Fokkum — Notice Yourself Demo CDR

Band: Fokkum
Title: Notice Yourself
Label: Self-Released
Format: Demo, CDr
Release Date: 2011
Country: Netherlands
Genre / Style: Hardcore Punk, Anarcho Punk, Dutch Hardcore 
Streaming Link: Bandcamp

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Tin can drums and recycled ‘80s hardcore riffs played at demo quality, yet, it’s this Dutch band’s sixth CD-R. You’d expect the band to have stepped up their game by this point. Each song sounds pretty much exactly the same—banana riffs with the lead singer speak/shouting the lyrics with the rest of the band coming in, here and there, to back him up. However, I can’t be too hard on it. All in all, it’s not great, but there is an appeal to it, a level of passion that I can get behind. Take the lyrics to “Fake Brains: “Wake up and live your life / but try to fix your sight / born with real brains / held down by chains / washed by power games / change your fake brains, live!” Most of the lyrics are of this socio-political nature, covering stuff like feminism and vegetarianism, but mostly resistance to capitalist alienation and living for yourself, like the title track, “Notice Yourself” (which is put in context on the CD cover, the words emblazoned over a huge aerial shot of a dense city)”, in which, the lyrics go “it’s in your mind, it’s in your soul / It’s your own mind, it’s what you sow.” Yeah... notice yourself! All the songs might sound exactly the same and it reminds me of a whole bunch of so-so albums I bought in the nineties when I was a punkling and hocked for cash long ago, but there’s an appeal to it all the same.  
— Craven, Jan 11, 2013, Razorcake.org