The discerning reader of promotional sheets is used to a lot, but what Rookie Records writes here is truly outrageous. PASCOW is supposed to leave the genre they have created with the new album.
Really?
Why are they doing this?
And is it really true, or is Rookie Records, along with the band, just trying to reach out to people who, like me, have previously avoided PASCOW?
The artwork of the cover is already appealing, and combined with the back cover, it gets the mind working.
The pretty facade in front and the true self on the back?
The pretty front and the ugly face that shows people how they really are?
The expected life in front and the destroyed, emaciated life of reality in the back?
Or simply, a pretty girl is into Kiss and Halloween?
We were immortal when we were high
the blood in our heads so incredibly fast
With these lines, the album begins, as does the first song “Silberblick & Scherenhände“. A lyrical heavyweight.
Something broke years ago
it was meant to be exactly like this
so don’t include me
in your prayers
A final greeting to the middle-class parents in some middle-class town?
When boredom and the same old routine, along with the friendly facade of functioning, become too much. Crazy, now I’m getting cryptic, and that’s exactly what PASCOW didn’t want to be anymore. They really aren’t. At least not like that anymore. The lyrics are indeed clearer, more frontal, and more direct. I find that they are harder to endure than metaphors or similes, which are still more abstract. Here on the album, things are more direct. Avoiding is harder. Engaging with the music and the lyrics is almost forced. PASCOW wants to be heard.
“Kriegerin“ illustrates a concrete case of what happens when essential things are missing and you have nothing left to lose. Everything made by humans. And someone once said: “Humans destroy humans.” That’s how it is. Look around, don’t be blind.
PASCOW also shows what it means to be different. Understanding songs is not about finding yourself there. That’s how it is with “Unter Geiern“. There, as in other lyrics, the band’s familiar songwriting style still shows. Not necessarily cryptic, but still not concrete, rather intellectual and presented in phrases.
Overall, however, the band has gained clarity, which is certainly a step forward in terms of recognition. Some concerts of the tour in April are already sold out, and the band will surely not disappoint.
I find “JADE“ more accessible than the previous albums of the band, and I think I’m not alone in this.
