Goddamn, this is rad! This is the first (and second) time I’ve listened to Djunah before. Right off the bat, this Chicago two piece is pounding and shredding away. This is noise rock with an emphasis on rock. Most people hear “noise” and think right away of noodling, but no; Djunah has a lock on the controlled burn here.
As per their their Bandcamp page, they’re a noise rock band “with a leg for a bassist.” As drummer Nick Smalkowski keeps tense time with hammering fills, Donna Diane, Djunah’s guitarist and vocalist, plays the Moog bass with her leg and, yes, I had to look that up.
Speaking of Ms. Diane, holy mother of fuck, can she belt! She has one of the absolute greatest screaming/yelping/screeching, barbaric yawps I’ve ever heard, and I’ve heard plenty of beautiful screaming in my day (if you don’t mind me sounding like a psycho killer for a moment.) Here and there they slow it down. They have great melodic sense and turns in time. I won’t make comparisons of Ms. Diane’s voice to others’, because I don’t want to throw you off. But at varying points she reminds me of three different female vocalists who are quite different, but all indie/noise/punk rock royalty.
I’m not going to give you a song for song rundown on this one. Suffice it to say that every song on here slithers and crawls around in your brain by way of your ear canals (there’s that bellowing shriek again; HOLY SHIT; chills!) and if you like rock and you like it LOUD, please don’t fuck around about this. Mixtape pick? Album opener “Animal Kingdom,” in which Donna and Nick come raging out of the gate, and we first get to hear her exquisite howl. Though if I were listening to this in the car (had I a car) I might be tempted to crash it into a Chase bank on purpose.
THE PUNK ROCK NEIGHBORHOOD 