and be just a little bit dark but still have good melodies and be a whole lot of fun, and sing lyrics like “feelings spring up like mushrooms” and still do a bootyshaking dance number without it seeming stupid? Yeah, well, there was a time, kids, in the 1990s, when somehow that was all possible, Kurt Cobain notwithstanding. Or because of him. Or maybe it’s got nothing to do with Kurt Cobain.
Anyway, Suralin are from Chemitz, Germany, and luckily for them the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and so they remember that time, too, and while they don’t seem hellbent on repeating history (who the hell from the GDR would?) they do seem to have at least decided that playing fast rock with big riffs and a decent ear for melody is something we could all use here when economic times are making it feel like we’re living at the end of it all.
Sometimes you get a big riff driven by drums and guitars, like the opening couple tracks (“Bright Black Morning Light” chugs you along on its bassline), sometimes you get the bootyshaker (“Keep It Dark”), and sometimes you get a little bit of everything (“Chemicals Between”). The thing about Suralin is that they seem to have soaked in a pretty big bath of music, and the whole range has gotten into their skin; they mix their pops and their rocks without making their heads explode, wearing their ideas like a comfortable set of clothes. Is that a mixed metaphor? Whatever.
You get the feeling that the real way to listen to this band is at a live show, because sometimes it sounds like the recording left them coming off a little too soft around the edges, which doesn’t do some of the big riffs justice. And by the last third, the album does start to feel a bit repetitive: you want Suarlin to push out into some new territory instead of exploring the same patterns they’ve established, or maybe just to loosen up a little bit. But then again, who cares what you want? They have the decency to end with “Sonata for a Good Soul,” which plods along with a building slow riff and ends with a wash of guitars, and if that’s not what your good soul wants, then you’ll just have to miss out.
