MAKTHAVERSKAN - II LP (Neon Pink Vinyl)

Label: Run For Cover

There are singers who use reverb as a crutch, and then there’s Makthaverskan’s Maja Milner, who would break any crutch she tried to lean on. Her voice is a weapon. The reverb is a sheath. She pierces through the mix on the Swedish band’s second LP, sounding both distant and shockingly immediate. She’s the scar a missile leaves on the air right before it hits.

II, which crosses the pond for the first time this month via Run For Cover Records, is a brutal, addictive piece of work that constantly spasms between hunger and anger. It’s a heartbreak album, the bitter kind, not the kind that sulks in its shadow. The band hooks back into the ’80s in sound and structure, but don’t use the throwback to patch a gap in substance. This is not a band that simply rewards you for liking the Cure. This is a band that asks you why you’d want to sit around and hear someone mope for an hour. These aren’t goth tunes for sad girls, but punk songs for people who’ve come to realize that sometimes the healthiest response to their hurt is boiling, untamed fury.