UNGDOMSKULEN

“Modern Drummer”, off 2007's Cry Baby, was Norway’s Ungdomskulen to a T: Hard hitting weirdo rock, delivered without a lick of self-seriousness, and with musical chops to take to to the bank. On their fourth (if you count 2011's 10-songs-in-10-minutes micro-LP Gimme Ten) long-player, Secrecy, the edges are smoother, but the songwriting is more lean.

Mostly absent are the over-long prog-jams of their debut and its follow-up, 2009's excellent-if-indulgent Bisexual. In their place are sparse, economical New Wave pop-leaning gems.

Album opener “Askefast” sounds like XTC & Yes collaborating on a long-lost James Bond theme song (instead of just holding up the end of my record collection, like they usually do.) Guitarist/vocalist Kristian Stockhaus continues to channel XTC’s Andy Partridge on “Young Hearts” and “Marilyn”, but the prog-rock feel is never far away, especially on album closer “Justify My Grudge”, which, like most of the album, interweaves earwormy melodies with air-guitar-worthy riffs.

If you’re looking for a gateway to the world of Norwegian prog-pop (and, let’s be honest, who isn’t?) Ungdomskulen’s Secrecy is your huckleberry. Pick it up from iTunes, or in person from your favorite record store. ^Mike - The Griffin Blog

Bergen, Norway post-punk trio Ungdomskulen will be announcing some new album details soon, but before that happens, today they’re sharing the video for the first single “Askefast,” a propulsive, proggy cut. The video finds the group workin’ some stuff out in the shadows and features some always-much-needed shirtless cave drumming. Watch it below and nab the MP3 while you’re there. - Stereogum

Norway’s Ungdomskulen are the kind of dudes who can take an idea that sounds primed for sparse simplicity, namely ten songs timed at about one minute apiece, and wind up with the tangled, knotted songs of last year’s Gimme Ten. For something that seemed like a doomed venture from the start, there were (a very few) moments that made it seem like prog rock actually was actually meant for one minute snippets. Given more time to unpack those songs on their new disc, Secrecy, and the jumpy, amped-up trio wound up with longer tangled, knotted songs.
The downfall of Secrecy lies in the fact that these overfilled suitcases of music are too often hard to tell apart from each other. The rhythmic bed of “Facemask” is pitch-perfect dance-punk, with guitar ratchets and thrumming bass tumbling over busy polyrhythms. It’s momentarily invigorating, but as the track fades into “Austin Love”, familiarity breeds contempt. The same oleo of motorik rhythms and slick guitars smacks of paint-by-numbers insouciance when stuttered like this.

At their best, as on the insistent “Marilyn”, the trio sound like Jens Lekman fronting TV on the Radio at some eastern European night club’s Prog Night. Kristian Stockhaus’ accented English and low register, moaning tones add a haunting quality to the droning piano and aux percussion onslaught. “Those days are over,” he intones, as the krautrock groove builds to swank guitar nose-dives.

But when Ungdomskulen decide to add layers and develop movements within a track, they got lost in their own ideas. The competing guitars of “Young Hearts” solo at each other without meshing or competing, clashing in dissonance while everything around them (up-strummed rhythms, thundering bass, and hard-charging snare fills) sync perfectly. Suddenly, Stockhaus’ lyrical hat-tip that “there’s so much to wrap our heads around” makes a lot of sense.

Seven minute album closer “Justify My Grudge” exemplifies the over-ambitious and at times messy nature of Secrecy, which is sections of a handful of different songs jammed into one. For many bands, a track like this would mean some airy, building expanse, but for Ungdomskulen, it’s just a way to add in a passage where clarinets drone, and another where the guitars twirl off into an algebraic math equation, and another where auxiliary percussion dominates the mix. Ungdomskulen aren’t afraid of clutter, and here struggle to be found in its midst.

Essential Tracks: “Marilyn” - Consequence of sound

Norwegian prog-rock outfit founded in 2003, Ungdomskulen, has released the video for "Kafka on Ice," the third track off of their latest LP, Secrecy, released September 25 via Young Aspiring Professionals (the label founded by DATAROCK).

Though the group consists of three dudes, this black and white video is all about the ladies, simply goofing off and being girly in a hair salon, as they apply mascara, blow-dry their hair simultaneously, do the robot, pop champagne and shout, and play spin the bottle and make out. There are blondes, brunettes, and some sideboob action—all to the tune of Ungdomskulen's epic and lo-fi psychedelic rock anthem. It's a track with some serious 'tude, yet it's totally easy on the ears. Hit play. Or smash it, kick it, what have you... Ungdomskulen certainly would. - Filter magazine

Pitchfork's Stephen M. Deusner summarized Cry-Baby, the album Norway's Ungdomskulen released in 2007, by pointing out that it crammed in "eight long songs with as many digressions, tangents, and asides as possible." Anyone deterred by such extravagance may find something more palatable to chew on in Gimme Ten. But this is indulgence of a different kind. Here the band has simply stripped everything down and produced an album of 10 songs that are each around one minute long. The entire record breezes past in less time than it takes the average krautrock jam to hit its stride. The band members are doubtless prepared for people to wave this album away as a gimmick without actually hearing it, but to do so wouldn't entirely be fair. There's definitely an air of novelty about it, but there's still as much care and attention put into these songs as there is in their other material. Those "digressions, tangents, and asides" are all still intact-- they've just been vacuum-packed into an impossibly tiny space.
That level of detail maintained by Ungdomskulen recalls other artists who have worked in a vaguely similar manner, such as the earliest material by Glasgow's the Yummy Fur or Manchester post-punkers bIG fLAME. This album also borrows heavily from the same stylistic mien as the latter. Much of it contains elements of the syrupy-funk undertow that bands like Orange Juice and A Certain Ratio were dabbling in during the 1980s. There's a spikiness to the guitar sound and a playfulness to the lyrics that also recall that era. "Elle" contains most of those elements, with its jerky stop-start rhythms and liquid bassline combining to do some pitch-perfect Gang of Four cloning. Some of these could be decent off-kilter pop songs if they were allowed to spread their wings a little-- "It's Official" and "Number One" cover the kind of ground that Franz Ferdinand and Queens of the Stone Age were respectively delving into with some success in the past decade.
But therein lies a big part of the problem with Gimme Ten. Too many of these sounds and directions have been thoroughly regurgitated and explored in recent years. Ungdomskulen are certainly well drilled at taking those ideas and condensing them down into bite-sized chunks; it's just a shame they couldn't have chosen some less picked-over territory in which to perform this experiment. There are flashes of inspiration, but the nature of this record makes it a frustrating listen at times. "Silver or Bronze" matches synthesized handclaps with some wickedly lumpen rock riffing at one point, and "Take It Back" almost bears a chant-along chorus to go with its buzzsaw guitar. Ungdomskulen are more than capable of packing such short songs with plenty of belief, but too often it feels like they're straining under the weight of it all. With so little room to function, the rush to get to where they're going causes any genuine flashes of insight to be discarded with indecent haste.
Despite such reservations, it's to their credit that Ungdomskulen have taken to this task with considerable zeal. There are 10 videos, one to go with each song, and the audio files are available for free download from the band's website. They even prove the worth of the one-minute format a couple of times. "Walking the Dog" works just fine as an impossibly brief pop track interrupted by quirky burping noises reminiscent of Elastica's "Line Up"; "Your Soul" filters in post-hardcore yelling that's well suited to such claustrophobic expanses. As an exercise put out into the world for free, albeit with a decent amount of love and perspiration, Gimme Ten provides fleeting moments of enjoyment. But instead of really inhabiting its restraints and taking them somewhere revelatory, much of this album serves to highlight why it's not a very good idea to deliberately impose shackles on musical notions that are on the cusp of heading somewhere stimulating. If they're looking for a quickie follow-up project, it might be worth filtering these songs through the same kind of ambition they demonstrated on Cry-Baby, just to see whether all this abstraction can congeal into something more substantial. - Pitchfork

It's a track with some serious 'tude, yet it's totally easy on the ears. - Filter magazine

NRK (Norway's primary public media organization), July 6, 2007: "Took Roskilde by Storm"(translated), Band feature by Jørn Gjersøe
http://www.nrk.no/musikk/festival/roskilde/1.2904564 - NRK

"Best thing I've heard all year." - MOJO Magazine

Pitchfork Media, Aug 8, 2007: "Øya Festival Report: Tuesday", Stephen M. Deuser.

"Two of tonight’s biggest Norwegian acts hail from Bergen, a small city about seven hours northwest of Oslo and, despite its size, the center of the Norwegian scene. Most of the country’s most popular exports, such as Kings of Convenience, Magnet, Annie, and Röyksopp, hail from this city in the mountains, as do Sissy Wish and Ungdomskulen, the night’s biggest and best-received acts. [...] Four hours and three aggressively loud bands later, Ungdomskulen close out the evening with an energetic set of spastically danceable indie rock. Sporting thick black glasses and a beard to rival Doug Martsch’s, singer/guitar player Kristian Stockhaus bounds about the stage enthusiastically, as if to demonstrate how the audience should respond to the band’s squirrelly riffs and elaborate structures. He only stops moving to sing in an endearingly cracked voice, but vocals aren’t the band’s primary concern. Instead, with a friendly aggression that recalls the Rapture (without the dance-punk baggage) or Klaxons, the band run headlong into their songs, playing loud and fast as they lock into one solid jam after another. Each number churns enough momentum to be an effective closer, so it’s a little surprising and even disappointing when they unceremoniously end their set and begin packing up their equipment." - Pitchfork

“Just in time for the Polvo 10-years, these Nords put out an impeccable seven-inch trilogy (four tracks for download) of vicious, often confrontational "what indie used to mean before Palace fucked everything up" rockers. Excepting Les Savy Fav, nobody over here's making arty post-punk so nearly big and black. What to do with the lyrics' Xiu Xiu bent and sexual matter-of-factitude, that's a question all right. The guitars though, how fat and gritty they sound, and the riffs, how many and catchy and evenly distributed (that bassline kills me), pull no punches-- they only pull punches.” - Nick Sylvester- Pitchfork

7/10

Ungdomskulen means 'middle school' in Norwegian. It looks shit on a T-shirt - get rid of it guys. But keep everything else. Keep the ethos that quiet bits are for pussies. Keep the cacophony of fuzzed-up guitars, rutting each other to obscure time sgnatures. Tracks like "Feels Like Home" makes 'Cry-Baby' as relentless, reckless and original as Sonic Youth. - NME

4/5

Bergen trio buck ethnic expectation. And sound brilliant.

Norway's musical exports tend to fall into one of the three identifiable camps - avant jazz, electronica (both poppy and experimental) or black metal. Now Ungdomskulen have arrived to smudge the stereotypes. Their debut comes after the release of three import-only, seven-inch singles and is a thrilling, precision-tooled blend of math rock, prog jazz, art punk and post hardcore designed to blast fans of Battles, Fugazi, At The Drive-In and Dungen into seventh heaven. Despite their length and complexity, these eight tracks are terrifyingly taut and demonstrate turn-on-a-dime control, but surely Ungdomskulen's greatest trick is to have given each of them a surprisingly funky heart. Sharon O'Connel - Uncut

7.7/10

Loosely translated, ungdomskulen is provincial Norwegian for junior high school, which in this case seems like an adolescent scrawl across a bathroom wall. It might be approximated in English as Junyer Hi Skool-- an adolescent scrawl across a bathroom wall. Sure enough, the songs on Ungdomskulen's debut album, Cry-Baby, detail such teenage concerns as masturbation, public erections, hard rock, and mythical creatures sketched in notebooks, but Ungdomskulen are neither brats like the Black Lips nor pretend-goths like Fall Out Boy. Instead, the trio are both the freaks and the geeks, deviants deciding their fates with a ten-sided die before cramming for that trig exam.

Cry-Baby is a busy album, cramming eight long songs with as many digressions, tangents, and asides as possible, transitions be damned. It can be a little jarring and occasionally repetitive, both of which are forgivable for the band's misfit relentlessness on "Modern Drummer" and stand-out "Spartacus", with its shouted chorus and spiraling trajectory. Occasionally, they jam aimlessly, as on "Ungdomskulen", but most of these songs-- even "Glory Hole" with four-minute clockwork cowbell breakdown-- are purposefully and thoughtfully constructed. Up close, opener "Ordinary Son" is a frantic dancepunk track similar to those by Klaxons or early Liars, with herky-jerky guitar riffs and a bouncily melodic bassline. Take a few steps back, though, and the entire ambitious arrangement becomes visible, reminiscent of Built to Spill's guitar epics. Drummer Øyvind Solheim rides his high-hat furiously between the notes, and singer Kristian Stockhaus, in his thick-frame glasses and scruffy beard, shows off his formidable metal falsetto on the chorus. The song reaches a fevered climax around 2:30, then starts to wind down. But that's a feint: Ungdomskulen re-attack with short exclamatory riffs, then regroup for a lengthy mid-song groove as Solheim tests out his cowbells and Stockhaus and bassist Frode Kvinge Flatland, hidden behind a cascade of dark hair, swordfight with their guitars. Shamelessly, they do the same fake-out ending later in the song, and on almost every song thereafter. It works every time.

And yet, for all their wankery, Ungdomskulen never departs from its power-trio line-up, meaning there are very few sounds on Cry-Baby that don't emanate either from drums, guitar, bass, and vox. Cry-Baby is just strings and skins, and by necessity, it's democratic, emphasizing each element equally while covering a lot of ground, from the pop melodies of "Feels Like Home" and "My Beautiful Blue Eyes" to the noisy crunch of, well, "Feels Like Home" and "My Beautiful Blue Eyes". These songs are all motion, mixing indie-rock lightning with heavy-metal thunder and revealing a belief in rock's spiritual powers: "I feel that your fills are real," Stockhaus tells a modern drummer on "Modern Drummer". "You fill up the void that we all have inside." On one level, their approach-- the musical equivalent of running "Serpentine!"-- seems to short-circuit any stab at seriousness, not that they're trying to be the Arcade Fire. But Ungdomskulen manage to rock sans irony, finding a certain freedom in adolescent arrest.

Stephen M. Deusner - Pitchfork

Ungdomskulen means 'youth school' and is the equivalent of junior high school in Norway. If they were Canadian they'd no doubt be called 'Degrassi' and each of their songs would force home a hard hitting 'issue' punctuated by jocular humour. Thankfully thay are Norwegian - a fact made all the more obvious by drummer Øyvind Solheim's suspect moustache and frontman Kristian Jan Erik Stockhaus's over-the-top 'let's rock' introductions to each and every song.

And rock we do. Ungomskulen are the loudest band I've heard in ages, very heavy yet with an unlikely disco precision backing up their shared, yelped vocals. This is perhaps best exemplified on current single 'Modern Drummer' - a huge percussion monster that demonstrates Stockhaus to be quite the frontman. Despite the apparent language barrier, he has better banter than most visiting British bands and exudes a geek confidence that endears him to an audience happy to be confused by a song with five endings, the last of which sees the frontman waltzing with his guitar.

"This is our last song. It's called 'Spartacus' and it's very good I must say." I must agree. Anyone who wishes the Rapture had listened to more Iron Maiden growing up (and why wouldn't you?) will find joy in Ungdomskulen - they could be the future of rock n roll if everyone can learn to pronounce their pesky name.

-Richard Brown - Culturedeluxe

8/10

Ungdomskulen. Supposedly, the word means “middle school” in Norway. Supposedly. The band Ungdomskulen has taken that word and transformed it into something much more, however. It’s through their debut release Cry Baby that they are reinventing the music dictionary and the compass, thus melding the worlds of the musician and the explorer. Thus, in the creation of their music, they are also destroying all sense of direction. Still, it’s very easy to listen to two minutes from this album and cast Ungdomskulen aside as a dance-punk band or just another indie group hopped up on speed and happiness. It’s a little too easy to do this and if you do, you’ll probably be regretting it for a long time.

Art and especially artists come in many different forms and it isn’t always the depressed, brooding ones who are totally devoted to the music. Ungdomskulen are three guys, Kristian Stockhaus on vocals and guitar, Øyvind Solheim on drums, and Frode Kvinge Flatland playing bass. The three-piece is proof that quantity has nothing over quality. These guys sound like a plane nose-diving from 30,000 feet in the air, while a train is derailing and a fault line is shifting. Yes, this is an image from a Calvin and Hobbes comic, but the sheer adrenaline and unpredictability of it all are the only way to describe Ungdomskulen.

Cry Baby is an album that jumps out at you from the first listen. Actually, because this is Ungdomskulen, I’d say the album will more likely kick you in the throat, won’t apologize, then in its own distinct way make you forgive it and let it take you on one hell of a roller coaster ride. All extended metaphors aside; this album and this band are not something to be taken lightly. They know their stuff. Cry Baby opens up with the track “Ordinary Son”.

Its catchy, distinctive melody riff is only a taste of what’s to come. The guitars and Stockhaus’s vocals provide a jam that will get your head grooving. Then the drums kick in. Then your legs go and suddenly your whole body becomes a tool to shake every muscle and tendon in your body. Then quiet. The momentum, the inertia stops. The song takes a different direction, almost unrecognizable but still franticly excited. This is where we see Ungdomskulen in its true shape. And what you soon realize is…there is no shape, no formula, and no order, just pure, unadulterated chaos.

A line from the third song, “Feels Like Home”, sums up this feeling pretty well. “I don’t care if you see me/as long as you are shameless”. It’s not that they don’t give a damn about any one else, but they’re playing to make music that fits their spirit and they want to have a good time while doing it; that is ultimately their aesthetic. And just to remind their listeners about their philosophy, Stockhaus sings, “Better yet, let’s mix things up and make some love together”.

Aside from spreading their philosophy on music, the lyrics on Cry Baby are strikingly poignant and don’t beat around the bush. On the song “Ungdomskulen”, Stockhaus refers to their own frustrations and hopes, although in a somewhat pretentious way, with the line, “It’s absurd that we’re unknown, and it feels like we’ve outgrown this town / ‘Cos we’re leaving now, and we won’t be back until it’s rained out”. But again, as arrogant as that sounds, you have to forgive them because the tension in the guitar and Stockhaus’s highly controlled falsetto work so well together in painting their angst and readiness to keep moving.

Cry Baby is an album that starts and stops and starts again. Some of the songs, like “Modern Drummer”, have such intensity and originality that you wonder why these ideas, riffs, melodies, and songs haven’t been thought up before. It’s just more proof that Ungdomskulen are not pioneering a new genre of music, but they’re piling genres upon each other, dissecting and inverting them. They shift from jazz to post-rock to metal in a flash, leaving everything else around you stale.

This chaos is pretty much the core of their sound. Ungdomskulen is all about movement. Not always forward movement; at times the songs fly upward towards the sky at astonishing speeds. At other times, the music doesn’t rise above a shiver. Mind you, that shiver never stops, but that extreme still exists in the album and it makes you crave the diversity in their sound and the chemistry of the musicians involved.

If you still aren’t sold about this band, then let this final thought be a guide to you. There is not one boring song on this album. Case closed. - Popmatters

4/5

This is the sound of post punk, prog. rock Norway. You wont forget it.

Ungdomskulen means middle school in Norwegian and is apparently ‘a word designed to trip up the tongues of under achievers the world over.’ Kristian, Øyvind and Frode make up the band from Bergen who have been playing together since they were at school. They signed to the eclectic Ever record label in 2006 and have been plying their mixture of post punk prog. rock and jagged indie disco ever since, Think QOTSA meets Frank Zappa or The Foo Fighters meets The Klaxons.

Their album is called ‘Cry-Baby’ and like the school bully they immediately subject the listener to the brutal and addictive new single ‘Ordinary Son,’ where growling bass drives euphoric dance punk tomfoolery. ‘It’s hard not to wake with your face full of cake in life,’ they conclude. ‘Glory Hole,’ talks of faceless love and dog-faced donors unloading their guns over fractured guitars and pummelling cowbell.

‘Modern Drummer,’ is a frenetic bass led burst of indie disco with an undeniably gorgeous hook and jazzy guitars. Over this mayhem the vocals swim effortlessly. On ‘My Beautiful Blue Eyes,’ we are treated to the ubiquitous scouring bass, frantic distorted riffs and funky drums. When you call a song ‘Spartacus,’ you had better produce the goods and the next track sounds as grandiose and impressive as its name suggests. While the enchantingly titled ‘Witches Mate in the Underground,’ quite literally finishes the album off. They sound like they are taking a chainsaw to their instruments.

Shrewdly the album contains only eight tracks of furious yet tempered resonance and as such they don’t give themselves a chance to fail. There wasn’t a piece I didn’t like. In another attempt to pin down their illusive intriguing sound I’d suggest The Gang Of Four with Sonic Youth and a touch of Black Sabbath. Just to throw another spanner in the works they are currently touring with The Young Knives. A show not to be missed it would seem.

Practice makes perfect for this band of unashamed musical perfectionists who produce a bass dominated sound with syncopated beats and spiky but harmonic guitar. Yet lyrically they hold their end up too. The quietly insistent vocals balance and discipline the absconding noise which threatens to run off at any minute. Don’t be an underachiever, learn to pronounce their name I suspect like them you won’t forget it.


- Mandy Williams - Subba-Cultcha