Reviews

Like America, the Germans have their own punk megastars in Die Ärzte and Die Toten Hosen. I’m as equally uninterested in them as I am in our punk megastars. So it was great to hear Adjudgement, a long-standing vaguely metal but mostly hardcore band out of Hannover, a city in northwest Deutschland. They’ve been around since 1993 and have released one prior English album called At Two O’Clock.
 
Normally, I’m not a fan of the yelling (as I’ve said eight billion times before), but Marc Brodowski’s vocals are nothing like the self-aware, fashion-conscious screamo yelling I’ve come to abhor. Marc’s vocals are more like short bursts; less barfing, more barking. This works well with the music, which is also short, fast and loud. Human Fallout actually reminded me of Comeback Kid’s latest album, Broadcasting, only a little more compact, a little louder and a little more repetitive. What Adjudgement lacks in technique and variety they make up for in energy and passion.
 
The lyrics are simplistic: they sound like foreigners translating their home language into English. I’m sure this is how I sound when speaking German: limited vocabulary and a few grammatical missteps. The content though, is everything I can get behind. Adjudgement’s songs are socially and politically motivated. The album starts off on a reflective moment of self-doubt, which is quickly wiped away by criticisms of the prison system, fashionable scene kids, hardcore violence and particularly greed and the discrepancy between poor and rich in wealthy western countries.
 
While I agree with this perspective, I have to admit (though I hate to cause it sounds so very, very jaded), it’s kind of like spinning wheels; you hear it a lot. I know they’re going for an international audience here, but Germany has some distinct problems of its own—reunification, neo-Nazism, racism—it would have been cool to hear Adjudgement’s take on some of the more German-specific issues, like mid-90s skate-punk/ska act Terrorgruppe did. Of course, that’s probably not a common viewpoint for a non-German. Either way, Adjudgement’s socially conscious, brash and passionate new album makes a fine addition to hardcore and Engineer Records’ roster.