Simulacro – Demo 2019

From Lota, a town in Concepción, Chile, comes the label Incendia Records-home to bands like Idioma De Los Libros, Manifiesto, Cadenaxo, Declive, and Heterofobia, among many others.

Since 2015, they’ve been releasing cassettes of bands playing hardcore punk, punk rock, screamo, noise rock, and everything in between. One of their latest releases is a demo by Simulacro, a loud punk band from southern Chile.

This is the band’s first actual release, having previously released two songs—re-recorded for this demo—from a rehearsal last year. They are a brand new outfit without much history behind them, but here they are eager to tell us what they think about the world.

Their liking for arts and philosophy is well presented within their lyrics and their overall aesthetics. The first thing you notice is this, the album cover is an obvious reference to Russian Constructivism, especially to El Lissitzky—paying homage to bands ranging from Generation X and Kraftwerk to Au Pairs and Test Dep.

The first track is based upon the work of Jean Baudrillard and talks about simulacrum, the imitation and projection, of being numb because of overstimulation, senseless because of saturation. In this time and age of internet, these are things that are easy to resonate with.

Information and communication goes through all of this work, as they are concepts key to the understanding of contemporary society and the new ways of thinking. We must understand where we are if we wanna move or fight back.

The second track is immersed in the dialectics of late capitalism and of dark futures to come. Is the history and big machines and the new ways of politics? The acceleration of production in the modern age. Everything in this demo is about communication and ways of talking, of delivering messages. About making theory and making politics, as the third track says.

The sound is chaotic, hissy, disarmed, full of wavy sounds of flanger, chorus and distortion, with dissonant screams constantly exchanging. The bass is overdriven, wide and pulsating. The drums are simple and don’t stand out, but they work well within the context.

The fourth track talks about the new ways old enemies present themselves, about the change in discourse and how revolutionary thinking has been co-opted. We thought we knew how to act, but it was all a lie. But we cannot stand still, continues the last track. We have to think about the situation we are in and start from there. Let’s look at the past, but let’s not stay in it. There’s more to it. Analyze, restructure and remodel.

Overall, the sound and production is not great, but it is as expected from a demo. For a first release it’s a way to show how the band sounds and what they think about things, so it works well. Let’s hope that Simulacro will continue in the same direction.