Hello again fellow listeners of excruciating tunes with no shallow political ambiguity! It is once more to brighten up a Friday with more of the aforementioned, presenting you today a slice of the active and kicking neo-crust scene down in Galicia, Spain.
A legendary region already for crust punk worldwide thanks to acts like Ekkaia (see also Icon), Cop on Fire (partly), Ictus, Madame Germen, Hongo, Black Panda, Leadershit, Asedio, SL’S3… most projects were (are) intimately related to each other. Insightful and creative experimentation let these bands forge a path that couldn’t possibly go unnoticed, and today we are extremely fortunate to share one of the (not few!) acts from the current in Galicia that carries the weight of such a heritage on their shoulders. A good number of bands in this humble and moving scene are usually tagged as “dark hardcore” or just neocrust, and TENUE, a four-piece ‘Rural Punx Family‘ from A Guarda (Pontevedra), are a highlight within the myriad of styles and mixes this diversion of hardcore punk already has. Arcos, Bóvedas, Pórticos (roughly translated as “Arches, Vaults, Gateways”) is the most recent piece of work they put out back in the 1st of August, delving back into their personal blend of poetry and philosophy-ridden neo-crust with a notorious kick of screamo that carries away a bit the overall feeling from the sombre negativity or angst to wire a more tender yet not less visceral voice for their messages.
Since their inception back in 2017 with their first demo, TENUE has left us with a great catalogue of introspective and thoughtful songs written in Galician, speaking about the self within modern states and the footprint of our actions, about animal liberation, about the ‘Antifascism of the little things’ in the everyday exercise of existence in such a world as what we know by the First world. TENUE has always been a band to crush the wall that lets us be alienated from ourselves and others, a cry in the search for the affection needed for a real change within our insides, as their first album Anábasis embodies, for example.
In 2021 they released their one-song album Territorios, recorded during the COVID pandemic crisis, as a way to represent the will to connect again, to keep going even if the world seems to be falling apart (at least, let’s fall embracing those we love and care for). But coming back to our album here, TENUE is treating us with this and much more in a step beyond what’s already mindblowing in another effort of pure catharsis visiting topics in the scope of mental health, from an identity crisis, traumas, psychological scars one does carry for a lifetime and shape us in our own way, more personal even while equally political (as if we could separate easily one from the other, right?), with one single conclusion: to keep living, to keep looking for what gives us joy without submitting for any imposed collective rule, or as the band themselves accompany their album page with <<Nós dicimos que alí onde experimentamos a alegría, alí está o noso destino; que os fins son immanent aos medios; que é necesario vincularnos tanto ás prácticas que nos colman de gozo como a nós mesmxs. […]>>, taken from the Invisible Committee, the anonymous antifascist French collective of writers, which from Galician here would be “We say that wherever we experiment happiness, there is our fate; that the ends are inherent to the means; that is necessary to attach ourselves both to the practices that fill us with joy as well as to ourselves”. This is manifested in the form of 5 songs of frantic riffs and breakdowns, heart-piercing vocals, and melting melodic crust with a pinch of bossa nova as part of the character of this particular album that will not leave anyone indifferent.
⚔️TENUE ⚔️
BC: https://tenuepunx.bandcamp.com/
IG: https://www.instagram.com/tenuepunx
FB: https://www.facebook.com/tenuepunx