My seemingly never-ending thirst for awesome foreign punk has compelled me to make a lot of blind purchases in my record collecting life. If I'm digging at a record store and come across a reasonably priced foreign punk band that I don't know, more often than not I'll just buy it. 75 percent of the time I end up with something horrible, but in this case, I scored a classic! It makes the trial-and-error-style record buying worth the hassle. I bought this LP because the cover art rules and it looked like it might be Eastern-Euro punk, and hallelujah it was indeed! Fucking remarkable, in fact!
DAVOVA PSYCHOZA formed in Bratislava in 1987 and are still active to this day, and this is their debut LP from 1991. I played a show in a very small and pretty town in Czech Republic a couple of years ago called Ústí nad Labem (seriously, look at it), and met a nice local couple there, and we began talking about punk bands. I told them the only Czech band I knew about was DAVOVA PSYCHOZA, and their expressions lit up and they cheered (and corrected me that they are technically Slovakian) that I knew this band - and that's how I found out that they were important!
You may have noticed that one particular trend in my taste in music is the melodic/aggressive combo. I like hooks, melodies, crafty songwriting, and high-energy in my punk, and this LP is oozing with all of those qualities. It's all about the up front sung/yelled vocals and guitar leads on here, it's fucking brilliant. If you're like me you will become obsessed with this record and start singing along with some of these undeniably catchy choruses in Slovakian, with no grasp of the language whatsoever (or making up your own English phrases that sound the same). The only other recording I have by this band is their split 7" with ZEMEZLUC from 2001, but I know there's more awesome D.PSYCHOZA shit out there, so please hook me up! And seriously, download this because it's probably better than whatever you're listening to right now.
This is, in my opinion, an absolutely flawless LP. It perfectly represents all of the things I love about punk songs. So. Damn. Good. Not stoked that I do not have a copy of this record, one of my all time favorites....
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