The Flying Luttenbachers, Losing The War Inside Our Heads (ugEXPLODE) – Apparently Losing The War Inside Our Heads is the 17th official album from The Flying Luttenbachers, I’ve kind of lost count what with all the bits that fly at us from all sides of the ever rewarding Luttenbachers spectrum, it feels like there’s been several albums this year already, but none were the actual new album we were all waiting for, this is the actual proper new album. The new album has landed, this is the one, this is it and all you really need to know is that there are lots of Flying Luttenbachers albums, each one as vital as the next, seventeen times now, they set their bar high, this is no ordinary band, more is demanded, they demand it of themselves, so do we. The Flying Luttenbackers always deliver, they have once again and If you already know them then you don’t need a review from us, you’re already on it. If you don’t know the Luttenbachers then you need to get on it, what are you waiting for? Get on it now, this is serious high art. 

What you need to know is that the wars they fight inside your head are different, there’s extreme music and then there’s The Flying Luttenbachers. The thing about those seventeen albums is that they all sound very much like Flying Luttenbachers albums, they all have the trademarks, the finger prints, the attitude, the never wavering commitment to the art of noise, but they all in some way sound different. There are bands that just go through the motions of another album, that is not the way Weasel Walter and whoever he has with him do things, whoever might be part of the line up at any given one, they never just make another new album. A proper new Flying Luttenbachers album is an event, a piece of art this is always so obviously them yet every time sounds new and different, sounds fresh, a fresh challenge. This latest one, Losing The War Inside Our Heads,and yes I have been sitting on it, waiting for the right moment, seems like the right moment has come – 1am on a Monday morning if you must know, end of a hot baking Summer Sunday in August 2024, this is the time that a demand was made to finally open up the new album and listen to it properly – here we go, studio door wide open, wet paint everywhere, insects coming in to check it out (the music, not the paint, they know to keep away from the paint), Hackney tuned it weither they like it or not, well you can’t listen to a new album from The Flying Luttenbachers quietly can you!? Here we go, there’s a ritual to a new album, it can’t just be background music while you do the washing up    

According to Weasel Walter, Losing The War Inside Our Heads is a “desolate, bracing collection of music showcasing five varied new tracks of intense, composed modernism. The previous release Terror Iridescence (2022) was an abstract horrorscape of alienated dissonance”, an album that marked founding member Weasel Walter’s transition back to the original base of operations, Chicago. Following four albums with New York based personnel since reviving the Flying Luttenbachers in 2017 (after a decade long hiatus). Hey you don’t need a history lesson here, if you have any sense, you’ve skipped reading this by now and you’ve gone to the actual music, who needs to read about it when you can just fire it up and listen for yourself, go on, quit reading this and just go do it.

Yes, this is The beautiful Flying Luttenbachers at their most complex, their most ambitious, and yes, I know, they always are complex and ambitious but this is even more so. This time they they sound tight, mean, almost economic, they sound composed, focused. They’re not economic of course, there’s several kitchen sinks and enough noise to fill most bands careers in each one of these five compositions and no, five tracks isn’t short changing you, there’s forty-odd minutes here, each minute intense, Flying Luttenbachers minutes are are longer and bigger than most band’s minutes, they must be to get everything in there, but it is economic, it is lean, there is no excess, there isn’t a single riff or one tiny note that isn’t needed, that isn’t vital.  

There aren’t highlights, the whole body of work is of the same very high standard, however you might like to note there’s another full-bodied interpretation of brilliant 20th Century composer Olivier Messiaen’s work on here (the previous one was on 2005’s Cataclysm, this time we have a wonderful piece called Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum movement five, a piece that features a painstakingly faithful adaptation of the original concert score with dozens of obsessive guitar overdubs replacing the woodwinds and brass of the original arrangement, what could there possibly be that’s not to like? It is a glorious version, a tour de force, almost orchestral doom metal, only almost though, never that obvious, what a piece of music! You’d think they’d leave such an epic thing as a Messiaen interpretation until last thing on the album, you’d think that logic says it can’t be followed, but then logic didn’t know about the ten minute attack that follows the Messiaen piece, ten minutes that just gets ramped up and up, the closing ten minutes of the album that is Crawling 1000 Meters Across A Cold Stone Floor Towards The Forbidden is just daring you to go with it, can’t you take it? Do you want to get off? Have you got what it takes? Ha, thought it had ended but no, they keep threatening to end and them crank up even more. Brilliant, just brilliant maximalism.

And yes, Weasel Walter has been getting into Cardiacs. he’s made no secret of it, the opening track here, the obtusely titled The Solution Is The Problem is almost a homage to the extreme ends of Cardiacs noise, and that banging bit there could almost be the vile introduction, we mean this as high complement to the sheer brilliance of the relentlessly marvellous piece of course, listen to that chopping and changing, the thrilling thrash of it all, the going off and things, just marvellous! Intentional or not, Weasel and his band have it just right here. The band this time are the ever constant Weasel Walter on guitar with Luke Polipnick on bass guitar, and Charlie Werber on drums (recently replaced by James Paul Nadien for the touring lineup). The Walter/Polipnick/Werber combination that also featured on the recent stripped-down, live-in-the-studio EP Spectral Warrior Mythos 2, released in Spring 2024 – ah, I see, so that one was only an EP, sounded like a full on album to us! Love the way this band constantly evolves, the way, once you think you’ve worked them out, the tactics change again, are they playing with a false number nine now or is it cricket? Are they pressing? Counter attack? 

Is this there’s best album? impossible to say, every album is their best one, you can’t pick, you can’t say, kind of like trying to pick Rothko’s best painting, I mean, I’ve never heard The Flying Luttenbackers sound like they do here nine minutes into the twelve that make up Excruciation and yet it is so so typical of them. Yes, these are musical wars playing out inside your head (and there’s), they’re different wars though, they’re visceral, they’re intense, they’re relentless, defiantly so, they’re a challenge, they’re almost challenging you to stick with them, no one is losing anything here, it is all going to be alright, you will live to fight it all again and you will want to, and now were back to the dark brooding wall of colours that is the Messiaen piece again, we’ve had the album running on repeat here, the sun will be up soon and well, just wow! If this isn’t their best album then it is one of them. Weasel Walter and company do it again and more, it is just the audacity of it all, it’s not about the money with you and me is it, Gal? It’s the charge, it’s the bolt, it’s the buzz, it’s the sheer fuck off-ness of it all. Am I right? These are brilliant musical times and The Flying Luttenbachers are right up there at the top of it all, go get it… (sw)

Bandcamp / ugEXPLODE

P.S

Weasel Walter and Alex Ward on the album… First Weasel and a post he just made on social media

“when i put out a Flying Luttenbachers album, there’s usually a ton of work leading up to it, and it is usually crammed with a lot of subtext. you don’t need to care about the amount of work or what lies beneath the surface to engage and enjoy it . . . that’s just my own trip. i try to make sure that these releases are the best they can possibly be, given the limitations of my reality. On the most recent full-length, “Losing the War Inside Our Heads”, out now on LP/CD/download, the music spans some years and reflects the struggle to keep the band going and meeting my high expectations. having a name that people follow demands that a bar of quality is met. the amount of sweat equity and blood i put into conceiving and executing this concept is justified only by the final result. the new album has five compositions that reflect my hopes, disappointments and triumphs in an abstract container. oh, and i felt like i needed to cover a messiaen piece and did dozens of guitar overdubs to carefully realize the parts of the orchestral score.

dunno. love it or don’t, i’m still not phoning it in.

you don’t have to buy this through bandcamp. that’s just a convenience bridge troll. if you PM me directly you save money and i get paid more”.

On the brand new The Flying Luttenbachers album, my esteedmed peer Alex Ward writes: ” . . . for my money the new Flying Luttenbachers album is one of the greatest achievements in their entire catalogue. In stylistic terms, the most No-adjacent moments are to be found in the slobbering improv squalls of the second track “Excruciation” and the tortuously assembled noise blocks of finale “Crawling 1000 Meters Across A Cold Stone Floor Towards The Forbidden” – but with regard to embodied sensibility, the overall morbidity of emotional tenor displayed in these 5 compositions should resonate with anyone who appreciates the nihilistic side of the original No Wave movement. As highly recommended as can be.”

Previous Flying Luttenbachers coverage on these pages.