ALBUMS: Trigger Cut Turn It Up On ROGO

You hear an indie band is named Trigger Cut and you might immediately assume this is some group of Pavement fanboys in ironic T-shirts.

Well think again, hotshot.

Based out of Stuttgart, Germany (a city famously rocked by CAN in 1975), Daniel Wichter, Mat Dumil and Ralph Schaarschmidt make music that recalls a time before Pavement gave up their noise rock roots for R.E.M.-aping melodies and sports factoids.

Artist: Trigger Cut

Album: ROGO

Label: self-released 

★★★★ (4/5 stars)

And on the follow-up to their blistering debut Buster comes a set of songs that kicks up the abrasiveness to Unsane levels of volume, immediately recalling the days when indie rock had fangs and claws. 

But what makes ROGO so distinct from its predecessor is in how they’ve evolved their sound, incorporating deeper elements of Big Black-esque industrial dirge into noisecore riffage of key songs like “Solid State,” “Coffin Digger” and “Fireworks” like The Jesus Lizard if they jumped ship to Wax Trax! in 1990. Yet you still got cuts like “Way Down The Border”, “Regular Funk” and “Nutcracker” that just want to pummel your skull all the same.

Recorded during the COVID-19 stay-at-home order of 2020, ROGO brims with a feral ferocity ready-made for the live setting. Germany was one of the few European countries who managed to keep their death toll below 100,000; but Trigger Cut speaks for everyone who felt the rage and frustration of enduring this pandemic year and the divisions it has created in civil society..

If you miss the days when indie rock meant bands like Cop Shoot Cop and Bastro and not The National, this second Trigger Cut LP is a must hear. Wowee zowee. 

AUDIO: Trigger Cut ROGO (full album stream)

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Ron Hart

Ron Hart is the Editor-in-Chief of Rock and Roll Globe. Reach him on X @MisterTribune.

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