By José Gandue @spinning zone
Photos: Agustín Dusserre & Nacho Arnedo
Friends, classic horror movies are back.
Or at least, we now have a new soundtrack for those favorite nightmares featuring ghosts, monsters of all kinds, creepy clowns, sinister smiles… and lots of skeleton dancing. Enough to wake up drenched in sweat, with zombie-like eyes, and clamoring for more of this kind of suffering. Remember the days when we could laugh at horror and the good-natured absurdity of B-movies? Well, that's what it sounds like. Nasty Neighbours on his new album: Horrible!
Let's see... let's adapt the story of this gang to the fantastical horror universe of those old series we used to watch on Saturday afternoons, like The Addams Family o The Munsters. Let's invent a legend... that isn't so far from reality: a German girl —who in the future will be known as Karina Kaos— He arrives in Argentina, and in his eagerness to fill a local audience with fear and laughter, he joins forces with the guitarist and producer eMon. Then they complete this gang of serial terrorizers with the bassist Lea Almendro y Hernán Zombie X in the drum kit. Since 2023, the year of its sinister creation, Nasty Neighbours He has performed over 40 concerts, including a 17-date European tour, with two performances at the legendary Fusion Festival and a shared show with the cult band Die Schwarzen Schafe.
Its sound navigates between the surfing, he punk and the indie rock. They themselves cite as immediate references The Buzzcocks y B-52's.
Absolutely horrifying, his new album, is released under the German label Rookie Records, the result of an alliance born during an extensive tour of Germany in 2024 with the support of Goethe-Institut.
From the very first seconds of listening, you can feel the festive contagion: charming keyboards (that childlike yet funereal sound so indispensable in audiovisual productions with cemeteries, skulls and witches), Spectral choirs envelop the entire soundscape like a thick fog, and guitars give the body no peace. Karina dominates the scene with her voice, alternating between Spanish, German, English and French, gracefully assuming her role as mistress of ceremonies: the one who draws back the curtain so that terror invades our ears and bodies… and we can't stop dancing, as if we had beriberi and we couldn't stop trembling and smiling.
The album, composed of 11 songs, It is easy to listen to from beginning to end. One of their secrets lies in commenting on reality without losing their playful spirit. As they themselves say:
“We use horror as a stylistic device to talk about real issues, but with a good dose of humor.”
His best songs? I'd say The Mummy, Tunnel of Horror, Haunted y Ghost Train, The latter was a brilliant exercise in bass playing, worthy of imitation.
In short, here we bring you an intense thirty-seven-minute party that can refresh the sometimes antiquated label of rock. Definitely, Nasty Neighbours It teaches us, through morbid entertainment, that the solution to our bitterness It can emerge jokingly on the edge of the precipice, in good company with panic and fear.
