Review - Station Model Violence – Station Model Violence (Anti Fade Records)
A “dense beast” of motorik post-punk blending jangle, sax and feedback: an Australian debut that transforms tension into trance
Behind this compactness lies a story of migration, forced stagnation and new urgencies. Daniel “DX” Stewart (Total Control, UV Race) moved to Sydney after the long years of lockdown and, instead of starting afresh with a solo project, put together a proper band: Buz Clatworthy and Alan Gojak (R.M.F.C.), Micky Grossman and Michael Hassett (Den), plus Nick Kuceli (Gaud) on sax. The material stems from three strands that eventually intertwine: demos that found no home elsewhere, songs left hanging in a “never-born” band (KX Aminal) and tracks written collectively by the final line-up. It is an album that sounds, consistently, like a fresh start without erasing anything: the sum and synthesis of lives spent in Australian punk, yet with a hunger for form and detail that looks beyond mere urgency.
Their vocabulary is that of post-punk, but spoken with an updated grammar. The twelve-string on “Learn to Hate” evokes for a moment the oblique light of the most melodic new wave (and inevitably the ghost of a certain Joy Division-style jangle), only to reveal an underlying threat: repetition is not a quirk, it is a weapon. The guitars chase one another as in a controlled duel, somewhere between the nervous clang of Wire and the rhythmic discipline of Gang of Four, whilst the feedback takes on the role of a soundscape — at times with that ‘Eno/Fripp’ elegance capable of transforming a riff into atmosphere. And beneath it all, constantly flowing, is the krautrock fuel: not so much a reference as a method, a way of conceiving tension as trance, the forward rush as a state of mind.
It is no surprise, then, that the track is called “Heat”. In the album version, it lasts over eight minutes and functions as a monolith with its own gravity: it starts with a tight groove, builds up layers, lets the saxophone creep through the folds and the guitar open up ever-wider fissures, without ever allowing a decisive explosion. It’s a track that forces you to recalibrate your attention: if you’re looking for instant gratification, “Heat” leaves you out in the cold; if you accept the logic of progression, it becomes an event, a journey of increasing density in which the band demonstrates just how epic it is possible to be without flexing one’s muscles.
Centred around that core, the tracklist plays on contrasts and false certainties. “Leisure” is perhaps the most “catchy” track, but for that very reason it is also the most unsettling: the double jingle of a Rickenbacker, synths that cloud the air, short-circuited imagery (“total leisure / total war”) sung without raising a voice. “Drip Away” is a cannonball: accelerating death-rock, punk stripped to the bone and then reignited, like an alarm that won’t stop flashing. Just as the album seems on the verge of slipping beyond its boundaries in “Two Eyes For An Eye” — a genre-defying detour undertaken with almost playful confidence — “Crepe Throne” brings it back to its core: compact, steady, with a barely perceptible muscularity that refocuses the band’s ethos.
The strong point, however, is the sense of control within the complexity. The saxophone is not an ‘arty’ ornament: it enters when needed to shift the mood of the track, to make it more carnal or more sinister. The piano appears as a foreign object that suddenly feels inevitable (in ‘Cliffs’, for example, it opens up a broader perspective, almost like a distorted ballad). The guitar parts repeat long enough to become hypnotic, yet each repetition shifts something — a harmonic nuance, a rhythmic accent, a feedback that spreads — as if the band were slowly turning the knobs to the exact point. A lot is happening, yet nothing becomes muddled: it is tension that organises itself, not chaos that spills over.
The lyrics, too, work through accumulation and friction: surveillance anxiety, the fabric of modern life, images of decay and the near future (the AI-driven apocalypse of “Drip Away”, the claustrophobic “mould music” of “Immolation”), culminating in a moral that never sounds like a slogan. DX sings “learn to hate in broad daylight” as if stating a rule of survival: without emphasis, without catharsis, with a controlled frustration that lends credibility to every word. It is a crucial choice: had the vocals sought hysteria, the album would have become an exercise in style; instead, it remains human within the mechanics.
Much of the credit also goes to the production: the recordings between Melbourne and Sydney and the mix by Mikey Young (a key figure in the Australian underground) manage to bring together density and clarity. It really is a ‘dense beast’, but not an indistinct wall: you can hear the metal of the strings, the air around the drums, the texture of the sax, and above all you sense how the band plays with space, allowing certain riffs to linger ‘in the corner of your ear’ even when the song has already moved on.
The last track, “Falling Down”, makes clear what makes this record special: the band can afford a distorted punk acceleration whilst simultaneously returning to those spiralling guitars that wrap around one another like a choreography, with a kinetic energy that doesn’t ask to be “understood” but only followed. It’s one of those albums that stays on the turntable for weeks: every listen brings out a detail, a rhythmic interlocking, a line that at first seemed simple and then reveals itself to be obsessive, studied, inevitable. In an era where post-punk often risks relying on tired tropes, Station Model Violence don’t ‘revive’ it with a theatrical flourish: they carve new channels within old grooves, and the current begins to flow once more. Strong, taut, strangely luminous.
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