Octophilia

KermesZ à l’Est are extraordinary mash-up merchants. Their name is invented to sound Eastern European and the eight-piece Belgian band play post-industrial Balkanic à la heavy metal. They sport leather jackets, beards and mullets and feature plenty of Balkan-style brass – trumpet, trombone, sax, squealing clarinet, parping tuba, helicon and euphonium plus a battery of drums. It's organised mayhem and mostly loud. On stage – which is really the place to experience them – they roam around like looters with a baby's pram, swapping instruments or tossing them across the stage to each other. On this album they claim influences from Azerbaijan, Greece, Romania and, more surprisingly, French Baroque composer Jean-Baptiste Lully. ‘Lullysion’ sounds like the French Baroque composer has drunk a gallon of slivovica with Goran Bregović before reworking the Ouverture to Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. The final track, ‘Pony Wurst’, is perhaps named after their post-show snack, probably dunked in mayonnaise like Belgian french fries, or at least that of their four-legged friend Octto who contributes howling on ‘Trilock - Part II - Strong’ and is their album cover star. I wish more bands were so outrageous.