Album Review: This Is Not the End by Spielbergs

The Norwegian post-hardcore group, who have the best song about McDonald's since Justin Timberlake's, could you be your favourite new band - and they've perhaps made the best debut of 2019 so far Formed of three friends having one last shot at music after being chewed up and spat out by previous bands, Norwegian post-hardcore trio Spielbergs were met with instant acclaim and curiosity when their first single dropped last year. Could their anticipated debut album turn their fresh start into a happy ending? Opener 'Five On It' lays out their mission statement of scuzzy punk and rousing emo anthemics, before 'Distant Star' proves even more of a slave to melody as they holler for that teenage dream of belonging and escapism: "Now we could be perfect, you could have made me better / And we could be soulmates, if we could find a place to live". READ MORE: Meet Spielbergs - the Wombats-approved post-hardcore troupe who want to fight everyday boredom That thrill of skirting between anxiety and triumph at 1000mph is what makes this album such a joy, which is exactly what you'd expect on a single with a name like 'We Are All Going To Die'.

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Norwegian indie rock trio Spielbergs specialize in a particularly bombastic brand of fuzzed-out power pop and post-punk. Made up of several Oslo scene stalwarts -- Mads Baklien (vocals/guitar), Stian Brennskag (bass), and Christian Løvhaug (drums) -- who had all enjoyed some modicum of success in previous bands ranging in style from indie folk to post-hardcore, the band coalesced in 2016 with little ambition except to get out of the house once a week and have fun playing rock music together. Having already cut a handful of unnamed demos, one of which bore the placeholder title "The Spielberg Song" -- after a recent viewing of the American director's classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind -- a friend suggested they just name the band Spielbergs and call it done.

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Spielbergs, Norway's most recent spectacular rock export, burst onto the scene in 2018 with Distant Star, a debut EP so mature, muscular, and full— equal parts bombast and vivacity— that it seemed almost obscene for it to be a debut. And yet Distant Star was, indeed a debut, one that left fans salivating for what was to come. With This Is Not the End, the band's first full-length, Spielbergs have delivered on the promise of that debut, and then some.

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The line between pastiche and homage is wafer thin at the best of times, but with pop punk it's nearly imperceptible. One of the biggest challenges facing emerging artists is grappling with the genre's inherent sincerity, channelling it as endearing rather than cloying. There's only so far earnestness can take you without the self-awareness to tenderise it, demanding a sense of stakes and palatable depth beneath the chantalong aphorisms.

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Distant Star, the 2018 debut EP from Oslo's Spielbergs, took less than a second to put its target market on notice. Throttling, distorted octaves and massive drum rolls moved in lockstep, instantly evoking decades worth of bands, both boyish and brawny, who most effectively communicated their feelings through "whoas." This style of rock is perpetually deemed obsolescent, but it always seems to find an audience dealing with the same issues. Played with enough urgency, it doesn't become relevant but simply asks, "Why do we waste so much time caring, anyway?" Spielbergs clearly understood those mechanics; their original band name, after all, was We Are All Going to Die, which doubles as the name of the first song they wrote.

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