When an album is described as ’emoviolence’ music with some math rock chucked in, then it gets my attention. What can I say, I have eclectic tastes. Anyway, Worcestershire might not be known for its avant garden scene, although it is the birthplace of Blanck Mass, as well as John Bonham and, er, Cher Lloyd, this is most definitely quite an avant garden album from The Murder of Rosa Luxemburg, a short-lived band who liked a concept in both band name and album. Which brings me to Everyone’s In Love And Flowers Pick Themselves, their debut from 2003, which was reissued digitally in 2019, on British DIY label, Undergroove Records.
Rosa Luxemburg was a political and socialist revolutionary brutally murdered in 1919 in Germany by an assassin who clearly didn’t like her writings on imperialism and its capitalist roots. From this 20th century ‘icon’ of socialism and communism the band took their name. So far, so sixth form band, you’d think. But you’d be wrong. Members of the band are extremely talented musicians, even if their output might not be to your liking. Yes, this is not toe-tapping, sing-a-long-a tunes, but it is a swirling complex of noise infused with melody and wrapped in sandpaper that still somehow manages to make you want to get up and throw some shapes.
Then we come to the album itself. Emo-length name? Tick. Literary concept? Tick. Yes, the album title, Everyone’s In Love And Flowers Pick Themselves, is from the e.e. cummings poem, ‘who knows if the moon’s’, but the well from which the band drink is rather darker in tone than the idea of a balloon that lifts you to a city where it’s always spring. Here’s what the band states as their artistic statement for this album:
“Now an old man and with the prospect of death looming, Victor loses all faith in religion and convinces himself that by building a house that cuts him away from society he can take on the superior role of God himself and avoid the concept of Death altogether. However, his disillusionment with his past life acts as a catalyst for his madness inside, where a giant cat and a giant dog fight for his conscience and whatever other life there is left in his naked and passive body. The inevitabilities of Time and Death cannot be avoided and Victor dies a roaming, misguided non-entity without the recognition he would have received through passing away in his past real life.”
Okay, bear with me. It may sound pretentious, I know. However, I’m convinced that there is humour here and even if you didn’t care to get the nods to historical assassinations and literary greats, the music would pull you in and then tear you apart leaving you to try and put yourself back together into some semblance of the person you were before. It bludgeons you with its intensity, of course, with its thrashy emocore new wave frenzy and constant seemingly chaotic time signature changes and barking vocals. But like a dog that’s never known love, if you approach it with care and really take the time to listen, it rewards you in ways that you wouldn’t have thought possible.
Take the track, Infernal Music, which I admit doesn’t sound like the kind of tune your grandmother will be asking you to put on five times in a row. This mixes avant garden electronic noises before shifting into guitar-based math rock, vocals ranging from typical hardcore punk shouts to what might be called ‘standard singing’. And then the whole thing breaks down into that sort of classical music inspired stuff made popular by thrash metal bands in the late 80s before finally shifting gear again into death metal and some sort of avant garden jazz noodling to end. It’s quite the journey, believe me.
Tracks such as Time And Death Invading The Arcadian Scene and Building (A House For Flowers And Lovers) take a more standard metal approach in terms of vocals, but the tracks stand out from your average long-haired throat-grunting band’s output through the rich and diverse useof rhythms employed to wrong foot the listener (in the best way). A mosh pit of exceptional quality would be created at their live gigs, of that I have no doubt; these heavy metal murmurations are exactly what this type of music is made for.
And then you’re suddenly yanked sideways by the melodic, almost electronic mathness of Ex Post Facto, which undulates beautifully in the same ways that someone like FourTet does with his songs. You’ll be left wondering what on earth their influences are, especially when the Zappa-Beefheartian oddity that is the final track, Venezuela Is Realised starts. While it resolves into coherence, its structure is anything but expected. The choice to include a fade out made me break out in a knowing smile. This was deliberate, surely?
And that seems to be the entire point of …Rosa Luxemburg’s music, to keep you guessing even as you’re completely enthralled (or driven mad by what may well appear to be nothing more than a cacophony). This is a band that was doing their thing without pandering to commercial tastes and corporate profiteering. To those who like their music to be arresting, different, shape-shifting and a tad odd, this will likely be your thing. It’s singular in its focus, uncompromising in its delivery. And at 29 minutes long it’s a short, sharp onslaught of the senses.