GURS – GERRAN BIZI GARA (2024)

A peaceful town of 417 inhabitants in the heart of the French Atlantic Pyrenees, Gurs is located a stone’s throw from the megalopolis of Oloron Sainte Marie and the metropolis of Pau. But if a punk band choose to call themselves like that, it’s because history wanted things otherwise. The Gurs camp, created in 1939, was a detention camp for Spanish republicans and anti-fascist activists during the civil war. During the Vichy regime the latter became a concentration camp annexed by the Nazi regime.

It is therefore in memory of the heavy local historical past and the politically consented horrors that the Basque quartet GURS releases its first album “Gerran Bizi Gara” (We live in war), a hymn for the memory of our struggles, for a stubborn class war and a desperate call for hope.

| By NinoFutur

Self-proclaimed as “the dysfunctional fusion of four friends” Gurs come from Bilbao and have been offering a raucous and saddened punk since 2021, the result of a fusion between rough street punk and the stickiest and deeper post punk there is. Something currently being done a lot in our DIY microcosm, you would say? Yes, but Gurs doesn’t have something more than just following a trend. Alternating between Basque and Castilian lyrics, « Gerran Bizi Gara » is a fast, honest and necessary summary of everything needed to bring a catchy punk record. Hardcore immediacy, street punk-ish sing alongs and cold wave tunnel melodies drown deep down in reverb, it’s hard not to get caught up in at least one of the 8 short bangers making up the album.

From its opening with the desperately nihilistic “No retorno” (No return) depicting a livid and consumerist humanity reduced to a mass of flesh, bones and anxiety (“CARNE, HUESOS Y ANSIEDAD!” as it’s shouted) doomed to slowly drown in the guts of our urban centers watered by an autophagic liberalism.

To “Volveran” (They will Return), an anthem for workers’ struggle and whithin its martial chorus where the powerful word would no longer be enough to define the explosion of serotonin that it can generate with each listen.

With the backdrop of numerous questions around class struggle and the exploitation of our urban lives hovering over the entire album, “Gerran Bizi Gara” does not lie. We live in war, where our bodies are sacrificed as cannon fodder for an annihilating capital, where our tired bodies fight as best they can to rekindle the sparks, where the sidewalks, the gray concrete paths digest us a little more every day: “ mountains of plastic and cement, these accumulations of our sadness” (“Eder ta Hutsa”).

Spleenful away from all kinds of disco balls we can recognize the obvious influence of our Brest-all stars of Syndrome 81 (S/O Karton #9) on “Bihotz-nekea” (sorrow), both as in the musical approach and lyrics, but we can also notice the melodic vivacity listenable with the Californians from Generacion Suicida.

Ending with a more punk song, about goodbyes that are difficult to accept. Gurs gives us once and for all the color of their effort: black is black.

Produced at the corsario studios in Donostia and with a sublime artwork signed by Aritz Aranburu having also worked with their unfortunately too forgotten Euskal-Herra bros from Arrotzak ( listen up automatically if you recognize yourself in the caste of cold-punk enjoyers !),

Gurs is another band adding a solid stone to the already very solid edifice of Basque punk. At once melancholic, warlike and political.

Outcome of great common commemoration of a past of struggle and anti-fascism, Gurs both by their name and their approach attempts to dust off and reshape a combative although disillusioned mentality through a record as cold as it is warming. Between exploitation of the working class, disfigurement of our cities, state lies and parliamentary corruption… “Gerran Bizi Gara” is a harsh and necessary reminder of reality, rekindling both our darkest hours and the flames of tomorrow.