Winters – "Berlin Occult Bureau" ...

Berlin Occult Bureau, by the Scottish trio Winters, is a very fine doom rock album with a fresh nineties indie rock sound. The album will be released on the 31st of August, on CD (limited edition) and as a limited vinyl edition on the German quality label Van Records. Clocking in just under forty minutes, Winters give you myriad rock and metal spheres combined into one rolling, rocking vehicle: Berlin Occult Bureau. Berlin Occult Bureau is their second album (check their debut Black Clouds In Twin Galaxies and the EP Satelites released on Rise Above Records in 2008). Although the band doesn’t sounds doom in the regular use of the word, it’s still pretty down and unhappy. Like they describe on their facebook: Winters sounds like Ace Frehley on downers. Their inspirations: The Damned, The Dickies, The Kinks, The Cardiacs, and, Kiss.

Goodbye opens up the album quite up-tempo. You can clearly hear the guitar driven & rock oriented nineties indie sound. Nice one! It’s easy for the sound of this band to comfortably nestle itself into the back of your head. It’s radio friendly, easy on the ears and nothing too offensive lyrically. Plans Within Plans opens up with a possible semi-Pixies riff. Good start. This isn’t even doom, and you will like it!  Ausländer is as close as Winters will get to major radio play if you want my humble opinion. This song also stars on the Van Records compilation disc, which I got at Roadburn, and to be honest, to this day that disc hasn’t left my car stereo. Great, great song and this song actually got me into Winters in the first place, and I was desperately hoping for this album to be released. Schwarze Kraft reminds me of Nirvana and Sebadoh, which is a good thing.

Berlin Occult Bureau starts off with a few good drum rolls. A neurotic riff sets in and makes this track a beauty. Yes, Winters is eclectic, and as they state on their last.fm: “ [the] songwriting is rooted in an eclectic mix of classic British post-mod pop to bands like Low and singer-songwriters like the late Elliott Smith. One of the biggest influences is the cult British proto-punk band The Creation. Contemporaries of The Kinks, The Small Faces and The Who, they inspired the name of Alan McGee’s seminal indie record label in the 1980s as well as providing camp German disco donkeys Boney M with their 1970s hit ‘Painter Man’.”  On Your Street Again is lighter in tone. No Tomorrow might just be your anthem for the sunny days of this Summer (in Holland at least). A track named Ace Frehley shows their clear love for, well, Ace Frehley. Run Run Run and Geistkämpfer close the album. Geistkämpfer shows the band at its best: slow, nice moving dark rock that digests very smoothly right into the bowels of your musical intestines.....8/10.

For those of you that live in the UK, go see them here live at the 6th of September in  London / Black Heart Camden together with Lesbian (USA) and Necro Deathmort. You can check out Ausländer here: YouTube

Words: Sandrijn van den Oever

Winters | Facebook