It’s easy, even facile, to compare post-punk bands with a monotone baritone vocalist to Joy Division. In a world of unending and presently meaningless commercial riffs on the infamous Unknown Pleasures artwork (look, you can get it printed on leggings!), the Manchester quartet are the first reference for people who don’t know much about the subgenre—that’s not a slight, simply a fact.
Post-punk is rich and expansive territory, though, and there have been bands mining it consistently from 1978 onward. Even among the glut of bands currently exploring the first-wave strain of post-punk, East Berlin’s Diät stand out, much like their labelmates Total Control. Their song structures are playful and unique, their riffs memorable, their lyrics sly and clever, and their rhythm section unbelievably taut (check the drum solo that opens "Toonie"). While there will doubtless be comparisons to Joy Division, I hear more Blitz circa Second Empire Justice in the guitar lines (bless Diät’s hearts for using the chorus pedal to genuine effect rather than just applying it flat across the entire record), more Crisis in the politic, more Bauhaus in the unfettered energy of the playing, more Modern English circa Mesh and Lace in the song structures.
Diät are more than the sum of their influences, and they prove what I suspected from their first two 7"s, released in 2012 and 2013: their debut LP was worth the several-year wait. These songs were worked to the smallest detail. "Young and Successful" is wry commentary on how we internalize the capitalist work ethic, and on the line "Write a manifesto, write a shopping list," the song ends abruptly, hanging, grasping, as it should. "Hurricane", with its slow percussive build and sharp riff, is about Chris Dorner and the inherent tensions of policing, and the subject fits perfectly with the ominous instrumentation. "Nightmares" is fast and meaty and propulsive, more punk than post-.
There’s also a Cannanes cover on this record, of all things, and it is a really good one: that is to say, it does right by the well-loved original while putting Diät's own powerful spin on it. This brings me to the title of the album—Positive Energy might seem like a misnomer upon first bleak recognizance, but it’s not. Look no further than a cover of a song by a well-loved Australian indie pop band (some say they were among the '80s twee originators) on a dark punk record for the truth: "positive energy" isn’t an ironic pose for Diät. It’s not the kind of sarcasm that goes nowhere. It’s in their approach to music—sarcasm as a way to get to the heart of the matter, with the beating heart still going despite the outside world’s many attempts to still it, that heartbeat being the most important thing, the only thing.
