Post-Punk History- "Getting the skinny on The Knutz"

TAROT CARD MEANINGS

"The Tower is falling"

Because of circumstances beyond your control, you have no choice.

"In practically all renditions of the Tower card, disaster is striking or has just struck. The demons of madness and despair are released from ancient hiding places, and nature conspires with human failings to destabilize society. The upheaval is collective and impersonal. Let us remember these images were created for the educated nobles and clergy -- reminding them that they have the most to lose if the hierarchy is toppled.

Lightning is a fitting karmic payback for the guilt of those whose fortunes come from the exploitation or abuse of others. A modern subtitle might be "revolution," indicating that through drastic social change, oppressed people can find renewed hope of better times. The Tower experience comes like a flash of lightning to topple the hierarchy of the old order, after which everyone can have a fresh start on a more equal footing." (www.tarot.com (Rider-Waite)

Gothic / Post-Punk Historical information

The Knutz is one of the main Brazilian names in the dark scene of the country, well-known by the energetic live performances and a distinguished music. The group roots come from punk and goth rock, but they don’t simply keep limited on a small range of genres or ways of thinking. They can please rock ears from anywhere with unique BatCaveabilly rocking sounds, wild synths and attitude.

The Brazilians Daniel Abud (vocals/ guitar), Tiago Abud (bass) and Airton Silva (drums) joined their musical influences together to create The Knutz’s sound in 2005. With own compositions, the group arranged its first demo CD in 2006. From its 17 recorded tracks, 5 have been rewritten to the band debut disk, ‘Ghost dance Party’, which was released along with European performances in November of 2010 – highlights for the ‘Spider’s Web Festival’ in UK.

First album - ‘Ghost Dance Party’

Released by the German label ‘Af Music’, the independent band’s first record, Ghost Dance P a r t y, a s i t s t i t l e suggests, creates a phantasmagoric environment, based on the mix of dark synths and distorted punk guitars. There are eleven killing tracks from undead goth rock songs to 80’s dancing ones. Moreover, the album has a high quality videography which contains five official videos, including a 3D animation of the CD’s title song.

The band debut album ‘Ghost Dance Party’ is a proof of The Knutz’s diversity. An ambient spooky intro opens the album, preparing the listeners to the title song: a dancing deathrock classic and a creepy guide to a distorted reality. This chaos is also felt in other songs, as on the dusky and dense ‘The Hanging Man’. But clearly, there’s a light beyond this foggy atmosphere: ‘Heaven Outside The Mirror’ is a drop of hope in all this confusion, as well as a powerful catching song; ‘Where are you now’ is an emotional ballad, a rising sun after a storm of feelings and thoughts. Besides, the album also includes classic post punk tracks, like the vigorous ‘Just Be You’, and other punk and 80’s dancing songs – a perfect accommodation of plentiful influences.

Echoes internationally through the German ‘Zillo Musikmagazin’, Russian ‘Grave Jibes Fanzine’, the English ‘Spider’s Web Zine’, the Greek ‘Athens International radio

104.4 FM’, the Spanish ‘Lux Atena Webzine’, the Italian ‘Iyezine’, the Polish ‘Bat- Cave.pl’, the American ‘Midnight Calling’ and the Colombian ‘Bat Beat’. Besides, its

demo disk was reviewed by the English writer Mick Mercer and included on his book ‘Music To Die For’.

In Brazil, the group travels around the country, opening the ‘Theatre des Vampires’ concert in 2007 and performing at events like ‘WoodGothic Festival’ 2008 and 2013, which is the most prominent event of gothic, post-punk, darkwave and the like in the country. They also appears in the newspapers as the well known ‘O Globo’ and ‘O São Gonçalo’, the magazine ‘Dynamite’, on a jornalism project written by college students from PUC-RJ called ‘Bandas sem Fronteiras’, on the ‘Radio Oceânica 105.9 FM’ and on the TV program ‘Globo Esporte’ from Rede Globo. The band even hits the cinemas, taking part in the film ‘Acontece’ soundtrack, by Guilherme Scarpa and Felipe O'neil,

The Knutz newspaper clipping shown at ‘Festival do Rio 2012’.

The album - ‘We Are The Monsters’

The Knutz released their brand new album ‘We are the Monster’ on the 31st of October 2015. A work which reminds the classic ‘Ghost Dance Party’, however among psychobilly influences, without losing that deathrock spooky aura or the diversity of the electronic new wave sounds from the last record. Following the same recipe, the new album came along with well-done dark videos, available on the band’s official website.

At this time, it’s possible to notice psychobilly influences like on the title song, where alternative worlds are ironically explored again on an attempt to understand the nature of the band members’ ghoulish souls. Following the same music line, there’s the funny ‘BBBatz’, an innocent joke that doesn’t leave anybody’s head easily. On the other hand, visions of destruction and disorder are compiled on the epic ‘Where the souls dance free’, a progressive deathrock with that sarcastic aura of the prominent ‘Ghost Dance Party’ song.

Back to our current reality, political lyrics discuss society corruption on the powerful somber post-punk ‘Right or Wrong’. Moreover, electronic synths and a distorted psychedelic bass drive the insane ‘Living in a Nightmare’, proving once again the group is not afraid of trying new ways to expose their disturbed thoughts. In addition, the gloom duet on ‘Lady Shadow’ shows the band maturity, while describing a fictitious attractive character as a way to suggest how evil seduces the mankind. After all, this album, through 12 spooktacular songs, demonstrates to any rock fan that there’s still too much to be created in this new dark music age.

Over again, the group traveled abroad for the new album release tour, also called as ‘Monsters on Tour’. At this time, the Brazilians went to Germany from May to June 2016 to perform a total of five concerts, including the biggest and most popular punk squats of the country, such as AZ (Mülheim), Alte Meierei (Kiel) and Alhambra (Oldenburg). Always supported by the German deathpunk group ‘Ghost of Dawn’, The Knutz spread their music from the north of Germany to its capital, Berlin.

In July 2016, the band signed up with ‘Fairy Dust Records’ in order to distribute the album ‘We are the Monsters’ throughout Europe. The months of March and April 2017 saw for the first time The Knutz performing over Latin American countries beyond Brazil. The so called ‘Latin American Tour 2017’, produced by Khristian Cordero (Tumbas Eternas Producciones) in association with Ariel Maniki and Bambam Records, embraced the cities of Lima (Peru), San Jose (Costa Rica), Leon de Guanajuato (Mexico) and Mexico City (Mexico).

During this time, the tour was covered by the Peruvian radio Miraflores Television, as well as by the Mexican TV La Zona Fuzión and the Mexican radios Fúzion Rock and radeeal.fm. A band interview and a review concerning the tour can also be found at subterock.com (Peru) and summainferno.com (Mexico).

New Album - 'The Tower'

Twisted angels whispering once more amidst the shadows: this is a good metaphor for the eternal return of post-punk, which rose from the self-destructive ashes of original punk and lifted much bolder flights than its predecessor. This army of crooked angels - the gothic, the synthpop, the cold wave - takes off again in the shadows that dominate The Tower, The Knutz's third studio album. In reworking with conviction the most characteristic elements of post-punk aesthetics in 11 songs sung in English, the trio (based in Niterói, RJ) surpasses the geographical and temporal limitations. It may have been recorded in 2018 in Brazil, but it is fittingly aligned with the sounds that served as reference to the band, released in Europe and the US 30, 35 years ago.

Daniel Abud (guitar, keyboards and voice), Tiago Abud (bass) and Airton Silva (drums) are not newcomers. Since 2004, they have pursued a sound that is reportedly influenced by names such as The Cure, Bauhaus and David Bowie. The loyalty to these icons has always guided The Knutz's music, despite changes in training and wandering around Europe (excursions in England in 2010 and Germany in 2016). Confirming the universality of post-punk language, they were noted by international critics with their first two albums, Ghost Dance Party (2010) and We Are the Monsters (2015). The Tower, produced by Bruno Marcus (Tomba Orquestra, Gilber T), is the natural continuation of a trajectory that only seems fixed in the past - but that actually transcends the clichés that could be expected from a work with such a definite personality. As Daniel sings in "Thank the Moon": "The night has more colors than the day". There are unexpected and original colors on The Knutz's dark night.

The title is a reference to the concept that ties the songs of the disc, derived from the tarot: the tower is the greater arcane, and the letters narrate its imminent fall, the drastic changes brought by the collapse and the beginning of the reconstruction of the tower, doomed to collapse once again. For the band, it is a metaphor for the state of voluntary blindness in which mankind lies, embedded in a seemingly indestructible tower. Everything comes down shortly at the opening, with the title track ("Fake structures withstand no more / Nothing is safe as we thought"). The distressing narrative drawn by the lyrics goes through the alienation ("Nobody knows what is wrong / But they laugh and laugh upon", in "The Fool"), the feeling of misfit in society / To deconstruct me, "in" It Hurts ") and terminal loneliness (" The cave frozen my heart "in" The Cave "). Finally, in "About to Fall", we confront the inevitability of another fall ("Don't matter what we've done / In the end we're about to fail") ... and the resumption of the morbid cycle.

"The Tower" is the darkest moment of the album, which continues alternating climates and timbres without deviating from the fundamental elements of post-punk. Striking bass lines lead "The Fool," "The Mockery Ballad," "Do Not Judge" that counts with the DJ, singer and burlesque performer Ludmila Houben, and "Hex," complemented by sparse and atmospheric synthesizers. Already in "It Hurts", "Thank the Moon" and "About to Fall" guitars take center stage. "The Hand that Takes" evokes a surprising flavor of dub

reggae, another ingredient typical of the post- punk salad. And with "The Woman with the

Coffin Case," they contrast the more gothic of the lyrics ("She is cold as a corpse, but a beautiful grace") with a shameless beat of soar dancing and the crucial participation of the vocalist Luciana Lazulli, who still scores on three other tracks on the album. The Tower, the album, can be regarded as a reverent and careful review of the original post-punk lessons. You can also position The Knutz in the pantheon of recent bands that are also inspired by the giants of the past - She Wants Revenge, Interpol, The Editors. Or it can be seen only for what it really is: a work that will take the trio to flights ever higher, on the wings of crooked angels, always in the midst of the shadows.

The Tower was recorded and mixed at 'Tomba Records' - Niterói, Rio de Janeiro by Bruno Marcus and Mastered by Pedro Garcia. Released on May 13, 2018 by the Brazilian label Deepland Records, the album was debuted at the 'Madame' club in São Paulo by the so-called "The Tower Tour" which extended to Germany with gigs at the Gothic Pogo XIII at Leipizig and Wild at Heart at Berlin .

Logo conception

The living dead skeleton which represents the group on its logo is Knutz Skeleton Dressed like an authentic Knutz’s musician, he has a gloomy empty look, a symbol of the band’s dark side. Perhaps, the crack on the top of his pale head might be the reason of his death, who knows...

Haunted by the ghosts of his memories, this puzzling creature has the need to expose his chaotic feelings, as in his famous appearance on the ‘Ghost Dance Party’ 3D animated video.

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