Pervitin came out into the open in 2020 with a damned outrageous 4-track ep, then in 2022 with another mini LP consisting of six much polemical tracks. We were very eager to hear what this fourtet would give birth to after such promissing beginnings. Well, I gotta admit the result goes far beyond my expectations.
The tone is immediatly given with its title, which happens to be taken from a song : Demons. We are in the heart of the bayou, somewhere in between Manhattan and Brooklyn, in a zone with such a high rate of radioactivity that the federal authorities put it under state of alert, where angry alligators and toothless rednecks with worn strawhats roam, where you can spend all you cash on the dirty counter of a speakeasy with no effort, where you can attend voodoo rituals in the courtyard of a decrepit building, where you can innocently pass the Clarksdale crossroad on 23rd, between 7th
and 8th Avenue. Demons takes you exactly where you reason orders you not to go.
But your conscience wants you to go there to have a taste of the forbidden pleasures the miracle of
electricity has to offer .​
The song entitled « Latest Nightmare » sums up the state of mind of the band, somewhere between No-wave and Swamp-rock, in between The Stooges, The Troggs, Suicide, Beasts of Bourbon, Chrome Cranks, Cheater Slicks, Gun Club and Dum Dum Boys. During the captivating « DOTD », a saxophone creeps between your ears to eat your brains out.
Their cover of « The Living End » from Jesus and Mary Chain is marked with red-hot iron, and at this very point Pervitin crooses the rubicond, and there is no coming back. So when the band dismantles
« Kung Foo Cowboy » by Alan Vega at the very end of the album, you wonder how it is going to survive. Demons is simply phenomenal.
All of the nine tracks are powerful and intense, but nevertheless Pervitin thought that was not enough for your gourmet's appetite.
The band added three more songs : the splendid « Constantly wrong » from their first Ep, revisited in an atomic version, a remix of the Alan Vega cover, and the unrealeased « Short Chill » , some kind of a stoogian anthem, with stax-like horns, an absolute hit, maybe too rythm'n'blues to fit on the album, but nevermind, this song is made to be a nice single.
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With Demons, Pervitin picks up all the energies of Rock'n'roll drawing straight from the original blues. Demons is so intrinsically rock, no matter what you do, you can twist it in any direction, you can take it from just any point, you can listen to it backwards, at 33 or 45 rpm, it will retain its shape, it is not deformable, it is unbendable, rot-proof : It's rock, full stop, there is no need to seek any further.
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Patrick Foulhoux
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(Rollling Stone, Rock Sound, X-Rock...)
Also author of "Les Thugs : Radical History", "Hache tendres & gueules de bois".​​