Band: Princip
Title: Fuck Your Empire
Genre: Blackened Hardcore Punk
Time: 13.19 min
Release Date: 2018
Rating: 72/100
Just when I was searching for some hardcore punk bands to review on these 'zine, 6 months ago I received a request from a HC act called Princip. It is a one-man band based between London and Belgrade that was founded in 2015 by Damjan Stefanović, a very active British musician with Serbian origins that not only plays in various bands/projects (also with an illustrious artist like Sarah Jezebel Deva of Cradle of Filth's fame!) but runs even a young small label named Life as a Dream Records. Through it, he digitally released in 2017 the first two EPs performed under the moniker of Princip. Some months later that release, the Serbian label JesBoliGaKurac Records edited both the EPs in a single cassette tape called "Fuck Your Empire" (that's also the same title of the first EP). And only 6 months later I finally managed to listen to this compilation, but I think that all this waiting was worth it!
The first EP "Fuck Your Empire", that lasts only 5 minutes per 4 tracks, see an interesting melting pot between hardcore punk, crust and black metal (that is present especially in the mood of the music). The songs are short explosions of pure fury thanks to elements like blast-beats from time to time, gloomy guitars that often spit out hallucinated riffs without any fukken solos, and screaming vocals that express a truly palpable rage so to deal in the most intense way anti-authoritarian and anti-militaristic themes that are also against "the general culture of apathy, ignorance and distraction pervading the West". Considering this kind of lyrics, it isn't a case if Damjan decided to name this project after Gavrilo Princip, the man that assassinated, just before the World War I, the archduke of Austria-Este Franz Ferdinand, whose inverted image of his bloodstained cost is on the cover artwork of the EP. Good is the variety offering by the EP, so you can range from the always slower finale of the titletrack to some noisy tunes of the hopeless "The Revolution Will Never Come", and to the ultra-violent grinding closing song "Whore" (that is opened by an intro in which you can hear an absurd joke of Hillary Clinton about the assassination of Muhammad Gaddafi in 2011).
But how the second EP "Culture of Nothing" sounds so different from the first one! In fact, now the songs are longer and are also more articulated. Plus, the black metal influences are more present into the riffwork while there is a better interaction between the two axes also by playing some clean guitars but still without any solos. Nice news even about the variety, that's notable as exemplified, to name a few, by "This is What You're Bred For" (the most HC punk-oriented song with Discharge tunes and a scrapping mid-tempo perfect for the moshpit), or the following "Fucking Killing" (that contains some very atmospheric vibes).
In conclusion, "Fuck Your Empire" shows a project able to promise good things for the days to come. Even though the quality is always good, I prefer without any doubts the second EP "Culture of Nothing", that's a little masterpiece (only 9 minutes of lenght) of a dynamic and intense blackened hardcore with crust tunes. Instead, the first EP is pure unadultered destruction as it should be but I think it doesn't express the real potentialities of the project, also because, as declared by the same Damjan, it was written and recorded even in one day, so I think it was made in too much of a hurry. And now, if you want some other stuff related with Princip, then grab also its 2018 split, listenable in its entirety through this link, with 5 HC bands coming from Serbia, Croatia and Montenegro.
Tracklist:
1 - Gavrilo Gde Si
2 - Fuck Your Empire
3 - The Revolution Will Never Come
4 - Whore
5 - This is What You're Bred Fir
6 - Fucking Killing
7 - Fuck Anyone Who Isn't Me
8 - Stop Defending Them
Line-up:
Damjan Stefanovic - vocals/guitars/bass/drums
Fuck Your Empire: https://lifeasadreamrecords.bandcamp.com/album/fuck-your-empire-ep
Culture of Nothing: https://lifeasadreamrecords.bandcamp.com/album/culture-of-nothing-ep
Life as a Dream Records: https://lifeasadreamrecords.bandcamp.com/
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