CD-R/free download, D-trash Records, 2008
www.phallusuberalles.net
For those who aren’t familiar with this american band yet, don’t misunderstand the name: Phallus Über Alles aren’t machos, they’re girls, they’re feminists, and they’re pissed off! So they attempt to express their anger against the contemporary world (and more specifically against the male-dominated hierarchies) by performing some raging digital hardcore – electro punk.
“Les Femmes de la Guerre” is their first record to be released on the Canadian label D-Trash Records, since their first album, “Iron Woman”, was published in 2004 by Fatal Recordings (Hanin Elias’ label), and the recipe doesn’t seem to have changed very much since that time.
So this new EP CD contains 7 tracks : “Fuck the Radio” (a potential hit, but not really fitting into the standards of broadcasting as you can guess), in its original version and in a “flaccid”, censored radio edit ; “Brawl at the Boys and Girls Club” in two remixes respectively performed by Robad Pills (a breakcore producer based in Florida) and Hansel (another american band from the D-Trash catalogue, who plays a mix between hip-hop and electro-industrial), and in a quite surprising dub mix made by Phallus Über Alles themselves ; “Beefed Up” (which has a more “poppy” feeling at the beginning and then turns into breakcore) and “Fakecore Outro” (a short and harsh technoïd instrumental track). The whole thing is packaged in a “Soviet” artwork (red stars, cyrrilic letters, and so on).
Globally, “Les Femmes de la Guerre” is a pretty well-produced EP, but isn’t really enough to satisfy those of us who are waiting for a Phallus Über Alles new album since a while. Let me get this straight: this record isn’t going to renew the genre, but without a doubt it’s gonna kick some ass.
[7/10]
— Olivier Noel