I first came across Travølta via To Live A Lie Records after noticing that their 2017 split LP with Marxbros made for a memorable album cover. That album art not only grabbed your attention, but told you everything about what that record was going to sound like: a punk as fuck political farce of the cheekiest kind. The same thing happened again a couple of years later when I once more stumbled upon the band's brilliantly packaged, In Tinnitus We Crust LP. The angelic black metal pseudo-sacrilegious celebrity parody printed in gold on the jacket with matching gold vinyl is the thing physical media was made for. I was beginning to see a pattern emerging that would require that I finally give this band some real mindful attention. So when Travølta's Disco Violence Up Yours! came out in 2023 and Give Praise Records asked me to take a look at it, it seemed like a long time coming.
Travølta got their start in Belgium blending elements of D-beat crust punk, hardcore, powerviolence and grindcore into an uneasy fusion of their own brand of Urban Cowboy fastcore. Soon the band released a trilogy of splits in 2016 and 2017 with the likes of Days Of Desolation, Gewoon Fucking Raggen and the aforementioned Marxbros. 2018 saw the band release another split with Boom followed by that Chains of Gold full-length—In Tinnitus We Crust in 2019.
Much like many of the bands in the world during the Covid pandemic, Travølta found themselves at a pivotal crossroads in their musical careers and some reevaluations and decisiveness were necessary. After a lineup change and some socially distanced songwriting, Disco Violence Up Yours! was delivered and would be the band's second original full-length record. The album would serve as a back to basics homage to the band's roots. Whereas In Tinnitus We Crust seemed a darker, speedier sounding exercise in grindcore/fastcore, Disco Violence Up Yours! is a deluge into punk rock and hardcore.
Disco Violence Up Yours! is a political satire lampooning capitalism, bigotry and the greed filled hatred that has been systematically institutionalized in the western world. Disco Violence Up Yours! is the not-so-subtle voice of dissent in our half forced, half self-induced toxic modern culture. Surely I need not have to overly decipher the symbology of the communist propaganda-esque album cover of a proletarian hand, raised in opposition, wielding a medieval morning star fashioned from a disco ball? That imagery once again sums up so much about the band, both ideologically and musically.
Like I stated previously, Disco Violence Up Yours! and Travølta as a band are a mix of several subgenres, finely triturated into an indivisible bag of grindcore cremains. I usually pride myself on categorizing bands and placing them where I feel they fit best. Travølta is one of those bands that I find personally frustrating when it comes to writing and defining. (If this review comes out late I think it's safe to blame the band recommendations appendix stumping me.) [Editor's note: This review did in fact come out late.] Travølta made it a point to classify themselves as powerviolence, even going as far as titling the album after a Saturday Night Fever powerviolence pun. And, sure, powerviolence is an essential ingredient, but that isn't a genre that I would immediately jot down as a prominent identifier. At least not in the traditional sense of that Californian, 90's urbanized powerviolence that comes to mind for a lot of us. But then again, the powerviolence elements we see in many "grindviolence" bands can be a bit of a reach, as well. Clearly powerviolence is a major influence on the members personally and is a part of the band's musical mulch. I find it very fortuitous that the band included a cover of Dropdead's "You Have A Voice." Dropdead being one of those bands that bridged the gap between hardcore and powerviolence and is well accepted within several adjacent musical scenes.
Likewise, the same could be said about Travølta being just straight up punk rock. The structuring of the songs and the use of choruses and gang vocals certainly lends to the punk/hardcore punk feel. Not to mention, Travølta are heavy on the melody, especially on this latest LP. An attribute you will be hard pressed to find in much of any grindcore releases in general. Several bands came to mind while listening to Disco Violence Up Yours!, namely, the East London band The Restarts. Probably for no other reason than a shared belief in genre blending and sharp political sarcasm.
Yet still, in tandem with all of that, the aggressive, political nature of the music and the brashness of the vocals alone could be enough for this record to cut the mustard with any crust punker. Despite lacking that boring metal element of most crust and D-beat bands, Travølta's speed, lyrics and overall grindcore presence would allow them to shoehorn in just fine.
While I might personally label Travølta as a fastcore band, or maybe just a grindcore band, it's just simply not that simple. Disco Violence Up Yours! isn't necessarily a blast-a-thon—maybe even less so when compared to past records like In Tinnitus We Crust—but I have listened to fastcore releases that didn't blast at all. Maybe the real lesson here is that labels are contrived and it's possible for a band to coalesce all their influences together seamlessly and produce a true, unprejudiced embodiment of them all. Or maybe I just talked myself out of a job. [Editor's note: Cut that last bit.]
Whether the band is powerviolence, fastcore, grindcore or some kind of halfsies, it's all under the grindcore umbrella, assuredly here in this House of Grindcore. But then, vocally, Travølta differs from your atypical grindcore act. Absent are the customary deep gutturals or the high/low shrieks back-and-forth. Travølta's lead vocalist Nico is surprisingly decipherable in his powerful hardcore punk barking. His vocals are so distinctive I had to scour my mental Rolodex of music to find something vaguely reminiscent. Filed under the early 2000's during my high school street punk years, I landed on Germany's Die Oi!gens and Italy's Rotten Bois. For sure deep cuts, but they're what came up. Travølta's vocal presence is obviously more powerful and pronounced than two short-lived European street punk bands, nevertheless, it could give credence to the band's paradoxical shrine of subgenre influences, if nothing else. I also noticed a repetitiveness in the lyrical structures of the songs in which Nico emphasized the same lyrics over and over again and the choruses are filled with similar chants. I immediately thought of 80's UK bands like Discharge and their looped lyrical styles.
As distinctive as Nico's taunting snarls, Kevin's bass playing is just as uncustomary in the genre; or rather his tone is. His punchy skate punk sounding bass is slinky and front line for the entirety of the album's mix. It's a very uncommon sound for grindcore bassists. The white hot brightness and cleaner tone en lieu of heavy distortion is a great way to infuse both a vibrancy and energy into the songs. The same could be said for the guitar, played here on Disco Violence Up Yours! by band newcomer, Jonas. The guitar is obviously distorted, yet not overly detuned. The lighter weight in the riffs provides a nice gain filled crunch and clarity while allowing the songs to stay agile and springy. The guitar and bass are dialed in to that unbridled punk rock energy and Travølta are focusing it like a laser towards their activist viewpoints.
If you had any doubts on whether Disco Violence Up Yours! was anything but a grindcore album, drummer Rik is here to dispel any of those rumors. There are a lot of fast punk beats throughout the release, but there are even more, even faster blast beats. Rik is pushing the punk rock riffs and hardcore vocals into overdrive. He has no problem turning the Travølta Kalashnikov from semi-automatic to fully automatic and back again on a dime. From the skipping blasts of "Modern Day Witch Hunt" to the hardcore poundings of "Bruin Rotte Zweer" to the slow plods of "Jesus Crost Soccer Punch" to the nonstop blasts of opening track "Shake Your Ass," Rik does it all with extreme control and ease.
It's pretty late and I think I'm rambling, so suffice to say, Travølta is an exceptional band that not only blends and bends genres, but has perhaps indeed created their own—Disco-fucking-violence! Thankfully, it's a genre that does not contain disco at all, rather it has plenty of punk, crust, hardcore, fastcore, powerviolence and grindcore. That's all of the good ones, mind you! Travølta are the perfect grind band for those of us that came into the genre via punk rock instead of metal. They are a bit of a mix bag, but nevertheless, they are a rock solid band of flawless musicians with a cynical wit and a radical agenda.
[Editor's note: Disco Violence Up Yours! is available from Give Praise Records here in the States and is just the latest record in the band's immaculate discography. And speaking of record labels, I didn't even get around to discussing Rik and Nico's amazing label, Loner Cult Records, and the amazing roster that they have over there.]
FFO: Extortion, Hetze, Lovgun, Raw Peace
Listen to the album: https://travoltakvlt.bandcamp.com/album/discoviolence-up-yours
or Give Praise Records: https://givepraiserecords.bandcamp.com/album/disco-violence-up-yours
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