RDS-202

KermesZ à l'Est are not only the wildest Balkan band in Belgium, but probably on the planet. I first encountered them at Balkanik Festival in Bucharest in 2017. The following summer they played WOMAD in the UK and this year WOMAD in Australia and New Zealand just before lockdown. No doubt the best way to experience this band is in the flesh, which is well supplemented with facial hair, mullets and leather jackets and a brilliantly choreographed anarchy on stage. But while such excess and fun is hard to imagine right now, this album, available free from their website or main music platforms, is playful, punchy and skilled. Four of the tracks are radical arrangements of traditional Romanian and Bulgarian tunes, another is Arabic and one is original.

The enigmatic title, RDS-202, is the name of the biggest nuclear bomb ever created, nicknamed the ‘Tsar Bomba’, and tested by the Soviets above the island of Novaya Zemlya off northern Russia in 1960. The picture on the album cover is its fireball, which was 8km across. ‘The choice of the Soviet bomb illustrates both the incredible energy of the music’, the band explain, ‘and the madness of man in our post-industrial world that may lead humanity to self-destruction.’ Somehow KermesZ's post-apocalyptic vision seems even more relevant right now.