Panic Lift - Witness to Our Collapse

How to differentiate between the music of Panic Lift and that of Suicide Commando & friends? Frankly, I don’t know. It’s the same kind of sharp, very aggressive, heavily distorted vocals accompanied by electronic sounds (be they fast or slow, smooth or edged) cut up by various samples. So maybe there is a certain condensation of aggression and a level of distortion that causes uncontrollable throes in the more sensitive listeners (also on the dance floor)?


The lyrics? I must confess that – due to the all-encompassing, sometimes overwhelming music which attacks you with a whirling mass of screeching, violent sounds – it was hard to distinguish them at first hearing. And at second. At third, you start to get the impression that maybe it’s not about getting the meaning; ‘cause who in the dancing crowd will actually stop to think about the words they hear (if they hear them)?

I seriously doubt anyone will.

So maybe it’s about knocking you out with sound, causing reactions mere words could hardly cause?

I don’t know, but taking it all into consideration, we can proceed to listen to Panic Lift’s debut album, Witness to Our Collapse – without an excess of enthusiasm, but with no reason to despair either.

There’s definitely some variety: there are moderate harsh tracks (“Everything I Have,” “Failsafe,” “Dawn of Fate”), which act as typical dance floor tanks operating on the principle of stun and exhaust; mixed pieces (melodic vocals + distorted vocals) like “Hold On” or “Butterfly Wings (My Only Hope);” there’s meat grinders “Remnants of a Dead Age” (the meat being human, of course); slow, hypnotic songs like “Witness to Our Collapse” (not devoid of shrieking vocals, though); even some slightly (I repeat, slightly) ambient, mysterious, ephemeral sounds like the CD’s most delicate track – “Seasons Change” (by the way, tracks concerned with change tend to have slow, thoughtful, nostalgic melodies regardless of who performs them – a harsh band, a rocker, or a homeless drunk :-).

And so this album flows. The positives: Panic Lift evidently make music with a lot of force (you might even say “brute force”); the introduction of the piano – which really stands out from the whole electro-slaughter – and a lot of good, dynamic beats also work in favour of the album. So if you’re still hungry for music that lashes you without pause, noisily, brutally and danceably – Panic Lift will do you right.